ENTERTAINMENT
April 13, 2013 | By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
HONG KONG - Strung up in the Sunbeam Theatre in a gritty working-class part of this city are posters showing Cantonese opera singers, their red lips offset by chalk-white, made-up faces. In the faded lobby, where theatergoers mill on a Saturday afternoon, dozens of bouquets with handwritten messages are dedicated to the stars by fans. For four decades, this theater in North Point on Hong Kong Island has been one of the last remaining stalwarts for Cantonese opera in the city. But its existence is by no means guaranteed.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 10, 2013 | By Patrick Kevin Day
IFC announced a development slate of 11 projects on Wednesday, three pilots and eight scripts, and based on their descriptions, the channel appears to be going even more idiosyncratic in its projects. Among the projects possibly coming soon to the channel are an '80s-style soap opera animated entirely with baby dolls and a buddy comedy about a struggling comic-book illustrator befriending a vampire from the future, titled "Jetpackula. " PHOTOS: Hollywood Backlot moments The three pilots IFC has commissioned include "Timms Industrial Piping," the "Dynasty"-inspired series about the residents of Timms Valley, Wis., dealing with the disappearance of the founder and CEO of the town's biggest employer.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 4, 2013 | By Richard S. Ginell
Los Angeles Opera wheeled into its final three performances of Rossini's “Cinderella” Wednesday night with a new Cinderella toiling amid her cadre of lovable, helpful rats. She is the Georgian mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze -- yet another winner of Plácido Domingo's Operalia competition to appear on the L.A. Opera stage (her debut), and also somewhat of a contrast to the previous Cinderella, Kate Lindsey. This Cinderella registered a distinctive vocal presence with a Slavic accent (which lessened as the performance unfolded)
ENTERTAINMENT
April 1, 2013 | By Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Music Critic
SAN DIEGO - Devout opera companies caring to connect with Holy Week easily can. Along with the obvious choice of Wagner's "Parsifal," contemporary composers such as Harrison Birtwistle ("The Last Supper") and John Adams ("The Gospel According to the Other Mary") have been contributing to the cause. On Easter Eve, San Diego Opera looked a little further afield, however, by offering the first major American production of Ildebrando Pizzetti's "Murder in the Cathedral" at Civic Theatre.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 30, 2013 | By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
From the nation that brought you "Are You Being Served?" comes "Mr. Selfridge," a loose dramatization of the founding of a British retail institution, the Selfridge & Co. department store, familiarly called Selfridges. Its eight-part run begins Sunday, under the colors of PBS' "Masterpiece. " Starring Jeremy Piven as Harry Gordon Selfridge, the American who brought recreational shopping to Britain, it is neither a miniseries nor a biopic, but a full-on, open-ended TV series - a second season is already slated for 2014 - which, like "The Tudors/The Borgias," takes real people from a real place and time and embroiders their lives with the sort of things you watch television for. There are resemblances to "Mad Men," as well, in that it is a period piece about the business of selling and the dreaminess of buying; and of "Downton Abbey" because it is concerned with social mobility at the end of the Edwardian era and ... big hats.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 30, 2013 | By Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Music Critic
LONDON - The editor of Opera is worried. The March editorial of Britain's leading opera monthly describes this city's opera scene as being in crisis. The city's major companies - Royal Opera and English National Opera - are in a state of flux, administratively, artistically, musically and, in the case of ENO, financially. Opera everywhere should suffer such crises. On a recent Saturday in the British capital, I couldn't imagine a better place for opera, crises or no crises.