By Paul Horsley The Harriman-Jewell Series’ auspicious 50th anniversary season has been a wild ride, and it’s not over yet. Recently the Series presented two notable performances within a week […]

By Paul Horsley One of the opera world’s newest stars hails from the oldest of places. The singer whom the New York Times called “the real thing, a tenor who […]

By Paul Horsley András Schiff’s recent Friends of Chamber Music recital stood out chiefly because the Hungarian-born pianist truly interpreted each of the sonatas he’d chosen to play: four late […]

By Paul Horsley The Kansas City Ballet’s current Giselle is a lavish affair, with exceptional dancing, delicious scenic designs by Simon Pastukh, tasteful “period” costumes by David Heuvel and fine […]

By Paul Horsley Her mother tried to keep her away from the piano, but three-year-old Dubravka Tomšič insisted. Soon afterward, having learned how to read notes, she acquired a teacher […]

By Paul Horsley Angels in America, currently playing at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s Copaken Stage, is an odd duck in American theater and is likely to remain so. Set […]

By Paul Horsley Even the humblest of choirs can sound good in a lush, warm acoustic, but it takes an excellent choir to come across as clear, accurate and well-balanced […]

By Paul Horsley Silent Night is the product of a top-flight librettist, Mark Campbell, and a marvelous American composer, Kevin Puts, and it features some of the most beautifully intricate […]

By Paul Horsley Rich Boy disguises himself as Poor Boy in order to win Poor Girl, who falls for him despite Mom’s suspicion there’s something a little “off” about him. […]

By Paul Horsley Maybe all you know about Angels in America is that it’s a monumental, mystical, two-part, seven-hour stage work that wrestles with gigantic subjects such as good and […]

By Paul Horsley Composers throw us a curve ball when they drastically revise works and leave the original for us to mull over alongside the new version. Of course there’s […]

By Paul Horsley Americans are surprisingly narrow-ranged in their cultural exposure these days, internet or no internet. For most people it’s either hip-hop or ballet but not both, hillbilly or […]

By Paul Horsley At 85, André Previn has nothing to prove. As one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th century and for that matter the 21st, the Berlin-born […]

By Paul Horsley Silent Night, the World War I opera that is taking the music world by storm, is not a history lesson, and it’s not a sermon. It’s an […]

By Paul Horsley If you’re not sure whether Mark Morris’ Acis and Galatea is opera or dance or theater or what, then you’re probably on the right track. “That’s historically […]

By Paul Horsley Any celebration of the Harriman-Jewell Series is to some extent a tribute to Richard Harriman, the late William Jewell College professor who cofounded the world-renowned series that […]

By Paul Horsley Ballet is ephemeral at its core, the product of a certain time and place, a specific set of dancers, musicians and designers. This year it’s with no […]

By Paul Horsley The Italian Girl in Algiers contains as much delightful music as about any Rossini opera you could name, and though it is hardly a rarity worldwide it […]

By Paul Horsley Just as Kansas Citians often think of themselves as residing at a geographic and a spiritual center-point of the United States, Macedonians characterize their nation as occupying […]

By Paul Horsley There are many reasons to make a ballet: One is to entertain. Some of our “serious” choreographers forget this at times, and the results are often overly […]

By Paul Horsley The staggering 30-year success of the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey has been built on community-based projects, educational initiatives for children and annual visits of the […]