Author: Mary Beth

The Metropolitan Opera at Central Park on Tuesday, August 22.

Sean wasn’t feeling well, so I went to the park alone. By myself, I only needed space to spread a single towel, so I shamelessly snaked my way to a small patch of unoccupied grass relatively close to the stage on the north end of the Great Lawn. Even from there, I could barely see the performers, but it didn’t matter. I spent most of La Traviata with my eyes closed, blissfully soaking in the music together with the cool night air.

The Metropolitan Opera’s parks concerts are unstaged, so they give one the opportunity to focus solely on the music. Verdi holds up to the scrutiny effortlessly. The vocal lines are interesting, not always moving in the direction I expect, and the orchestration is beautiful. The opening Preludio — with quiet yet ardent whispers from the violins — captured my attention immediately by not demanding it.

Closed August 13 after a limited run at the Booth Theater on Broadway.

The image of a barren landscape marked by a single blasted tree — the first thing we see in this production of Brian Friel’s play Faith Healer — lets us know immediately that whatever the play is about, it’s not faith, at least not a living faith. I confess I’m not entirely sure what it is about, though. Friel’s writing touches on the contradictions of hope, how its presence can sometimes be more painful than its absence, and the indignities of chance, the sense that we have little control over the courses of our lives. But I had some difficulty knitting it all together in my mind.

Faith Healer is riveting, certainly, and thoughtful and lyrical, but I wondered what to make of it in the end. As an acting showcase, it’s mesmerizing. Friel’s conversational yet writerly monologues gave Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones and Ian McDiarmid bountiful material to create rich, memorable characters, and the play surely would lend itself to repeat viewings or, even better, careful reading. Yet I suspect that even after all of that, it would reveal itself to be a brilliant quartet of monologues, nothing less but little more.

The San Francisco Ballet at the New York State Theater on Friday, July 28.

The word nymph typically invokes wispy, nature-loving little sprites, the sort of girls whom a stiff breeze might topple. We forget that in classical mythology, the nymphs of Artemis (Diana to the Romans) were mighty huntresses, defiantly independent and fiercely draconian (peeping Toms were subject to the death penalty) — nothing wispy about them.

Choreographer Mark Morris gets that right. It’s one of the few elements of his Sylvia that I will unreservedly praise, but setting that aside for now, his nymphs in Sylvia aren’t remotely pixie-ish, and that works. The titular Sylvia is particularly commanding. As played by Vanessa Zahorian, Sylvia is beautiful and womanly but not the delicate waif we see in so many ballets. Her movements, her physical presence, sometimes seem more traditionally masculine than feminine, not in the steps but in her stance and bearing. Morris’ choreography makes it clear that Sylvia is no one’s distressed damsel.