by Mike Telin
Opera Per Tutti, founded in 2006, announced last Friday that they were “rebranding” themselves as Cleveland Opera Theater. In a brief press release the company stated that:
Cleveland Opera Theater will continue to enrich the cultural life in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio by performing professional opera theater that is accessible, affordable and exciting, featuring professional artists who make Northeast Ohio their home, and offering exceptional education and outreach programming throughout the region.
We believe our new name will enhance our visibility in the community and allow for more dynamic partnerships with other Northeast Ohio organizations. Please join us in celebrating our new name as we look to a bright future of Opera in Cleveland!
The first production presented under the company’s new name will take place this weekend, with two free performances of the holiday classic one-act opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors. Performances will take place on Saturday, December 20 at 7:00 pm in Cleveland Public Theatre’s Parish Hall and on Sunday, December 21 at 2:00 pm in University Circle United Methodist Church. [Read more…]
It’s all about the holidays this week at Severance Hall. On Wednesday, December 17 at 7:30 pm, Brett Mitchell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and renowned Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster in “Christmas in Cape Breton,” a special show that mixes folk and Celtic styles with Holiday favorites and Nova-Scotian jigs.
Centaurs, dancing mushrooms, ballet hippos, and figure skating fairies accompanied The Cleveland Orchestra Thursday night at Severance Hall. Selections from the 1940 film classic Fantasia and its modern counterpart, Fantasia 2000, were projected over the orchestra for Disney Fantasia Live in Concert, part of the orchestra’s 2014 Holiday Festival series. 
When you’re taking the risk of performing Handel’s most celebrated oratorio from end to end, you need to field a quartet of soloists with alluring personalities, bring together a stellar chorus and orchestra, and be able to count on your own fine sense of pacing — otherwise this two-and-a-half hour work could become tedious soon after the “Hallelujah” chorus. Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire had all of these elements securely in place on Saturday night at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. Its version of Messiah — presented with a sense of theater, as Handel intended it to be — scintillated, charmed and inspired the large audience from Overture to “Amen.” 
As part of its 2014/15 performing arts series, the Cleveland Museum of Art is presenting five concerts by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, directed by Timothy Weiss. The third, featuring works by Pierre Boulez, Harrison Birtwistle and Richard Wernick, took place on Saturday, December 13, in Gartner Auditorium. The audience enjoyed top-notch performances, showing not only technical prowess but also a strong sense of the musicality of each of these difficult works. 
It’s difficult to say what falls more charmingly on the ear at this time of year — Italian baroque Christmas concerti or concerted French Noëls. Under the direction of music director Guy Victor Bordo, Akron Baroque gave its audience a taste of both on Thursday evening at First Congregational Church, plus three arias by the equally alluring soprano, Madeline Apple Healey. 
Most pre-concert lectures are delivered by musicologists or feature interviews with conductors. But when Apollo’s Fire gives five local performances of Handel’s Messiah beginning on Thursday, timpanist Matthew Bassett will talk about that most famous of oratorios from the point of view of the musician who has the least to do during the 2-1/2 hour work. “I don’t have that many notes to think about, but I think about them a lot,” he said in a phone conversation from Buffalo, where he serves as principal timpani with the Buffalo Philharmonic.
This week the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts series will present three musically diverse concerts in Gartner Auditorium.