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Cleveland Opera Theater moves to Playhouse Square with La Bohème (Sept. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Puccini’s La Bohème was produced 598 times worldwide during the 2017-2018 season, making it the fourth most-performed title in the repertoire (trailing La traviata, Carmen, and The Magic Flute). It’s also the show that Cleveland Opera Theater chose for its move from venues like the Masonic Auditorium and the Maltz Performing Arts Center to the Ohio Theater, a more traditionally-outfitted house. On Friday, September 13, Scott Skiba’s clever production surrounded a fine cast with memorable scenic design by Matthew D. McCarren and projections by Brittany Merenda that brought a Parisian garret, the Café Momus, and a toll gate outside the city vividly to life in Playhouse Square.

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Cleveland Opera Theater: La traviata at the Maltz (April 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

While opera often treats its audiences to spectacle on a grand scale, what really makes the art form take flight is the melding of distinguished singing with excellent acting and staging. Those elements came together beautifully in Cleveland Opera Theater’s production of Verdi’s La traviata on Sunday afternoon, April 28 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. A strong cast and a fine chamber orchestra joined director Scott Skiba and conductor Domenico Boyagian in bringing the story of Violetta Valéry to vibrant life on an engagingly human scale. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony & Chorus in Beethoven’s “Eroica” & Mass in C (Apr. 6)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Most musicians and music history buffs recount Beethoven’s life as a three-part story of artistic progress, from early indebtedness to precedent, through the heroic rupturing of tradition, then on to strange yet sublime experiments. However, smart concert programming can remind us that this central figure of the classical pantheon, like most artists, tended to zigzag. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater to present La traviata at the Maltz

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by Mike Telin

Violetta Valéry is among the most popular of the many sopranos who die in the last acts of operas. You can relive the story of that “fallen woman” this weekend when Cleveland Opera Theater turns the Maltz Performing Arts Center into an opera house for Verdi’s La traviata.

Scott Skiba directs, Domenico Boyagian conducts, and the cast features Angela Mortellaro as Violetta, Benjamin Werley as Alfredo, and Grant Youngblood as Germont. The Act II party scene is always a highlight, but this one, featuring Cleveland Burlesque, promises to be a show-stopper. The lights go up on Friday, April 26 at 7:00 pm and on Sunday, April 28 at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“Cleveland Burlesque performs all around Cleveland,” Skiba said during a telephone conversation, “and I reached out to them because we are setting the production in contemporary times. I was thinking, who would Flora hire to perform at her party, and I thought she would hire burlesque dancers.”

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Heights Chamber Orchestra at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts. (Feb. 24)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Concert promoters often confront a dilemma: advertisement demands a level of concision that can reduce a rich, varied program to a name or two and some titles. Undeclared riches might await behind a program labeled, say, “Satie’s Parade.” Wise, then, for the Heights Chamber Orchestra to avoid choosing a descriptive tagline for their most recent concert. So many individual aspects of the performance charmed that to single out one would be to minimize its many surprising delights. [Read more…]

Heights Chamber Orchestra: getting to know Dean Buck

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Dean Buck grew up on the West Side of Cleveland, then headed to New York City for four years of school and five years of work. Now he’s back, pursuing a master’s in conducting at the Cleveland Institute of Music and digging into the city’s freelance scene.

Two things he’s enjoyed since being back? For one, the cost of living. “You have substantially less rent to make each month,” he said, laughing. And two, the music scene. “It’s fun — there are some great groups and great people. I’m almost wary about saying how good it is here because it’s like, oh no, everyone’s going to come.”

Having led a couple of workshop performances during Cleveland Opera Theater’s {NOW} Festival in recent weeks, next up for Buck is a guest conducting opportunity with Heights Chamber Orchestra. What stands out most on that program on Sunday, February 24 at 3:30 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church: a concerto for the Wagner tuba.

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Margaret Brouwer’s Voice of the Lake, revised version at CIM (Oct. 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

On October 19, almost a year after its debut, Margaret Brouwer’s ambitious oratorio Voice of the Lake, chronicling the most recent environmental assaults on Lake Erie, was revived in an updated version in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. The affecting and nearly flawless performance conducted by Domenico Boyagian, involved soloists (Angela Mortellaro, soprano, Sarah Beaty, mezzo-soprano, Brian Skoog, tenor, and Bryant Bush, bass), the 15-member Blue Streak Ensemble and 12 voices of the Blue Streak Ensemble Chamber Singers, and the 21-voice Cleveland Institute of Music Children’s Choir. [Read more…]

Voice of the Lake — a conversation with composer Margaret Brouwer

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by Mike Telin

Growing up, composer Margaret Brouwer spent many wonderful summers enjoying the beauty of Lake Erie at her family’s cottage in Huron, Ohio. But when dangerous levels of algae blooms in the Lake’s western basin caused a water crisis in Toledo in 2014, the ensuing national conversation about environmental pollution and the state of the country’s drinking water became the source of inspiration for her Voice of the Lake. We spoke with the composer before the work’s premiere in November of 2017.

The revised version will be presented on Friday, October 19 at 7:00 pm at Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music (above, rehearsal photo). The performance features soprano Angela Mortellaro, mezzo-soprano Sarah Beaty, tenor Brian Skoog, bass Bryant Bush, the Blue Streak Ensemble and Chamber Singers, and the Cleveland Institute of Music Children’s Choir, all under the direction of Domenico Boyagian. The performance will be video-recorded for future broadcast. Tickets are available online.

Written in four parts, the oratorio is a musical description of Lake Erie during the first quarter of the 21st century. While the work portrays the Lake’s magical side — waves splashing on the rocks, walks on the beach, children playing in the water, and the pleasure of a fisherman in his boat — it also highlights the Lake’s many environmental problems as well as the innovative attempts that are being made to combat those problems.

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