January 26, 2006
Mozart's birthday
The lowdown -- Tomorrow is the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an anniversary being marked around the world. The National Symphony Orchestra is doing its part by offering a semi-staged presentation of one of his earliest operatic successes, The Abduction from the Seraglio. The comic plot involves a Spanish nobleman planning to free his beloved, who has been enslaved in the Turkish harem of Pasha Selim, and it's all set to brilliantly colored music. Leonard Slatkin conducts these performances, which feature an unlikely choice in the speaking role of the Pasha -- ABC's veteran newsman Sam Donaldson.
If you go -- Performances are at 7 p.m. today, 8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Virginia and New Hampshire avenues, S.W., Washington. Tickets are $20 to $79. Call 800-444-1324 or 202-467-4600, or visit ken nedy-center.org/nso/.
[TIM SMITH]
Gilliam in Prints
The lowdown -- Painter Sam Gilliam, who was the subject of a major career retrospective last fall at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, shows off his latest prints in Premonitions and Reflections, a delightful exhibition that opens tomorrow at Towson State University. Gilliam's work here is sleek, sophisticated and technically savvy, showing that he is every bit as inventive and masterful a craftsman in the print medium as he is in his more widely known painting and sculpture.
If you go -- The gallery is in the Center for the Arts, Osler and Cross Campus drives, Towson. Call 410-704-2787.
[GLENN MCNATT]
