Also this issue: Strikes, Fights, Big City A turbulent New York theater season produced some notable work. -Toby Zinman Lullaby of Broadway This season’s musical theater scene has been a bit sleepy. -David Anthony Fox Alone Again, Naturally -Susan Hagen Artsbeat -Debra Auspitz Green Violin -Steve Cohen The Plotz Retrospective -A.D. Amorosi Bell Esteem -Kristina Weise Don DeLillo -Andrew Ervin

April 24-30, 2003

artpicks

Faust

Gounod’s 1859 Faust was once the most popular attraction opera companies could offer: There’s a reason its colorful imagery and tuneful music figure in Phantom of the Opera, San Francisco, The Age of Innocence and other cinematic representations of life before World War I. Intriguingly, the ever-thoughtful director Ken Cazan has set the Academy of Vocal Arts Opera Theatre’s new production of the now infrequently given piece in Germany at the dawn of that cataclysm. Goethe lovers may miss the philosophical grandeur of the culture’s most enduring sell-your-soul-to-the-devil myth, but no one before Puccini wrote passionate love music like Gounod, and the epochal scenes in the church and prison retain their power to thrill. AVA’s alternating casts boast such burgeoning stars as bass Burak Bilgili (recently signed by the Met) as Gounod’s dapper Mephistopheles and Latonia Moore (fresh from her Opera Company of Philadelphia debut) as Marguerite.

Faust, April 26-May 4, Academy of Vocal Arts, 1920 Spruce St.; Tue. and Thu., May 6 and 8, Centennial Hall, The Haverford School, 450 Lancaster Ave., Haverford; Sat., May 10, Central Bucks East Auditorium, Anderson and Holicong Rds., Holicong; $30-$75, 215-735-1685.

—David Shengold