When I attended the finals of L.A. Opera’s 2004 Operalia Competition, Quinn Kelsey’s performance gave me the shivers. The Hawaiian baritone exhibited a glorious voice whose depth, range, technical virtuosity and passion should have won him top honors. Inexplicably, in what should go down as one of the great judging......
The second week of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Minimalist Jukebox festival continues with seven nights of musical permutations and combinations, some of which even go against the minimalist grain. In the words of festival director John Adams, “It has escaped no one’s attention that celebrating Minimalism in the context of......
Photo (below) by Max S. Gerber If ever oh ever a wiz there was, it’s Don Herbert. As early television’s Mr. Wizard, Herbert performed the magical feat of making kids fall in love with science. He became the idol of many a child when he showed how to turn old......
Photos by Anne Fishbein At Lovey Dash’s offices on Beverly Boulevard, it’s a regular dog-day afternoon. Her 1-year-old toy Chinese crested hairless, Zeuss, a tiny, oddly spotted creature with wild hair sprouting from the top of his head like an unruly exotic plant, is attired in an “at-home lounging housecoat”......
Gil Kofman’s new farce, American Magic, has the look and feel of kinky political satire. Not only is this tweaked fable a refreshing antidote to all the post–9/11 paranoia we’ve been tube-fed by the government and media, it also exhibits a sexy chaos not often glimpsed onstage. Then, halfway through,......
“3 a.m. Paris. Montparnasse, fabled haunt of Hemingway and his pack and still a center of Parisian nightlife. A last-minute decision to add one of the great viol fantasies to a recording devoted to Purcell has us working late. To capture the viol’s throaty resonance and the fantasy‘s intricate polyphony,......
This weekend, Grey Gardens, Albert and David Maysles' 1976 cinema verite classic about Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie, reopens for a weeklong run at the Nuart. In the film, the 79-year-old "Big" Edie, a former society beauty and sister of Jacqueline Onassis' father, "Black Jack" Bouvier, lies in......
Just before Christmas, amid a jumble of half-built sets and strange props that make you feel like you're in the middle of a junk shop, an early rehearsal for a production of Oscar Wilde's most misunderstood work, Salome (which opened last week at Actors' Gang Theater), is in full swing......
