Bringing back an innovation from last fall, the Charlotte Symphony put a couple dozen seats onstage behind the orchestra Friday for adventurous listeners. It must've been sonic dynamite.
It may have been cold outdoors Friday night, but that was still a warmer welcome than Mother Nature gave Grant Llewellyn when he last guest-conducted the Charlotte Symphony.
If you had to be logical about it, there might be plenty to criticize about the "Nutcracker." Its plot is scanty. The party scene at the opening is a little too polite and a little too long.
Money wasn't really the point. Nevertheless, after the Charlotte Symphony announced it would let people sit onstage with the orchestra at this week's concerts, it got a pleasant surprise: Those tickets sold at a nice clip.
Once you get that there's a love triangle, that the two men fighting over the woman have a connection they don't know about, and that the woman who appears to be one man's mother holds that secret, the plot of Verdi's "Il Trovatore" almost doesn't matter.
Once you get that there's a love triangle, that the two men fighting over the woman have a connection they don't know about, and that the woman who appears to be one man's mother holds that secret, the plot of Verdi's "Il Trovatore" almost doesn't matter.
Before he launched the Charlotte Symphony into Ravel's "Bolero" on Friday, Christopher Warren-Green offered up a couple of tidbits about it to the audience.
