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"Swan Lake" and the American Ballet Theater at the Met

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 22 June 2026 13:44; Written by Jack Angstreich

Skylar Brandt and Herman Cornejo in Swan Lake.Photo: Rosalie O’Connor Photography.

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful Metropolitan Opera House—on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 11th—I had the privilege to attend a memorable version of the magnificent Swan Lake, presented by American Ballet Theater in its admirable production—the first seen this season—with impressive choreography by the previous Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie, based on that of the celebrated Marius Petipa along with Lev Ivanov. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s glorious score was expertly conducted by the always reliable Ormsby Wilkins, while the attractive sets and costumes were designed by Zack Brown, and the powerful lighting by Duane Schuler.

The unforgettable role of Odette-Odile was arrestingly performed by Skylar Brandt—she excelled in this last year as did her superb partner Herman Cornejo as Prince Siegfried and he remains one of the finest principals in the company. (They both elicited enormous enthusiasm from a very appreciative audience, especially in their stunning turns in Act II.) Both Andrii Ishchuk and Duncan Lyle were also effective in the divided part of von Rothbart, the evil sorcerer.

Not unexpectedly, the secondary cast was again quite strong and here, for reasons of space and readability, I’ll cite only the most remarkable, starting with Léa Fleytoux, Yoon Jeung Seo and Jake Roxander (who also danced the role of Benno, the prince’s friend) who as an ensemble beautifully realized the marvelous Pas de Trois from Act I. (They also shone in in this in last year’s production.) The dance of the four Cygnettes at the lakeside (in Act II)—possibly my favorite in the entire ballet—was here splendidly executed by Zimmi Coker, Breanne Granlund, Fleytoux again, and Betsy McBride. Also fabulous was the exhilarating dance of the Two Swans, here brilliantly achieved by Sierra Armstrong and Remy Young—the latter also was exceptional last year in the same role.

In Act III’s delightful divertissements too, the main dancers were enchanting, beginning with Atau Watanabe, Camila Ferrera, Rachel Richardson and Coker again—the latter two exquisitely resuming their roles from last year—as, respectively, the Hungarian, Spanish, Italian and Polish Princesses. The enthralling Czardas was led by Zhong-Jing Fang and Roman Zhurbin—he danced this magically last year as well. The terrific Spanish Dance consists of two couples, which here were first, Olivia Tweedy and—here also repeating from last year—Joseph Markey, and second, Abbey Marrison and Tristan Brosnan. And, lastly, the Neapolitan Dance was rendered indelible by Daniel Guzmán and Tyler Maloney. The key non-dancing parts included the perennial Nancy Raffa as the Queen Mother and Alexei Agoudine as both Wolfgang, tutor to the prince, and as the Master of Ceremonies in Act III, while the sterling corps de ballet was characteristically extraordinary.

With perfect justice, the artists received a standing ovation.

Shakespeare in the Park Review—“Romeo and Juliet” at the Delacorte Theater

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 19 June 2026 20:23; Written by Kevin Filipski

Romeo and Juliet

Written by William Shakespeare; Spanish translations by Alfredo Michel Modenessi

Choreography by Mayte Natalio; directed by Saheem Ali

Performances through June 28, 2026

Delacorte Theater, Central Park, New York City

publictheater.org

Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens in Romeo and Juliet (photo: Joan Marcus)

At the Delacorte Theater every summer, the play’s usually not the thing. Instead, Shakespeare is often secondary to the busyness onstage, as director Saheem Ali’s Romeo and Juliet vividly demonstrates. In Ali’s staging, Verona, Italy, is now Nueva Verona, a bilingual town on the U.S.-Mexico border where the Capulets and the Montagues live and where a wall has been built on which protestors from the Montague clan spray paint anti-ICE slogans (the Capulets are pro-ICE, natch).

Against this artificially heightened backdrop, the doomed romance of our star-cross’d lovers is rather uneventful, even trivial. The director must also sense this, since he has also rather desperately added a portentous trio of masked spectres who represent death as they hover about the denizens and gravestones strewn about Maruti Evans’ spooky cemetery set. (Also hovering, somewhat more pretentiously, are outsized statutes of what looks to be Jesus’ mother Mary as well as a skeleton behind the large onstage wall.)

Ali’s direction can’t overcome the inherent contradiction of stuffing extraneous bits into the play yet not trusting those additions enough to embrace a true reimagining. Some of the text is spoken in (unsubtitled) Spanish, which may be authentic to the changed setting and the unbridgeable chasm between the two families—the lower-class Montagues speak it, the upper-class Capulets don’t—but having the two lovers speak Shakespeare’s most elevated love language in another language erases the original poetry’s beauty.

Juliet’s nurse is played by the capable Dierdre O’Connell as an unwanted mugging in the park, which Ali surely was after—so is the audience, which hoots and hollers at her every raised eyebrow. There are a few performers, like Francis Jue (Lawrence), Caleb Joshua Eberhardt (Mercutio) and Lachanze (who gets to sing as Lady Capulet), who are better at balancing the overacting that Delacorte audiences respond to with slightly more nuance.

This bloodless Romeo and Juliet comes to intermittent life through the chemistry of the leads. Daniel Bravo Hernández is a dashing Romeo and Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens believably makes Juliet a giggling teen and a maturing young woman. Both also speak fluent Spanish (in Alfredo Michel Modenessi’s translation) so they can often convey Shakespeare’s emotions without subtitles—but even they are defeated by Ali’s lazy direction of the famous balcony scene, the most forgettable I’ve yet seen.

As so often at the Delacorte, what’s most memorable is not from Shakespeare: Oana Botez’ dazzling costumes, especially in the pivotal ball sequence; Christopher Akerlind’s canny lighting; and Mayte Natalio’s energetic choreography. But the messy ending, in which the two grieving families agree to drop their long-standing differences (even though the wall still sits imposingly behind them), makes little sense in this context. That may be why each Delacorte performance ends with a real-life wedding led by Jue, who is an ordained officiant of the Universal Life Church: witnessing an actual celebration of marriage might help audiences forget that Shakespeare’s teenage newlyweds die onstage.

June '26 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 11 June 2026 14:56; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Honeyjoon

(Collective)

Young, single June goes to the Azores with her mother Lela on the first anniversary of June’s father’s death in Lilian T. Mehrel’s psychological drama laced with humor and eroticism about the different forms that grief can take.

Anchored by buoyant performances from Ayden Mayeri (June) and Amira Casar (Lela), Mehrel’s film is an occasionally meandering but touchingly observed look at how a seemingly unbridgeable generation gap between mother and daughter can be tentatively but optimistically bridged.

Promised Sky

(Film Movement)

Tunisian-French director-cowriter Erige Sehiri examines the intertwined lives of several females in Tunisia, including an orphaned young girl who was the lone survivor of a sunken refugee boat in this humane study that skirts—but never succumbs to—melodrama.

Although there’s inevitably an anecdotal feel as we jump around among these characters as they navigate the difficulties of being outsiders that includes racism from the top down, Sehiri’s perceptive eye is sure and real, as are the authentically lived-in performances by the entire cast.

This Tempting Madness

(Vertical Entertainment)

After a horrific incident lands her in the hospital, Mia awakes from a coma physically and emotionally scarred in Jennifer E. Montgomery’s often bluntly obvious but potent psychological study. With her memories jumbled, Mia has to try and piece together what’s happened, including her relationship with her estranged husband Jake.

Montgomery (who also cowrote the scattered script with Andrew M. Davis, the film’s inventive cinematographer) can’t thoroughly fight her way past the cliches and tropes of the genre, the intense Mia of Simone Ashley keeps things focused.

Streaming Release of the Week

Changing Lanes

(First Run Features)

When a beloved local teacher is killed on McGuinness Boulevard, a busy Greenpoint, Brooklyn, thoroughfare, the neighborhood is galvanized to provide more bike lanes and inhibit vehicular traffic in Ben Wolf’s succinct documentary that dramatizes how anger turns to action even as literal roadblocks are thrown up by those against changes.

Led by a long-time local business, what began in the DeBlasio administration are slowed to a near-halt by the corrupt Mayor Adams. Wolf packs a lot of info into his 74-minute running time, even though more would have been welcome, especially the asides from long-time bicyclist David Byrne, who extols the virtues of cities that plan for bike lanes as he’s seen while on tours in Europe.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

(Cult Epics)

Dutch director Wim Verstappen’s crudely provocative (and rarely seen) 1972 melodrama follows Cornelis, the patriarch of a large and successful company that handles both meat and contraceptives (!), who tries to find an heir who will succeed him at the helm.

Like any good soap opera, VD involves incest, adultery, abortion, suicide, orgies—Cornelis and his family are not likable people, and if Verstappen sometimes lays it on too thick with on-the-nose satire and commentary (including several look-away shots of animals being butchered), it remains fascinatingly watchable. There’s a fine restored hi-def transfer; extras include a commentary by film historian Peter Verstraten and Festival of Love, Verstappen’s 1969 short.

CD Release of the Week

Aribert Reimann—Ein Traumspiel

(Wergo)

German composer Aribert Reimann (1936-2024) wrote thorny, 12-tone music he memorably used to underpin the often radical-sounding operas he adapted from prestigious literary sources: Lear, written for legendary German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Diskeau, is his greatest musical triumph, and he also wrote operas based on Kafka’s The Castle and August Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata.

Ein Traumspiel, Reimann’s first opera, was composed in 1965; based on Strindberg’s A Dream Play, it’s dramatically riveting but a little diffuse, as if Reimann was still grasping with setting such challenging material to his idiosyncratic music. This compelling 2018 performance was recorded at Bavaria’s Theater Hof in Germany—Walter E. Gugerbauer conducts the orchestra, chorus and a cast led by mezzo Franziska Rabl in the vocally taxing role of the god Indra’s daughter. Also included is Reimann’s monodrama, Denn bleien ist nirgends (For to Stay Is to Be Nowhere), based on an elegy by Reiner Maria Rilke, superbly performed by speaker Martin Engler.

Lise Davidsen Performs Schubert at Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 10 June 2026 14:07; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Stephanie Berger

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Friday, June 6th, I had the exceptional privilege to attend a superb recital—presented by Carnegie Hall—of extraordinary lieder by Franz Schubert, sung by the magnificent soprano Lise Davidsen, splendidly accompanied by pianist James Baillieu.

The event started very auspiciously with "Am Bach im Frühlinge," D. 361, set to a text by Franz von Schober, one of the composer’s closest friends. Next was "Ganymed," D. 544, the first of numerous settings of poems by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, a towering figure in world literature—this lyric was notable for its surprising homoeroticism. The following "Der Zwerg," D. 771, with a text by Matthias von Collin, was remarkable for its suggestion of a perverse sexuality. The succeeding "Gretchen am Spinnrade," D. 118, from Goethe’s masterwork, Faust, is one of the composer’s most celebrated works and was a highlight of the evening.

This preceded a series of settings of poems from the same author’s immense Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, which served as the basis for the great Wim Wenders film from 1975, Wrong Move, which lamentably was recently withdrawn from circulation. The earliest of the series and the first to be performed this evening was "Kennst du das Land," D. 321. The next three selections were from a single work of 1826, Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister, D. 877, beginning with the second version of “Heiss mich nicht reden,” followed by the fourth and final version of “So last mich scheinen,” and concluding with the last of six settings of “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt.” The first half of the program closed with another famous song, “Death and the Maiden,” D. 531, set to verse by Matthias Claudius.

The second half of the recital was maybe even stronger, opening with Goethe’s "Der Musensohn," D. 764, and "Lachen und Weinen," D. 777, set to a text from Friedrich Rückert’s Oriental Roses. (He was one of the better poets that the composer adapted and famously was the source for many amazing songs by Gustav Mahler.) Another of the finest moments from the event was the performance of another beautiful Goethe setting, "Suleika I," D. 720. The next selection,

"Auf dem See," D. 543, was from a text by the same writer, and this was followed by "Der blinde Knabe," D. 833, set to a poem by Jakob Nikolaus Craigher de Jachelutta, itself a translation of 18th-century English verse by Colley Cibber.

The pinnacle of the event was probably the next song, another Rückert setting, "Du bist die Ruh," D. 776, one of the composer’s most glorious creations—it was very memorably recorded in recent years by the amazing countertenor, Andreas Scholl. The recital continued with "Die Allmacht," D. 852, from a text by Johann Ladislaus Pyrker, and

"Die junge Nonne," D. 828, from another Craigher poem. The next selection, "Erlkönig," D. 328, another Goethe setting, is one of Schubert’s most famous and celebrated songs. The program proper ended with one of its most exquisite works, "Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen," D. 343, from a text by Johann Georg Jacobi. Enthusiastic applause elicited two marvelous encores written by the same composer: another Schober setting, “A die Musik,” D. 547, and “An die Natur,” D. 372.

Reviews

"Swan Lake" and the American Ballet Theater at the Met

Shakespeare in the Park Review—“Romeo and Juliet” at the Delacorte Theater

June '26 Digital Week II

Lise Davidsen Performs Schubert at Carnegie Hall

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