A Fan in Exile
One man’s long-distance love affair with the New York City Ballet.
One man’s long-distance love affair with the New York City Ballet.
By W. L. Taitte
As befits masterpieces, Beethoven’s string quartets have been recorded a hundred times. Our trusty critic guides the novice through a maze of choices.
By W. L. Taitte
Why knock yourself out for two grueling weeks at a piano competition in Fort Worth? For $12,000—and a string of concert bookings money can’t buy.
By W. L. Taitte
Dallas productions of The Elephant Man and Children of a Lesser God proved that Broadway is getting closer to home.
By W. L. Taitte
By W. L. Taitte
Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are two centuries apart, but their ideas about music are exactly the same.
By W. L. Taitte
Schrenkeisens’ is so elegant you’ll think you’re in the big city, but the fish is so fresh you know you’re on the coast. Ninfa’s runs thirteen Mexican restaurants across Texas, and amazingly, they can all cook.
By W. L. Taitte
Le Select gives Houston fine French cooking in simple surrounds and at unbeatable prices; Hedary’s, a Lebanese outpost in Fort Worth, offers adventurous Cowtowners some exotic alternatives to beef.
By W. L. Taitte
In San Antonio, everything that glitters is in the Golden Palace, where the food is as gaudy as the décor. Austin’s OMei China gives you a zap on the mouth.
By W. L. Taitte
The San Antonio symphony is beleaguered. Conductor Lawrence Smith is well mannered. They’re both mediocre.
By W. L. Taitte
A young Austin playwright is making a name for himself by writing plays about famous people.
By W. L. Taitte
Two new restaurants in Dallas and Houston will save you a trip to Paris.
By W. L. Taitte
Dallas Civic Opera lured audiences back to the eighteenth century with its American premiere of Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso.
By W. L. Taitte
Lighting a stage for an operatic performance isn’t just a matter of flipping a switch.
By W. L. Taitte
Alan’s Texas Cafe in Austin is good eats with Alan; Don’s in Houston has Cajun food worth ragin’ about.
By W. L. Taitte
An Alley Theatre world premiere, To Grandmother’s House We Go was a play about family foibles that really hit home.
By W. L. Taitte
Beef is king at Cattlemen’s in Fort Worth; food fit for a rajah is yours at Houston’s Taj Mahal.
By W. L. Taitte
These recordings of Christmas carols and cantatas will help ye rest merry.
By W. L. Taitte
A double basist leads a singular life.
By W. L. Taitte
A loaf of bread, a glass of wine, and though hast a wine bar.
By W. L. Taitte
Arnold Shoenberg is the century’s most maligned composer, but to know him is to love him.
By W. L. Taitte
Houston’s Equinox Theatre has fine actors and directors, but its raunchy sex and violence can make you squirm. The nineteenth-century Granbury Opera House is a fetching setting for Texas Meg.
By W. L. Taitte
Try pasta and veal at Sergio’s in Dallas—that’s Italian! For an outstanding Sunday brunch, put your stock in Austin’s Green Pastures.
By W. L. Taitte
Mozart and Beethoven made an appearance, but Johann Sebastian was the guest of honor at Victoria’s annual Bach Festival.
By W. L. Taitte
Move over, Jett Rink. The West Texas wildcatter may give way to a new breed: the West Texas vintner.
By W. L. Taitte
Two guest conductors in Texas are wizards at their work; three Houston Grand Opera productions are enchanting.
By W. L. Taitte
When NBC televised The Oldest Living Graduate, it broadcast the flaws of live TV drama. Theatre Three’s Second Stage Festival deserved a larger viewing audience.
By W. L. Taitte
You can find the spice of your life at Uncle Tai’s in Houston; you don’t have a choice at Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth - except good, reliable Tex-Mex.
By W. L. Taitte
The Texas Little Symphony’s April concert was no whistle-stop - it was Carnegie Hall. Two chamber groups, Voices of Change and Syzygy, take the Twentieth Century Limited.
By W. L. Taitte
A Dallas composer is reviving medieval music in a modern context, while two new classical groups attempt a chamber music renaissance.
By W. L. Taitte
When the San Antonio Symphony fired its brilliant and popular young conductor, it produced a cacophony of artistic and political discord.
By W. L. Taitte
While the Pyramid Room in Dallas relies on pomp, two of its rivals in French dining are putting foot before pretension.
By W. L. Taitte
One man’s lifelong quest for the perfect recording of Mozart’s masterpiece.
By W. L. Taitte
On its Houston stop, the Acting Company unpacked performances for Texas theaters to live up to. Austin’s Center Stage is in the know but lacks the how.
By W. L. Taitte and Alice Gordon
Dallas Civic Opera is a grand old lady who knows her European opera. But sometimes she gets a little senile.
By W. L. Taitte
Beefing and chewing the fat about a rare pleasure that’s almost done for.
By W. L. Taitte
When Stage #1 opened as a halfway house for theater graduates from SMU, the participants weren’t pitied but applauded.
By W. L. Taitte
Houston and Dallas opera companies could fudge on shoe sizes when it came to casting Cinderellas, but the voices had to fit just so.
By W. L. Taitte
For the sake of the audience, it’s a question that needs to be asked. College productions of A Doll’s House show why actors go to school. Fort Worth has good actors and good producers—but not, alas, in the same theater.
By W. L. Taitte
With open arms—that is, mouths—Texas welcome a new breed of bakery.
By W. L. Taitte
A young Russian defector blows his chance to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and goes on to find fame and fortune.
By W. L. Taitte
Some Texas funny people get serious about their jokes.
By W. L. Taitte
The leaders of Houston and Dallas symphony orchestras start off the season with two perplexing concert series.
By W. L. Taitte
Can’t hull a strawberry? Can’t boil an egg? Can’t wash leafy vegetables? Relax. Help is on the way.
By W. L. Taitte
Even incomplete, Lulu was a great opera. Now it’s finished, and Santa Fe Opera got the stage the coveted U.S. premiere.
By W. L. Taitte
Texas, our Texas, all hail the mighty state-audiences applaud history plays in Galveston and Palo Duro Canyon.
By W. L. Taitte and Alice Gordon
Houston Grand Opera’s spring festival of operettas proved that golden-voiced, handsome men aren’t out of style. Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Mahler festival had its good days and its bad days.
By W. L. Taitte
Strawberry sodas, vanilla Cokes, grilled cheese sandwiches. That’s what we love about soda fountains.
By W. L. Taitte
Talent marries business sense at Dallas’ Theater Onstage.
By W. L. Taitte
Houston Opera Studio’s students learn their way into the limelight.
By W. L. Taitte