Ziegler’s warmth and scintillating diction brought to life a couple of numbers from another show that deserves reviving: One Touch of Venus, with memorable lyrics by Ogden Nash including the ironic “I’m a Stranger Here Myself” and the haunting, Shakespearean “Speak Low” (“Love is so old, and Time so brief/Love is pure gold, and Time a thief”).
Weill also collaborated with Langston Hughes (“Lost in the Stars”), Maxwell Anderson (“September Song”), and Alan Jay Lerner. We got juicy excerpts from such forgotten scores as The Firebrand of Florence (a flop about the love life of Benvenuto Cellini — Ira Gershwin again), the experimental Love Life (Lerner), and the unfinished Huckleberry Finn (Anderson).
Baritone Philip Lima served up a devilish mock-innocent “Mack the Knife” in Mark Blitzstein’s chilling translation for the famous 1954 Off Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera. Conrad gave us an affecting “September Song.” The other women — sopranos Ellen Chickering and Ruth Hartt, and sly, stylish mezzo-soprano Laura Chritton — out-sang and out-acted tenors Craig Hanson and Elias Rosenberg, but the guys made a terrific back-up chorus. Pianists Beverly Orlove, John Greer, and William Merrill were indispensable in more ways than one.
Related:
Diva-gations, Beloved of God, Here comes the bride, More 
- Diva-gations
Last week's Boston Symphony concert was a snaggle of contradictions. British guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth was substituting for the exciting but erratic Russian maestro Yuri Termirkanov, who'd cancelled all his American appearances.
- Beloved of God
One of my most profound musical experiences took place when I was still a graduate student.
- Here comes the bride
It's been a long time since Bostonians had the chance to see the most popular Czech opera, Bedrich Smetana's The Bartered Bride , but Opera Boston followed its electrifying run of Shostakovich's The Nose with this tuneful folk opera and gave it a sweet and very likable production.
- John Harbison plus 10
Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.
- Review: Sonny Rollins at Symphony Hall
The lines were around the block for will-call and walk-up ticket purchases at Symphony Hall Sunday night — causing the show to start a half hour after its advertised curtain time. The place was nearly full, the mood celebratory. All good to see in a down economy. But this was the first disappointing Sonny Rollins concert I’ve attended in years.
- Photos: Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, and more with the Boston Pops
The Pops pays tribute to John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy by combining quotes from their speeches with original text and video, accompanied by a dramatic orchestral and choral score.
- Sonny, Pat, and all the cats
The primo jazz event of the spring will be SONNY ROLLINS 's concert at Symphony Hall on April 18 (bso.org). The great master saxophonist and peerless improviser often hits town in April, and this time it's to kick off his 80th-birthday tour. Whew.
- Thinking outside the Woodbox
As Daniel Bernard Roumain was growing up in Margate, a small city in southeast Florida with a large Haitian population, he felt playing the violin was "a calling."
- James Levine: He's back!
Boston and New York have at least one thing in common. Both have missed James Levine, music director of two of the world's most renowned classical-music institutions.
- Fall Classical Preview: The power of music
Here’s my Top 10 list, in chronological order, of some of the season’s most appealing and important classical music events: symphonies, chamber music, operas.
- Sing, sing, sing!: The 2011 winter opera forecast
For opera lovers, the offerings last fall were at best a little thin. But this winter, it seems, everyone's doin' it.
- Less
Topics:
Classical
, Entertainment, Don Giovanni, Robert Schumann, More
, Entertainment, Don Giovanni, Robert Schumann, Langston Hughes, Maxwell Anderson, Modest Mussorgsky, Killian Hall, Symphony Hall, Huckleberry Finn, Kenneth Radnovsky, Less
