The Silent Woman Opera by Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig Bard Summerscape Review by Seth Rogovoy (ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y., July 29, 2022) – For anyone who thinks they can’t stand operatic singing, The Silent Woman is the opera for you. It’s all about an old man who abides by a one-word creed: RUHE (German for quiet).…
Vertigo Dance Company One. One & One PS21 Review by Seth Rogovoy (CHATHAM, N.Y., July 28, 2022) – One. One & One by Vertigo Dance Company begins with sounds of rain and dirt being shoveled and dogs barking off in the distance. The curtain opens to reveal a woman standing with her back to us,…
BARD SUMMERSCAPE 2022 SONG OF SONGS (world premiere) Pam Tanowitz and David Lang Fisher Center July 1-3, 2022 Review by Seth Rogovoy (ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y., July 2, 2022) – The Biblical Song of Songs, alternatively called Song of Solomon and, in Hebrew, Shir ha-Shirim, has inspired countless works of art over the centuries. This largely erotic…
Review by Seth Rogovoy (CHATHAM, N.Y., June 24, 2022) – PS21’s House Blend concert series kicked off on Friday night with a program of music stretching across centuries, with mid-18th century works by J.S. Bach juxtaposed with mid-to-late 20th century works that offered a variety of sounds, instruments, and stylistic approaches, all comfortably united under…
(NEW YORK, N.Y.) — Eleanor Reissa’s new memoir, The Letters Project: A Daughter’s Journey, will be published on Tuesday, January 18, 2022, by Post Hill Press. A second-generation Holocaust memoir, Reissa’s new book reads like a mystery, recounting the compelling story of her discovery of a cache of letters written in the 1940s from her…
Jessie Lee Montague, Unhooked Review by Seth Rogovoy Hudson Valley-based alt-rock singer-songwriter Jessie Lee Montague recorded several albums and performed widely around the region and in New York City in the late 1990s and early 2000s under the band name Jake. After a decade-plus hiatus from performing and recording, Montague is back with a terrific…
by Seth Rogovoy In a bizarre, almost meta- confluence of perfect timing, disgraced fraudster financier Bernie Madoff died in prison last week, just as Alicia Jo Rabins’s brilliant, rock musical film “A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff” began making the rounds of film festivals, with various online screenings, on its way toward a broader theatrical…
by Seth Rogovoy (FORWARD, 7.12.20) – It’s as predictable as death and taxes. Bob Dylan releases a new album and critics hyperventilate that it is his best since his masterful 1975 album, “Blood on the Tracks.” The latter was an acoustic song cycle largely about the dissolution of a marriage (his marriage?), and it does…
by Seth Rogovoy There are two kinds of people during a pandemic: Those who read “The Plague” by Albert Camus, and those who don’t. I, like thousands if not millions of others, am in the first category. I’ve always been a fan of Camus, but I had never read “The Plague,” which, for those…
by Seth Rogovoy (HUDSON, N.Y., April 24, 2020) — In the past few weeks, Bob Dylan has released two new songs, “Murder Most Foul” and “I Contain Multitudes,” which people have combed for references to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Never mind that these songs were most likely written and recorded months if not years…
