Sure, the floods of melody in “La Boheme” do the most to deliver the opera's thrills. But the quieter moments are where Puccini's tale of meteoric love can really grab the emotions.
When Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre goes on tour, it ends almost every performance the same way: with "Revelations," the work that made Ailey and his company an international sensation.
Since this was already in print, I won't pussyfoot around it: Christopher Warren-Green wasn't my No. 1 choice to be the Charlotte Symphony's next leader.
Charlotte Chamber Music had no choice. St. Peter's Episcopal Church uptown, the site of the group's concerts for more than a decade, closed its sanctuary for a remodeling. So the series switched to a temporary location nearby: First Presbyterian Church on West Trade Street.
Orchestras can't always use Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to give new seasons a blockbuster start. This time, the Charlotte Symphony has turned to Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 – an hour of nature worship, soul-searching and celebration for supersized orchestra.
There was such short notice that many dance lovers may have missed it when N.C. Dance Theatre's Dwight Rhoden landed on Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance."
It was the role that made Luciano Pavarotti a star. In April, another tenor brought it to the same theater that had been Pavarotti's launching pad. Juan Diego Florez upped the ante.
As he launched the first chamber-music program at this year's Spoleto Festival USA, Charles Wadsworth – the concerts' director, host and sometime pianist – shared with the audience a moment of self-examination:
