Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.
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The line between “opera and soap opera” is a fine one, explored thoroughly by Terrence McNally’s Golden Age, said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. This behind-the-scenes tale of the opening night of Vincenzo Bellini’s 1835 opera, I Puritani, mines a similar vein as earlier McNally works, including The Lisbon Traviata and the Maria Callas bio-portrait, Master Class. Here, Jeffrey Carlson movingly plays the composer, whose “fragile artist’s psyche” gets pushed near its breaking point by the backstage antics of his cast, a collection of singers whose talents are exceeded only by the size of their egos. The opera’s premiere unfolds just beyond the audience’s field of vision, while sundry “rivalries, jealousies, and insecurities” threaten to interrupt it.
McNally packs plenty of “good tragic irony” into his script, presenting us with characters who “obsess over immortality” yet today are known only to aficionados, said Christian Williams in the A.V. Club. The “world-galloping diva” Maria Malibran and the “baritone lothario” Antonio Tamburini, for example, were once roughly equivalent in stature to Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison. Yet McNally makes sure that such an ironic treatment never applies to Bellini himself. I Puritani would be the composer’s final opera before his own death, at 33. Together, Carlson and McNally create a soulful portrait of a man “acutely aware of his limited time on earth,” whose final work becomes a passionate attempt to “stave off oblivion.”
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August 31 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include FEMA's new scheme, Gavin Newsom's antics, and a clue in the Epstein files
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Disarming Hezbollah: Lebanon's risky missionTalking Point Iran-backed militia has brought 'nothing but war, division and misery', but rooting them out for good is a daunting and dangerous task
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Woof! Britain's love affair with dogsThe Explainer The UK's canine population is booming. What does that mean for man's best friend?
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If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.