Month: January 2007

Maude Maggart at the Algonquin Hotel on Saturday, January 27.

One of the many things that annoy me about American Idol (which I watch occasionally out of morbid curiosity) is the way the judges throw around the word cabaret like an insult. I understand that they’re looking for a pop star, not a chanteuse, but to dismiss an entire genre, a great tradition of American music, with such carelessness strikes me as unseemly.

I think part of the problem is the implicit assumption that cabaret is monotonous—invariably a low-voiced, cigarette smoker drearily husking her way through songs of the 1930s and ’40s—and that’s grossly unfair. Thirty-one-year-old Maude Maggart puts the lie to it immediately with her deliciously versatile voice. A skilled interpreter, she expressively modulates from rich and sultry to breezy and girlish or brassy and bold or warm and full to match the mood of each song she sings. The effect is hypnotic. On Saturday night my brother and I hung on her every note.

The New York Philharmonic on Thursday, January 11.

Is there a rule that since the legendary Jacqueline du Pré made Elgar’s Cello Concerto her signature piece, the work now belongs solely to young, photogenic female cellists? That was my first thought when twenty-four-year-old Alisa Weilerstein walked onstage Thursday night, but I’m being flip, of course, and dreadfully unfair. Weilerstein delivered a ravishing performance of the concerto with the New York Philharmonic, and perhaps the work lends itself to younger soloists. Although Edward Elgar composed it quite late in his career, the cello concerto’s passionate intensity can feel quite youthful.

The New York City Ballet on Thursday, January 4.

Could there be a more passive heroine than Princess Aurora, better known as Sleeping Beauty? She literally sleeps through most of the story, either as an infant or as the victim of a curse. That’s not her fault, of course, but neither does it make her a particularly compelling character.

The classic Tchaikovsky ballet, as choreographed by Peter Martins, drawing from the iconic work of Marius Pepita, remedies that by highlighting the Lilac Fairy as the story’s true heroine, even if she doesn’t get titular status. After evil Carabosse curses baby Aurora, the Lilac Fairy bravely counters the spell, downgrading spindle-induced death into a hundred-year slumber. When her spell takes effect, the good fairy safeguards the princess and her family by conjuring protective brambles around the castle. Then she finds a suitable prince, enchants him with a vision of the sleeping beauty, leads him to the castle, and helps cut away the thorny hedges. No wonder she takes center stage in the final tableau: the happy ending is entirely her doing.