The Enchanted Island with Joyce DiDonato
This extraordinary new work combines the world’s best singers, the glorious music of the Baroque masters, and a story drawn from Shakespeare. In “The Enchanted Island,” the lovers from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are shipwrecked on the other-worldly island of The Tempest. Inspired by the musical pastiches and masques of the 18th century, the work showcases arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau and others, and a new libretto by Jeremy Sams. Eminent conductor William Christie leads an all-star cast featuring David Daniels, Joyce DiDonato, Danielle de Niese, Luca Pisaroni, Lisette Oropesa and Anthony Roth Costanzo, with special guest star Plácido Domingo.
Watch Friday, May 18, 2012 at 9pm.
Watch Joyce DiDonato in The Enchanted Island on PBS. See more from Great Performances.
Faust at the Met
With Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, René Pape as the devil and Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite, Gounod’s classic retelling of the Faust legend is directed by Tony Award-winner Des McAnuff, who updates the story to the first half of the 20th century in a production that won praise in London. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, on the heels of his Don Carlo success, conducts.
Great Performances at the Met: Faust
Watch Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 3pm.
Watch GP at the Met: Faust on PBS. See more from Great Performances.
Art In The Twenty-First Century: Balance
The artists in this episode, Rackstraw Downes, Robert Mangold and Sarah Sze, create ordered and precise works that explore the gap between art and existence, challenge the distinction between seeing and knowing, and demonstrate that the pursuit of harmony can be a radical proposition.
“Art in the Twenty-First Century” Season Six includes 13 profiles of artists from five continents gathered into four, one-hour thematic episodes: Change, Balance, History and Boundaries. Spanning the globe from Nigeria to New York City, from Beijing to Brazil, the programs reveal the artists at work and speaking in their own words as they demonstrate the power of art to alter perception, challenge convention, and change how we see the world around us.
Watch Art in the Twenty-First Century Friday, May 4, 2012 at 9pm.
Rodelinda
Handel’s opera Rodelinda stars soprano Renee Fleming in the title role of Rodelinda, with German countertenor Andreas Scholl as Bertarido and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as his sister, Eduige. Harry Bicket conducts.
Watch Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 2pm.
Watch GP at the Met: Rodelinda on PBS. See more from Great Performances.
Art in the 21st Century — New Season
Artists Ai Weiwei, El Anatsui and Catherine Opie bear witness, through their work, to transformation — cultural, material, and aesthetic — and actively engage communities as collaborators and subjects.
ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, the only primetime national television series to focus exclusively on contemporary art and artists, returns to PBS for a sixth season. Through in-depth profiles and interviews, the series reveals the inspiration, vision and techniques behind the creative works of some of the most accomplished contemporary artists.
Watch Friday, April 13, 2012 at 9pm.
Watch Trailer: Season 6, Art in the Twenty-First Century on PBS. See more from ART:21.
The Thomashefskys
“The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater” brings to life the words and music of the American Yiddish theater. The story’s lead characters — Bessie and Boris Thomashefky — are the grandparents of San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas. Bessie and Boris immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe in the 1880s, and while still in their teens, they began to play major roles in the development of New York City’s Yiddish theater. For Jewish immigrants who settled on the lower East Side of Manhattan, the Yiddish theater was central to their lives, and provided a stage for the new ideas that were shaping the transition to an American way of life. In “The Thomashefkys,” Tilson Thomas serves as guide through the lives and repertoire of his grandparents. His grandfather died before he was born, but his grandmother lived until he was 17. His close relationship with her is a source of much of the performance material. Performing at the New World Symphony’s spectacular new Frank Gehry-designed home in Miami, Tilson Thomas shares the stage with a 30-piece orchestra and ensemble cast to bring the repertoire and words of Bessie and Boris to life. With time, aspects of klezmer and cantorial sounds became more integrated and more American, as Jewish composers became immersed in their new surroundings, greatly influencing composers like Irving Berlin and George Gershwin.
Watch The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 9pm.
PBS Arts from KC: Local “Homecoming” Production Begins!
Production in Kansas City begins on the upcoming PBS Arts special “Homecoming: The Kansas City Symphony Presents Joyce DiDonato,” which airs July 20, 2012 as part of PBS Arts Summer Festival. Pictured: Mezzo-Soprano Joyce DiDonato with Frank Byrne, Exec. Director of the Kansas City Symphony.
Homecoming: Day 1
On a misty Wednesday morning, KCPT’s crew kicked off a week of production as Kansas City Symphony’s Executive Director Frank Byrne officially welcomed home, Mezzo Soprano and Prairie Village native, Joyce DiDonato. With umbrella in hand, Joyce exited her car to a welcoming entourage of cameras as she got her first official tour of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts - her “home” for the next several days.
Joyce, Maestro Michael Stern and the symphony’s new concert master Noah Geller led an afternoon of rehearsals in Helzberg Hall. These were just a tiny glimpse of what audiences have to look forward to this weekend when Joyce performs with the Kansas City Symphony (March 23 – 25) and KCPT captures it all for the upcoming PBS Arts special.
Although this weekend will be Joyce’s first performance at the Kauffman Center, she took the stage on Wednesday night (March 21) as part of the Symphony’s Master Class series. Students from UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, University of Kansas and Wichita State University got the rare opportunity to learn vocal technique from the recent Grammy winner.
But it wasn’t just the students who walked off stage in awe of the vocalist; she had the audience of over 900 people equally inspired. Joyce spoke to the crowd about the importance of the arts saying, “I’m so happy to see a resurgence and a focus on the arts [on Public Television] because I think there is a real hunger in this country and other place for this kind of experience. Something that is deep and real and something that shows us what we can be: bigger than ourselves. An opera, a symphonic work takes so many people and so much effort to bring it together.”
Homecoming: Day 2
On day two of KCPT’s filming of “Homecoming: The Kansas City Symphony Presents Joyce DiDonato”, the documentary team on the production crew filmed rehearsals and behind the scenes interviews. At the same time, a production crew devoted entirely to capturing the concerts worked on coordinating the taping of Saturday and Sunday’s performances. Coordinating the duties and shot lists of eleven different cameras is no easy task!
Homecoming: Day 3
On day three of the production of Homecoming: The Kansas City Symphony Presents Joyce DiDonato, the crew put the pedal to the metal, literally. In the morning, the 63 foot long HD production truck arrived at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and a crew of engineers worked all day to pull about 7000 feet of cable from the truck, through the belly of the Kauffman to Helzberg Hall, where eleven cameras will capture the KC Symphony and DiDonato’s performance. About mid-day the Symphony and DiDonato did their final rehearsal before Friday evening’s performance. Adjustments to lighting design, camera placement and audio were also refined.
Homecoming: Day 4 and 5
During the final two days 0f taping, the major focus was capturing the Saturday evening and Sunday matinee performances. After the Saturday evening concert, producers worked into the early hours of the morning analyzing the shots captured by all eleven cameras and then updating the shot list and plan of attack for Sunday, which was the final opportunity to capture any missing shots.
The Homecoming camera crew sits around a table watching the previous evening's performance.
In addition, during Sunday’s concert there was a short “patch performance”, where the KC Symphony and DiDonato re-did a few measures to ensure that not so much a cough from the audience would detract from the taping. After Sunday’s performance, KCPT’s engineering and production worked feverishly to load out all the cameras, the 7000 feet of cable and get the HD truck ready to go in just few hours. During pack-up part of the documentary crew followed Joyce DiDonato back to her loft to capture a special family celebration of the monumental weekend. The family shared Jack Stack BBQ and Joyce showed us the amazing view of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts from her window.
After a monumental homecoming, Joyce DiDonato looks at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts from the window of her loft.
Satyagraha at the Met
The Met’s visually extravagant production is captured in its encore engagement. Richard Croft once again portrays Gandhi in Philip Glass’ unforgettable opera, which the Washington Post calls “a profound and beautiful work of theater.”
Watch Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 3pm.
Phantom of the Opera (Great Performances)
To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the musical blockbuster Phantom of the Opera, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and producer Cameron Mackintosh joined forces to present a fully-staged, lavish production in the suptous splendor of London’s Royal Albert Hall.
