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Stage: Hot ticket
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 21, 2002
This 'Turandot' is not for sleeping
Bulgaria's Teatro Lirico D'Europa brings Puccini's Turandot to Clearwater this weekend in the midst of a two-month 37-city U.S. tour. The company is profiled in this month's Opera News as something of a throwback to the barnstorming opera troupes of yesteryear.
"The physical productions and (artistic director Giorgio) Lalov's stage direction were reassuringly traditional," writes Richard Dyer, classical music critic of the Boston Globe. "Lalov's stagings tell the story clearly; everyone onstage can see the conductor and the conductor can see them. Some of the principals' costumes, especially in Turandot, are worthy of an old-fashioned Hollywood extravaganza."
Dyer, who traveled with the company last winter, goes on to praise the singing as "lusty, wholehearted, full-throated -- and honest. Perhaps it would be going too far to say this kind of performance is what opera is all about, but it does represent something personal and passionate that is often missing from evenings of opera in prestigious venues that aim higher."
Turandot is performed with orchestra and in Italian with English supertitles at 8 p.m. Saturday at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Tickets: $30 and $35. (727) 791-7400. Web site: www.rutheckerdhall.com.
Bathed in the glow of light
[Publicity photo]
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LUMA Theatre of Light combines magic, trapeze artistry, juggling and dance with color, high-tech lighting, movement and music to create a unique experience aimed at audiences of all ages.
LUMA creator Michael Marlin, an ex-comedy juggler, told the Providence Journal that he got the idea for the light show while living in a tree house in Hawaii. "While I was there, I became attuned to the moon cycles and the lava flows. I would see people become hypnotized by watching the lava flows.
"I had this epiphany that all life is drawn to light, and I decided to create a show based on light that the whole world would want to see."
Luminously costumed jugglers use glowing hula hoops and other optical-illusion props to make light appear to take on three-dimensional forms.
LUMA Theater of Light performs at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg. Tickets are $8-$12. Call (727) 892-5767.
Florida Orchestra to accompany Russian ballet
A Russian ballet company with live music is virtually nonexistent in these days of cost-cutting tours, so why not use the local orchestra? That's the bright idea behind two performances of Swan Lake by the Grigorovich Ballet with the Florida Orchestra.
The ballet company is the post-Soviet vehicle of choreographer Yuri Grigorovich, who was artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet for 30 years, until he founded his own company in 1994. Veteran dance critic Clive Barnes has called Grigorovich, now 76, "a unique 20th century choreographer of genius."
His company has 90 dancers, many of them recent graduates of ballet schools in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Perm and Novosibirsk. Most performances on the 27-city U.S. tour are to recorded music, and it should be a treat to hear the orchestra in Tchaikovsky's ravishing score and the sometimes eccentric tempos adopted by ballet companies.
Swan Lake has performances at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tickets: $18-$60. (813) 286-2403 or toll-free 1-800-662-7286.
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