Despite its name, “Lipsynch” is not a drag show.   It’s the latest large scale theater piece from the inventive Canadian writer and director Robert Lepage.  Best characterized as a play, the piece begins and ends with one character singing lengthy excerpts from Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.” As much as I’ve loved that slow and lush music and its popular 1992 recording by Dawn Upshaw, I don’t remember ever checking out the words, which are sung in Polish. But supertitles provided translations during the performance of “Lipsynch,” seen on Sunday October...

Is Margaret Cho not getting it enough? Because she sure talks about it an awful lot. Sex that is. When she walked on stage of the Swyer Theatre in The Egg on Saturday night in Albany, she got down on her knees to discuss — and demonstrate — the difficulty of maintaining proper ergonomics when pleasing a man.  Intimate acts and private body parts continued to be the overarching theme of the night.  For an anatomy lesson a loose and drooping microphone cord became a prop. It was often hysterical, especially when her malleable face punctuated the one-liners. For the capacity crowd of...

COOPERSTOWN – When the Italian American composer Gian Carlo Menotti died in 2007 at age 94, Michael MacLeod of Glimmerglass Opera was amazed at how little notice was given to the passing of such an important figure in 20th century opera. He responded by programming for the 2009 season Menotti’s “The Consul,” which opened Saturday night. MacLeod chose well.  A dark and gripping piece dating from 1950, “The Consul” received the Pulitzer Prize for Music and provides a welcome antidote to Menotti’s sentimental if highly effective holiday favorite “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” As...

Thomas Hampson is one of the top baritones on the international opera scene, but he’s not lost touch with his American roots and can make the humble song form into something powerful. The evidence came Wednesday night (7/22/09) in Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall, when Hampson gave an all-American song recital with the marvelous pianist Craig Rutenberg.  In 27 selections ranging from familiar to rare, Hampson sang with great beauty and unaffected ease.  At times he slipped into some regional dialects, but only one rolled “r” slipped out during the whole night. Through it all, the American spirit...

ALBANY – Words and Music, a vocal quartet based in Washington D.C., takes its bipartite name seriously. For a Sunday afternoon recital in Albany, where many of the singers have roots, the group performed a single work of nearly two-hours in length. Ned Rorem’s “Evidence of Things Not Seen” is comprised of 36 distinct songs for solo and ensemble, and can be considered both a model of quality, succinct art song and also a compendium of potent verse by some of the best English language writers, such as Whitman, Auden, Frost and Millay. Rorem has long maintained that you can’t have...

SCHENECTADY – Sometimes theatrical producing means simply investing money into a big ambitious venture, as Proctors Theatre has done a bit lately with Broadway musicals. But producing can also mean finding some dough and also putting together a team of artists to create something new. That was the case with a new hour-long multidisciplinary show that premiered Friday night in the GE Theatre. “From Within and Outside a Bright Room” was conceived by Peggy Gould, a dancer and actress, who performed with a team of four other women, each of whom displayed a strong stage presence and distinct...

TROY — The blazing technique of Stephen Hough can almost obscure his brilliant intelligence. But the British pianist’s ample gifts came together beautifully throughout his Sunday afternoon recital at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. It was Hough’s third appearance under the aegis of the Troy Chromatics. Besides an acclaimed virtuoso, Hough is something of a scholar, offering his own program notes and a well received pre-concert talk. He’s also an accomplished composer, though apparently a modest one, since he allowed his final encore, an original composition, to go unannounced. It was a storm...

Perhaps it’s all because of his iconic name but composer John Adams has a knack for making headline works, pieces that become the talk of a season. With a title like “Nixon in China,” his first opera was guaranteed to garner attention back in 1987. It didn’t hurt that the work itself was colorful, humorous and insightful.Adams has continued in the so-called CNN-school of American opera with “The Death of Klinghoffer” (1991) and most recently with “Doctor Atomic,” about Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the first atomic bomb.The two-act, three-hour-long...

There’s more than just music in the Wainwright gene pool. Also, self-deprecating humor and the general ability to entertain. All this came through Saturday night at The Egg, in the concert by Rufus Wainwright with an opening performance by his half sister Lucy Wainwright Roche. (Their father is the folk singer Loudon Wainwright.) Lucy offered a handful of fine original folk ballads but she could consider working in stand up comedy as well, or maybe just write a family memoir. Her mom is Suzzy Roche of The Roches, while Rufus’ mom is yet another folkie, Kate McGarrigle. According to Lucy,...

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON — The Montagues and Capulets are at it again with their legendary feud played out through music and dance. But in the new production by the Mark Morris Dance Group, Friar Laurence arrives in time to tell stricken Romeo that fair Juliet is alive. She awakes and they flee. Hearing the news, the families kiss and make up. The twists in “Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare,” which opened Friday night at Bard College, actually come directly from composer Sergey Prokofiev and his dramaturge Sergey Radlove. Scholar Simon Morrison uncovered their original version a...