Newsday, December 2004

Juan Diego Flórez at Alice Tully Hall. Sovereign artistry, jaw-dropping virtuosity and oodles of charm: Flórez has it all. New Yorkers already knew the Peruvian tenor as a peerless Rossinian. But on an icy January afternoon, he showed that vocal acrobatics were only one weapon in his formidable musical arsenal. He brought patrician grace to Gluck; to Bellini, dark fire; and to the folk-inflected songs of his homeland, disarming warmth. And, yes, he tossed off the nine high Cs from Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment with insolent panache. It was magic, from first note to last.

"Slug Bearers" at The Kitchen. With lyrics and projections by cartoonist Ben Katchor and a pop score by singer-songwriter Mark Mulcahy, The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island recalls the earliest operas, whose creators sought to meld the best of all the arts. Mulcahy's music, raunchy and tender, and his uncanny portrayal of some half-dozen characters animated Katchor's oddball tale of a girl, two boys, a tropical factory-island and the "consumer fiction" of appliance pamphlets. For poignancy and sheer, inventive fun, this music-theater piece topped 2004's strong operatic offerings.

Collegiate Chorale's "Crown Imperial." Maestro Robert Bass, the glad voices of Collegiate Chorale and the Orchestra of St. Luke's regularly deliver soulful, polished performances of choral classics. Their innovative "Music and the Movies" concert put that soul and polish at the service of John Barry's regal score for "The Lion in Winter" (in its New York concert premiere), and Prokofiev's music for Sergei M. Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible." Bass' conducting, synchronized with Eisenstein's film, was an artistic and technical tour de force, and the program enthralled a packed, noticeably youthful Carnegie Hall crowd.