Arts & Society

Gary Tischler • October 28, 2014

Almost 30 esteemed playwrights, commissioned to write monologues and vignettes. An ensemble of six local actors, joined by nearly 30 notable political, community and cultural leaders to present the results.

For director Anita Maynard-Losh, Arena Stage’s Director of Community Engagement, that’s quite a challenge.

It’s all about “Our War”, which is Arena Stage’s part in the multi-year, multi-city National Civil War Project. The show consists of series of brief plays commissioned as part of the 200th anniversary of the Civil War commemoration. “Our War” will be staged Oct. 21 to Nov. 4.

“Our War” is part of the National Civil War Project for Creating Original Theatrical Productions and Innovative Academic Programs. This nationwide cooperative effort among theaters, universities and other organizations was inspired by D.C. choreographer Liz Lerman, whose “Healing Wars” production was staged at Arena Stage this summer.

“There are a lot of moving parts, and it’s a little different every time out,” Maynard-Losh said. “We have an ensemble of actors, we have this small vignettes or monologues on the theme of the Civil War, and in addition, we have guest appearances each night by city and area notables.”

“I have to say, though, that to be able to direct works by twenty six great playwrights, that’s a gift and a treat, as well as a challenge,” she said.

“These are commissioned works on the Civil War,” she said. “They don’t take place during the war, necessarily, and they touch on themes about the civil war, and the effect it continues to have on Americans, on African Americans, on women. It’s about the effect of the war, more than specific figures from the war, or incidents, or battles. Some pieces are set there, to be sure, but mostly it’s how we’ve engaged with the war, it’s history and aftermath, how it’s become a part of how we live today. We have some historic figures—John Wilkes Booth, for instance, or Walt Whitman, who haunts this city.”

“We got very different works, very different responses,” she said. “There are stories about immigration, about the idea of citizenship and its responsibilities. It’s more of a contemporary take on the war, the playwrights give the war context in terms of our daily lives, of contemporary life.”

The playwrights include Maria Agui Carter, Lydia Diamond, Amy Freed, Diane Glancy Joy Harjo, Samuel D. Hunter, Naomi Lizuka, Aditi Kapil, Dan LeFranc, David Lindsay-Abaire, Ken Ludwig, Taylor Mac, Ken Narasaki, Lynn Notage, Robert O’Hara, Heathear Raffo, Charles Randolph-Wright, Tanya Saracho, Betty Shamieh, John Strand, Tazewell Thompson, William S. Yellow Robe Jr., Karen Zacarias, as well as two students.

The play features actors John Lescault, Ricardo Frederick Evans, Tuyet Thi Pham, Lynette Rathnam and Sara Waisanen.

Guest performers for “Our War” include council members Jack Evans, Yvette Alexander, David Grosso; Chris Matthews of “Hardball” fame; NPR correspondents Deborah Amos and Diane Rehm; Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia; Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg; and many more.

Among the monologues are “The Truth”, by John Strand; “Being Wright,” by Charles Randolph Wright; “A Union Soldier Writes a Letter to the Mother of a Boy He Used to Know,” by Naomi Isuka; “A Case for Laughter,” by Ken Ludwig; “La Adelita,” by Karen Zacharias”; “This is How We Do,” by Tazewell Thompson, and “The Grey Rooster” by Lynn Nottage.

According to Arena Stage, due to the wealth of content created by the 25 playwrights, the production has been separated into two selections of 18 monologues under “Stars” and “Stripes.”

For complete schedules for specific productions, go to the Arena Stage website.

Gary Tischler •

The day after I saw the Washington National Opera production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, I ran into a neighbor of mine who has a daughter in first grade, a precocious and restless youngster. I suggested that he should he take her to the production, all but guaranteeing that she would like it.

This comes by way of noting that there were a lot of children of a similar age in attendance at the opening night performance and more during the “Opera in the Outfield” simulcast at Nationals Stadium.

Mozart’s “Flute” was, to a large degree. sourced from 18th-century fairy tale collections and must have seemed then, as it is today, an almost ideal way of introducing young audiences to the world of opera. Certainly, this production is in line with artistic director Francesca Zambello’s endeavors to stage more works for young audiences—we’ve already seen two Christmas productions in that arena, and now the “The Magic Flute” with “The Little Prince” scheduled for next season.

It’s entirely likely that the presence of young children in the audience—much as they might have same effect in “The Nutcracker”—added a measure of fresh energy to the enjoyment of the production for adults.

Still, given that this is Mozart’s last opera, with the still-young genius operating at full musical variety throttle, the added frisson of a youthful presence is a little like an extra glass of champagne.

In this production, in which the digital designs, projections and sets and costumes of noted ceramic artist Jun Kaneko, provide a kinetic engine for the opera as well as a truly magical background and foreground, there’s a lot of added value for adults to become enthralled by. Not only is Kaneko’s work a kind of visual magic flute in action, there’s the fact that the opera is sung and spoken in English, making it more accessible for all of the audience, with NSO dramaturge Kelly O’Rourke bypassing potentially treacherous pitfalls and temptations in her adaptation.

And, of course, there’s Mozart and the music, with a composition so rich in diverse motifs and moods, genres, moods and mastery. It’s almost a glossary of everything you can experience in opera. Listening to some of the familiar music, the traditional opportunities and challenges provided for singers, the wayward joys and shocks throughout, it makes you almost sick to think that this was Mozart’s last work. He died at 35 with half a lifetime of work still ahead.

This production does the work honor in many ways—the originality of the translation, the hyper never-seen-that-before quality of Kaneko’s work, the singing and the orchestra work all combine to reveal what’s always there, the true collaborative quality of opera, and how designers, singers, performers, and musicians can create what is essentially and literally a spell binder.

You can just imagine this in the hands of Richard Wagner, although it’s probably fair to say he never had much truck for children on stage, or perhaps under foot, either. Still, as a story, this is a quest tale—a young prince named Tamino, eager for life experience, is tasked with the rescue of a princess whom he falls in love with immediately. He’s been asked to sally forth and find the princess by her mother, the Queen of the Night, and brings along a spirited, down-to-earth sidekick named Papageno. The princess Pamino is supposedly in the hands of the evil sorcerer Sarastro. Tamino must find wisdom, truth, courage and strength along the way, passing, as heroes do, several tests. He must learn to see what’s true and ask questions—there’s a reason mom is queen of the night as opposed to queen of the daytime.

There is a dragon, a fool and a secret order. There is danger and spirits who float by in airy balloons. There is danger and romance and comedy tonight, mostly provided by the chatty Papageno.

Mostly, there are some wonderful performances, in particular by Canadian baritone Joshua Hopkins as Papageno, whose singing and acting are straightforward. He’s the lovable buffoon with a song in his heart. American soprano Kathryn Lewek as the Queen of the Night, gives glamour to being wicked and thrills to her vocalizing, with two of the most difficult and sweep-away, jump-out-of-your-seat arias ever composed, which she nails in bravura style. American bass and local favorite Soloman Howard again displays his lower range in moving fashion, making everything rich with intonation. American soprano Maureen McKay, slight in stature but mighty in a voice full of romantic yearning, makes an appealing heroine, who’s matched by Canadian tenor Joseph Kaiser’s steadfast and earnest hero Tamino.

This is a production for which the specific glues are Mozart and Kaneko. During the overture we’re treated to almost an illustration of the music by projections that look and feel like uncharacteristically frisky Mondrian paintings trying to escape their graphs, responding to something celestial and emotional. The projections are seen—and in a way heard—throughout, providing another element.

The words, too, are worthy of listening to. Some of the spoken asides are witty and right now, without debasing the content for its own sake, including a complaint about the constant chattering heard in the world.

This version of “The Magic Flute” in the end is seductive. It invites and encourages being seduced and diving in. When a depressed Pagegano momentarily considers suicide, he was encouraged by an audience member to “do it.”

This may not happen in succeeding performances. But something will—you just watch and listen.

Gary Tischler •

Septime Webre, the artistic director of the Washington Ballet, has always had a flair for finding the modern, even when doing traditional works, such as “Swan Lake,” “Giselle” and “The Nutcracker.”

“The thing with any season, with planning, is finding a way to bridge the traditional with the modern, the old with the new, the classic with the innovative,” Webre said in an interview this week.

“Swan Lake” and “The Nutcracker” are bread-and-butter and people-in-the-seats aspects of any dance company worth its name. Both are part of the Washington Ballet’s 2014-2015 season.

But the season opening offering is exactly an example of that bridge in the form of “Petit Mort,” a trio of Washington Ballet premieres of works by rising and contemporary choreographers who are in peak form.

“These are works we haven’t done here, and they’re also works that are examples of contemporary choreographers who bridge to what’s gone before, to Balanchine and other geniuses of the 20th century,” Webre said. “I think they’re three of the most innovative choreographers of contemporary times.”

Innovative, yes, but also, from the descriptions, accessible and exciting work, the kind that dancers are keen to work on, because they represent challenges and opportunities.

“Every art form has its innovators, its game-changers—Hemingway changed the way language was constructed and used in literature, for instance,” Webre said. “I think you’ll find that sort of thing in these three pieces.”

“Petit Mort,” the title piece of the trio, is the work of choreographer Jiri Kylian to the music of Mozart. “It’s exciting, daring, witty,” Webre said. “It’s the most innovative pas de deux I’ve ever encountered.”

Incidentally, “Petit Mort” is a French phrase, meaning “little death,” and is used as a euphemism for sexual orgasm. So, there you have it.

“5 Tangos” is by Hans Van Manen, considered to be one of the fathers of the Dutch Movement. “Here’s an example of new dance bridging back to the traditional or to other forms,” Webre said. “It’s fast, it’s sexy, energetic and wrapped in the flavors, music and moves of the tango,” Webre said.

Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon had his break-out moment at the New York City Ballet with “Polyphonia,” a haunting, dense, elegant piece, which echoes back to the collaborations of Balanchine and Stravinsky. “It’s a rich, layered piece, set to the music of Ligeti,” Webre said.

Wheeldon won the Critics Circle Award and the Olivier Award for “Polyphonia”.

“These artists began to work in the 1960s and 1970s, and they dismantled that gap between traditional and contemporary, modern work,” Webre said.

“Polyphonia” premiered in New York in 2001. “5 Tangos” opened at the Het National Ballet in Amsterdam in 1977. “Petite Mort” made its debut at the Netherland Dance Theatre in 1991.

Webre has been no slouch at innovation himself. Consider his literary interpretations: the lush, detailed and spirited productions of “The Great Gatsby” and “The Sun Also Rises”.

“Innovation is always risky, no matter what you’re doing,” Webre said. “Those projects were risky, and this one is , too, in the sense that it’s a little bit of a departure.”

*“Petit Mort” will be performed at Sidney Harman Hall, the Harman Center, 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 23; 7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 24; 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 25; 1:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 26.*

Robert Devaney • October 27, 2014

The Friends of Volta Park gathered June 8 for its 14th annual cocktail party and silent auction at Georgetown Visitation Prep, one block from the D.C. public park. The group — founded by John Richardson in 1995 and headed by Mimsy Lindner — rescued Volta Park from a closed pool and overgrown plants, maintains the landscape and is a strong advocate for this green place in the middle of town. Mayor Vincent Gray said at the party that the park with its playground, tennis courts, pool, baseball field, used by many Georgetown families, is an example of how a public-private partnership should work. Gray was also happy to announce that Volta Park would be receiving $200,000 for playground upgrades as part of the fiscal 2013 budget that includes $9.7 million for park improvements throughout the city. The well-arranged auction added money to the effort, of course, but the party (with food and beverages from 1789 Restaurant) still stole the show. It was a relaxed, noisy mix of neighbors, public servants and business leaders who lingered in the hallway and rooms, glad to see each other. [gallery ids="100845,126529,126523,126516" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney • October 24, 2014

The second incarnation of Night Nouveau – “Not for the Quaint of Heart” – sought to evoke a surrealistic response from its attendees on Oct. 11. Many were up to the challenge, as they met a maze with mimes in the backyard of Halcyon House which led to the downstairs for the ballroom. The back driveway featured a projection of a fish tank, and guests and performance artists danced in the ballroom to the spins of DJ Dirty Hands. Daikaya and Sushiko provided savories with dessert from Dolci Gelati, Georgetown Cupcake and Peruvian Brothers; the after party was at Malmaison. All the fun and whimsy benefitted the S&R Foundation. [gallery ids="101895,136694,136689,136708,136712,136700,136705" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • October 23, 2014

Just go to “Marie Antoinette” — yes, the revolutionary play about the famous, infamous, haunting and haunted Queen of France, now at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre — and try not to connect to something in the way we live today.

You can’t. Are you a French Revolution buff, or love old movies and books about the French Revolution? They’re all here folks—Marie, herself, stopping to snap selfies or pose for pictures, the count who loves her, the rag-tag, murderous mob, the baffled, clueless King Louis XVI, except for Madame Defarge, knitting, Danton in his bath, and “Let Them Eat Cake.” The queen apparently did not say that.

Think this stuff is about the curse of celebrity, way back when? You can see it all, echoes and hints and flagrant bows or curses to the likes of Kim and the Kardashians, Lindsay, J-Lo and all the celebrated nonentities on YouTube.

Think we live in turbulent times? Sure we do: Ukraine, ISIS or ISIL, the Arab Spring, the Middle East Winter, the Syrian debacle. We have beheadings, too. We even have beheadings in the news.

If it were just a stylish, hip and cool, a playful tool for connecting the foibles of a young queen to the always now and new, “Marie Antoinette” would be a witty, if not quite as serious as it might be, sendup, zippy 18th-century fashion show, bloody red carpet of a show.

Except that the play—by the now celebrated playwright Dacvid Adjami (his “Elective Affinities” starred no less a Broadway legend than Zoe Caldwell)—is both less than what it appears to be and, in the end, much more.

The play is more than a bit of a mess at times—but, like a messy traffic accident or an accidental viewing of a reality show, you can’t look away—ever. Because it won’t let you, under the immersive and stylish direction of Yury Urnov, because it pulls you in visually, hypnotically and, finally, emotionally.

Looks- and temperament-wise, the show has the feel of “Marat/Sade” or a tour of a madhouse or the old Bastille cells or a mad-hatter party at Versailles, where I was once on a spring day sitting on a bench where the queen went to get away from it, and it snowed. I mention this because it’s a scene that might have gotten into this play—along with the every curious, inventive Sarah Marshall as a sheep—or a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The fact that we accept the presence of a talking sheep at the point of entrance says a lot about the plays powerful pull.

We open with a Project Runway shot—the queen and friends, frolicking and striking Madonna-like poses, clicking, gossiping about the city, politics, fashion, the mob, in a way that Snookie and company might, before descending into a hot tub.

At this point, you should not be surprised that this production is trying to pull you in every which way—there’s a mirror on board, which for audiences front and center should make them feel like voyeurs, watching themselves watching the stage.

There’s a lot to like in the acting—James Konicek as a fiercely frustrated and cruel guard, Joe Isenberg as the soft king, Bradley Foster Smith as the cool and true blue Count Axel Fersen.

But what makes the play is the transcendent performance of Kimberly Gilbert as the queen. It’s a somewhat unexpected star turn because Gilbert has built a longish list of credits with a persona that seems modern, no matter what (she had just completed a role in the reprise of “Stupid F—-ng Bird”). It does here too, and yet she’s found a way to be Marie in her own time. She’s a dreamy teen at first, wistfully wishing to be back in the bucolic Austrian countryside, frustrated with the king, clueless about the mob and her situation.

Somewhere along the way, Gilbert’s Marie, with a kind of heart-breaking empathy, grows in stature, adds weight and bravery to her demeanor, and a dignity peculiarly stuck in her time, a quality sadly lacking in contemporary celebrities.

It’s a bravura performance, building, changing as it goes, until the last cliches, like the last expensive piece of clothing, is gone and what’s left is a woman in her thirties, totally aware of her fate.

“Marie Antoinette” runs though Oct. 12 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, 641 D St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004.

Robert Devaney •

The Corcoran Gallery of Art died this weekend at the age of 145. Founded in 1869 by Georgetowner William Wilson Corcoran, the gallery was one of the oldest art museums in the United States. Through bad business decisions, the institution could not sustain itself and was divided between the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. The gallery’s last day was Sept. 28.

“We are all art widows now,” said Corcoran curator emerita Linda Crocker Simmons, an organizer of the requiem for the gallery.

Former staffers of the gallery — many dressed in Victorian funereal garb — met Sept. 27 to hold a mock memorial service at the Flagg Building on 17th Street and to celebrate what was once a vibrant beacon of the visual arts, especially American, and then proceeded to Oak Hill Cemetery on R Street in Georgetown, where Corcoran was buried in 1888.

As they reunited with old friends, mourners walked through the museum and were read a honor roll of names of those involved with the Corcoran. With names of artists and of those at the gallery, the service began to evoke a personal feeling — and also showed how those works of art in the room with Peale’s “George Washington” and Bierstadt’s “The Last of the Buffalo” shall no longer be together as once they were. The Flagg Building will be renovated. The tears of former Corcoran staffers were real.

A white funeral wreath — reading, “Rest in Peace, Corcoran Gallery of Art” — greeted visitors walking up the steps with the Canova Lions sculptures on a beautiful, warm Saturday afternoon.

“We are left with a gorgeous building, but it is now no longer the Corcoran, but a cenotaph, a memorial to something that is not there, an empty tomb,” said former Corcoran director Michael Botwinick in statement, read by Carolyn Campbell, one of the funeral’s organizers and a former public relations head for the Corcoran.

As Botwinick praised the art collection, the artists and students and those who worked at the Corcoran, he observed: “If there is one thing that surprised me in the last two years, it has been the deafening silence. Except for that circle that rallied to help people understand what was at stake, the voices of the larger community of patrons, colleagues, politicians and community leaders have been absent from the conversation. And that silence has now rendered this building mute.”

After taking in the grand hall and rooms one last time, mourners left for their cars to follow the hearse in a funeral procession to Oak Hill Cemetery, where that white wreath was carried in a procession and placed in front of Corcoran’s mausoleum. There was another chance for staffers to reminisce, as they stood for a time in the sunny peace of the Victorian cemetery.

Storytellers recalled the time Robert Mapplethorpe was smoking a joint in the downstairs gallery featuring his first museum exhibition while his friend’s photo collection was on view in the upper five galleries — and then there was the book signing where Andy Warhol used lipstick to kiss each book with an impression of his lips. He had to leave to catch a plane and told a disappointed staffer on the end of the line to use his lipstick and kiss the book herself.

On the hillside, bagpiper Tim Carey played “Going Home” by Dvorak, and those remaining left for the Jackson Art Center, one block away on R Street. The center with working artists had prepared afternoon refreshments, and it seemed a most apropos ending to the day.

Ari Post •

The word “terrain” comes to mind a lot at the Hirshhorn’s current exhibit, “Salvatore Scarpitta: Traveler.” Scarpitta (1919–2007), an Italian-American who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1920s, was a unique presence in postwar American art for reasons of both style and subject. As an artist, he negotiated many terrains and bridged many divides: of painting and sculpture, abstraction and realism, elegance and vulgarity, and most whimsically of all, of fine art and competitive sprint car racing.

Scarpitta moved to Rome after high school to study art. When World War II broke out, he served in the United States Navy, ultimately working as a Monuments Man, where he was tasked with safeguarding art and historic monuments from war’s destruction.

Perhaps the first of many fascinating career choices, Scarpitta stayed in Rome after the war and set up his studio on the famous Via Margutta, a narrow street rich with artistic culture, popularized by Gregory Peck in the 1953 film, “Roman Holiday.” This decision in itself alludes to a kind of fixation the young artist may have had with confronting destruction and devastation firsthand, as well as a need to help build things back up.

His work from the mid-to-late 50s directly confronts the destruction of the War, the failure of Fascism and the fall of Mussolini—an event which had forced him and his first wife, an Italian Jew, into hiding in the Apennine Mountains in 1943.

In these dimensional works that are part painting, part sculpture (and later deemed “Extramurals”), layers of fabric are wrapped around stretcher bars or wood panels. Folds of cloth, canvas, medical bandages, gurney straps and swaddling envelop the picture plane, creating precarious but steady surfaces. Scarpitta spattered the surfaces with paint, resin, tea, pencil marks and what seems like any material that was on hand. The result is a surprisingly elegant glaze over a woven landscape of coarse fabric. As a wall panel in the exhibit beautifully points out, they are “mottled, hide-like” surfaces, whose natural, undulating folds and weaves inform the surface with naturally occurring shadows.

It was this breakout work that caught the attention of legendary New York City art dealer Leo Castelli who convinced Scarpitta to move back to New York and exhibit in his gallery. Once there, Scarpitta rekindled his childhood obsession with cars.

As a boy in L.A., Scarpitta had been a regular spectator at the treacherous Legion Ascot Speedway, where he marveled at the feats of the drivers and mourned those who died in crashes. As an adult, he began using car parts—some scavenged from fatal wrecks—in his paintings. Like the Extramurals, the car-part paintings are cut and bruised, bandaged and bound. However, in contrast to his previous works’ muted monochrome, these works employ almost technicolor vibrancy.

This reignited passion for racing eventually led him to abandon abstraction for a radical, flesh-and-bones realism. Adding car parts to his paintings was no longer enough—he needed to make the actual cars. Between 1964 and 1969, Scarpitta created six full-scale vehicles, each in the souped-up, vintage go-kart style of the racers from his childhood.

The last phase of Scarpitta’s career took a different, equally unusual turn. He began building sleds in the 1970s and continued making them for the rest of his life. Made from scavenged objects, these nonfunctional sleds represent a more primitive means of transportation, as well as the solitary nature of art.

While some of the sleds stand upright as sculptures, others are mounted on canvas and hung like paintings. “Snowshoe Sled” (1974) looks like a Rothko collage, the sled hung in the center between color fields of yellow and green. It is oddly detached from anything in this world, the sled floating like a bar of color in the center of the canvas.

While they are obviously sleds, the works are also sculptures in a very natural sense, balancing Scarpitta’s remarkable craftsmanship and sense of structure in delicate harmony. They are his most inspiring creations, where his abstract sensibilities merge with his insistence for form and purpose of function to make works that seem alive. They are objects perhaps meant to traverse unknown landscapes of our unconscious, tantric tools to help guide us to the far reaches of our human condition. And if nothing else, they sure look fun to ride.

Come hear Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu speak at our Cultural Leadership Breakfast, this Thursday, Oct. 9, 8 a.m. at the George Town Club.

To read more on this exhibit, visit Georgetowner.com
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Richard Selden •

How often does one get to hear an electric guitarist improvise on famous themes from Russian music?

“We have upped the ante for the upcoming season,” says Vera Danchenko-Stern, artistic director of the Russian Chamber Art Society, which she founded nine years ago to bring a rarely heard repertoire to Washington.

That repertoire includes not only solo jazz guitar—played in this instance by Serge Khrichenko, a classically trained musician based in Silver Spring—but also arias and art songs by Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninoff.

The opening gala concert of the Russian Chamber Art Society’s 2014-2015 season will take place Friday, Oct. 10, at the Embassy of Austria. Titled “Russian Kaleidoscope,” the program features Khrichenko’s jazz, contemporary works for clarinet and piano performed by Julian Milkis and Danchenko-Stern, and vocal selections sung in Russian by two emerging talents: soprano Yana Eminova and mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wor.

Is the Society’s audience made up primarily of Russian speakers? “Absolutely not,” says Danchenko-Stern. Many patrons are opera aficionados who welcome the opportunity to hear and learn more about Russian vocal music, a tradition as worthy of international admiration as that of Russian literature.

Danchenko-Stern, a graduate of Moscow’s Gnessin Institute of Music was a faculty artist there and at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto where she and her family moved in 1978, says she “immigrated for the second time” this time to the United States in 1990 when she married her second husband Lev Stern. She has coached singers for Washington National Opera productions and taught “Singing in Russian” for more than 20 years at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory, one of the few music schools in the country to regularly offer such training.

Two of Danchenko-Stern’s colleagues on the Peabody faculty, violinist (and brother) Victor Danchenko, and pianist Alexander Shtarkman, will perform at the Russian Chamber Art Society’s holiday concert, “Tchaikovsky is Forever,” on Friday, Dec. 5. They will perform alongside her former student, soprano Natalia Conte, mezzo-soprano Elena Bocharova and tenor Viktor Antipenko.

At the Oct. 10 gala, which also includes a buffet dinner, open bar and dessert, the concert begins with the duet between Tatyana and Olga from “Eugene Onegin.” Tchaikovsky specified that the singers should be young and beautiful—Tatyana is supposed to be just 14 years old—and, while not in their teens, Eminova and Wor qualify by age and appearance as well as by vocal ability.

Wor, born in Poland, is an alumna of Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program and the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco.
Some of the pieces for clarinet and piano on the Oct. 10 program were heard in D.C. a few years ago when Danchenko-Stern gave a concert of works by Russian Jewish composers in honor of Rabbi Howard S. White, longtime Jewish Chaplain at Georgetown University. Others are Washington premieres.

Referring to the champagne reception for VIP ticket holders, the dinner and other festivities, Danchenko-Stern calls the gala concert “a chance for a whole event.”

More information about RCAS and online ticketing are available at thercas.com.