We're halfway through our 8-city audition tour, and both posts feature answers that the singers in our waiting rooms submitted via anonymous surveys.
We're auditioning 500 singers, looking for a couple dozen for next year's company. And meanwhile, we're trying to find out what makes these aspiring professional musicians tick.
It's just 3 weeks until I sit in a chair and wait for a different person to sing to me every 10 minutes. All day. For the better part of a month. In 8 different states. And although my chair will be facing forward the whole time, I'm spending this week drawing inspiration from the coaches on NBC's The Voice.
No, I am not the newest member of the American Idol panel, but I will be in search of the best young singers in the U.S. The main difference? I'll be on a steady diet of Rossini, Puccini and Mozart instead of Beyoncé, Daughtry and Coldplay.
TOP 5 FOR THURSDAY, JULY 19 1. "Anchorman" At Capitol Skyline Hotel Due to weather, this event has been rescheduled for Thursday, July 26 at 7:30 ...
In October 1787, the premiere of Don Giovanni was postponed twice due to unprepared performers and tough rehearsal scheduling (according to Mozart.) In July 2012, Wolf Trap Opera's opening of Don Giovanni was postponed twice due to a land hurricane.
TOP 5 FOR TUESDAY, JULY 17 1. Wilco At Wolf Trap America's best jam band (they are) and live act (arguably) head to the D.C. region for their annu...
TOP 5 FOR FRIDAY, JULY 13 1. THE IMMORTAL World Tour: Cirque du Soleil At Verizon Center This is nuts for a lot of reasons but they're mostly good...
TOP 5 FOR MONDAY, JULY 9 1. 11th Annual D.C. Hip-Hop Theater Festival: Jennifer Johns At Millenium Stage Johns has toured with the following music...
Baseball metaphors abound in popular culture -- curveball, home run, strikeout. Those kinds of references pretty much exhaust what I know about the sport, but this baseball novel has struck a chord.
The act of performing music, theatre or dance is anything but random, as it requires hours, years, decades of polishing a craft and internalizing skills. But when the rubber meets the road, it's just you and your wits alone onstage, delivering whatever you've got in real time.
It seems that when we look at Don Giovanni, what we see are our own cultural obsessions peering back at us. In the late 20th century, we began to see Giovanni increasingly as a man in existential crisis.
At Lucinda Williams' Washington show, it was a mad love-fest between audience and performer that I've rarely seen outside of a Bruce Springsteen concert.
Lyle Lovett's tour offered a model of what a great show should be like, sweetened by the sort of sensible prices that were especially appealing on a recent August evening.
As a result of a rider sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) added to the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act, visitors to national parks will be able to openly carry guns starting on February 22.
