Change your plans for this weekend. The Boston Lyric Opera's Rigoletto is a don’t miss production—superb direction and sublime performances by baritone Michael Mayes as Rigoletto and soprano Nadine Sierra as Gilda.
Rigoletto, Presented by Boston Lyric Opera, it plays at the Citi Shubert Theatre through Sunday, March 23rd.
Known for having some of opera’s most famous arias, including “La Donna e Mobile” and “Caro Nome”, Verdi’s Rigoletto tells the riveting story about the Duke of Mantua in the decadent Renaissance Italy, always in pursuit of his next romantic conquest. Meanwhile his jester, Rigoletto, is obsessed with protecting the Duke's innocent daughter, Gilda, from the corruption in the court. Baritone Michael Mayes, singing his first Rigoletto, and tenor Bruce Sledge as the Duke of Mantua, both make their Company debuts.
Celebrated bass Morris Robinson, a former all-American offensive lineman football star for the Citadel in South Carolina, is featured as Sparafucile. He told me in a recent interview, "It’s very, very cool to be the bad guy. I mean I often look the part anyway. I was a big football player, I’m bald-headed. I’ve got that look about me. So this time I get to enhance that and play on it, so I’m having a good time with it."
The Whale Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company, it plays at the Calderwood Pavilion through April 5th.
Winner of the 2013 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play, this very heavy play about redemption is told through the story of Charlie, a morbidly obese man who hides away in his Northern Idaho apartment, quietly eating himself to death in the wake of a personal tragedy. John Kuntz as Charlie gives a very strong performance, as does Georgia Lyman, playing Charlie's nurse and friend.
The Gardner and Google, Online now.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum joins over 400 existing online art collections through its new partnership with the Google Cultural Institute, a collaboration between Google and art partners from across more than 50 countries that work to preserve and promote culture online. This first for a Boston museum will give visitors a complete first-person walk-through (“Street View”) experience as part of its collection, offering immersive views of the Museum’s galleries and more than 2,500 objects. In a conversation with the museum's director, Anne Hawley about how virtual may disrupt the real museum-going experience, she pointed out that with a new generation, we don't know yet what their art-viewing reality will be.
“We don’t want the virtual experience to replace the authentic, being there, looking-at-the-actual-object experience," she said, "and to date it doesn’t appear that that’s the case. But will the digitals, those children who are born with the iPad in their hand, will they feel the same way or will the virtual be the real to them. I think that’s the longer term question and something that perhaps haunts us a little bit.”
Divergent, In theaters Friday.
I couldn't wait to see this action-adventure film, based on the book series by Veronica Roth. The scene is set in a futuristic world where people are divided into distinct factions based on human virtues. Shailene Woodley plays Tris Prior, who is labeled a "Divergent" because she has no one distinct quality. Tris discovers a conspiracy by a faction leader, played ruthlessley by Kate Winslet, to destroy all of her divergent kind. Tris meets the mysterious Four, played by Theo James, and together they fight to survive a new kind of holocaust.
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