Photo: Jenny Anderson

Not surprising, one night with the original Broadway revival cast of Falsettos was never going to be enough. The 10th Anniversary Reunion Concert of William Finn and James Lapine’s beloved musical sold out Carnegie Hall in a remarkable 90 minutes, and now a second performance has been added for Monday, November 2 at 7 p.m. at Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage.

And yes, the gang really is all coming back.

Tony Award winners Stephanie J. Block, Christian Borle and Brandon Uranowitz, Tony nominees Andrew Rannells and Betsy Wolfe, and Emmy nominee Tracie Thoms will reunite to reprise the roles they played in Lincoln Center Theater’s acclaimed 2016 Broadway revival. Anthony Rosenthal, the production’s original Jason, will also make a special guest appearance.

The originally announced October 18 concert was intended to be a one-night-only event. Broadway audiences apparently had other ideas. Once tickets disappeared almost immediately, “one night only” became considerably more negotiable.

There is another lovely full-circle element to the reunion. Tony-nominated director and choreographer Ellenore Scott, who served as assistant choreographer on the 2016 revival, will return a decade later—this time as director of both Carnegie Hall performances.

“Ten years ago, I had the gift of watching these brilliant actors work, and helped bring this beautiful show to life on Broadway as an assistant choreographer,” Scott said, describing the company as having since become dear friends and her return as director as “the most beautiful full-circle moment.”

Vadim Feichtner also returns as Music Director and Conductor, leading a band that will include most of the revival’s original musicians, while Cory Pattak will design the lighting.

The reunion carries particular poignancy following the death of composer and co-creator William Finn in 2025. Falsettoshas always possessed that rare ability to be screamingly funny until suddenly it isn’t. Beneath the neurotic family dynamics, sex, jealousy, baseball, Judaism and glorious messiness lies a story about love confronting mortality—and about the families we inherit, create, fracture and somehow continue to love.

The musical grew from Finn and Lapine’s one-act works March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, eventually becoming Falsettos, which opened on Broadway in 1992. Set against the emergence of the AIDS crisis, it centers on Marvin, his former wife Trina, their son Jason, Marvin’s lover Whizzer, psychiatrist Mendel and the wonderfully described “lesbians from next door,” Dr. Charlotte and Cordelia.

Lincoln Center Theater brought the musical back to Broadway in 2016 under Lapine’s direction, opening at the Walter Kerr Theatre on October 27. The revival received five Tony Award nominations and was subsequently filmed for PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, allowing a production with a relatively limited Broadway run to find an audience far beyond West 48th Street.

Ten years later, that audience clearly hasn’t gone anywhere. There is something particularly fitting about Falsettos returning through a reunion rather than a conventional revival. This is, after all, a musical obsessed with the complicated meaning of family. Bringing these particular actors and musicians back together isn’t simply nostalgia; their chemistry became part of what audiences loved about the 2016 production.

Both Carnegie Hall performances will benefit The BroadwayEveryDay Foundation and Family Equality, adding another layer of purpose to an evening already steeped in memory, love and chosen family.

Tickets for the newly added November 2 performance go on sale to the general public Wednesday, August 26 at 11 a.m. ET through Carnegie Hall, by phone at (212) 247-7800, and at the Carnegie Hall Box Office at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue.

Considering what happened the first time around, anyone planning to attend might not want to spend 11 a.m. leisurely contemplating the decision.

Apparently, Falsettos fans move fast.

Dr. Princess Antonia Prinzessin zu Schaumburg-Lippe brings Queen Liliʻuokalani’s account of Hawaiʻi to contemporary listeners through an unabridged Ad Astra Grand Classics audiobook available through Google Play.

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Queen_Liliuokalani_Hawaiis_Story_By_Hawaiis?id=AQAAAEC6LiVujM&hl=en_US
The written record of Queen Liliʻuokalani occupies an enduring place in Hawaiian history, literature, and the documentary legacy of monarchy in the Pacific. More than a century after the Hawaiian queen committed her experiences and perspective to the page, her story continues to reach readers interested in Hawaiʻi through a distinctly Hawaiian voice.

That literary legacy has also entered the modern audiobook world. Dr. Princess Antonia Prinzessin zu Schaumburg-Lippe serves as the narrator and voice performer for an audio edition presented by Ad Astra Entertainment as part of its Grand Classics of International Literature series.

The Google Play edition shown under the title Hawaiis Story By Hawaiis: Ad Astra Grand Classics identifies Queen Liliʻuokalani as the author and Princess Antonia Schaumburg-Lippe as the narrator. Released through Ad Astra Entertainment in December 2021, the unabridged audiobook has a running time of one hour and 47 minutes.

Its presence in a digital marketplace gives the historical work another route to an international audience. Listeners encountering Queen Liliʻuokalani through audio can engage with the material through spoken narration, placing the emphasis on language, sequence, and the sustained perspective of the work.

For Princess Antonia, the recording represents a meeting point between voice performance and historical literature. Her participation places her within the contemporary transmission of a text associated with one of Hawaiʻi’s most consequential historical figures.

The visual presentation reinforces the historical character of the production. The cover is restrained, using a black background and a photograph of an elaborate royal crown as its central image. The title appears prominently above the crown, while the Ad Astra Grand Classics designation and Princess Antonia Schaumburg-Lippe’s name complete the composition.

Queen Liliʻuokalani and the Power of the Written Record

Queen Liliʻuokalani remains central to any serious consideration of the final years of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Her historical significance extends across political history, Hawaiian cultural memory, music, literature, and the continuing study of sovereignty.

Her own writing is especially important because it allows history to be approached through the perspective of a Hawaiian monarch who personally experienced a period of profound political transformation. That first-person dimension gives the work a significance extending beyond conventional historical narration.

The audiobook format introduces another quality to that encounter. Written sentences become spoken passages, and the listener experiences the narrative according to the pacing and continuity of a human voice. Audiobooks can consequently serve as an important companion to printed and digital editions, particularly for audiences accustomed to consuming literature while traveling, working, or moving through daily routines.

Princess Antonia’s role is therefore fundamentally interpretive. Narration requires attention to pronunciation, pacing, emphasis, continuity, and the overall integrity of the text. Historical material carries an additional responsibility because its subjects are real people and its events belong to a documented past.

The designation of the production as unabridged is significant in that context. It presents the audiobook as an extended literary experience rather than a short introduction or condensed overview. For listeners seeking sustained engagement with the material, that distinction matters.

The edition also belongs to Ad Astra Entertainment’s Grand Classics framework, positioning the recording within a broader interest in making established works of international literature accessible through contemporary audio production.

Princess Antonia Schaumburg-Lippe Behind the Microphone

Dr. Princess Antonia Prinzessin zu Schaumburg-Lippe brings a distinctive public identity to the recording. Her name connects the project with a European princely tradition, while her work as the audiobook’s voice performer places her in the practical, modern discipline of recorded narration.

That combination gives the production an unusual cultural profile. A historical account by Hawaiʻi’s queen is carried into the digital audio marketplace through a performance by a European princess, distributed for listeners who may encounter it far beyond either of those historical contexts.

Yet the central figure remains Queen Liliʻuokalani. Effective narration of historical literature depends on maintaining that hierarchy. The performer provides the voice, while the author and the author’s experiences remain at the center of the work.

Princess Antonia’s contribution can consequently be understood as one of stewardship through performance. The objective of literary narration is clarity and continuity, allowing the listener to remain connected to the author’s narrative rather than drawing attention away from it.

Audio performance also involves decisions that are largely invisible to an audience. The pace of a passage can influence comprehension. Pauses can establish structure. Consistency allows a long recording to feel coherent. Pronunciation becomes especially important when dealing with names and terminology rooted in particular cultures and historical settings.

Those considerations become particularly relevant with Hawaiian history. Hawaiʻi possesses its own language, genealogy, political history, cultural practices, and systems of identity. Presenting material connected to the Hawaiian monarchy therefore benefits from an approach grounded in seriousness and respect.

A Hawaiian Queen for a Digital Generation

The appearance of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s story on Google Play illustrates how historical literature continues to move across formats. Works once encountered primarily as printed volumes can now circulate as ebooks and audiobooks through devices carried every day.

That shift does not alter the historical source itself, but it can alter access. A listener who might never seek out a physical edition can discover the title while browsing an online bookstore. Someone studying Hawaiian history can supplement reading with an audio edition. Another listener may first encounter Queen Liliʻuokalani’s name through the audiobook and subsequently pursue a wider study of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Digital distribution is particularly relevant to historical works because discoverability often determines whether older literature continues to find new audiences. Searchable catalogs allow authors, historical figures, subjects, and performers to remain connected across contemporary platforms.

The Google Play listing makes several essential elements immediately visible. Queen Liliʻuokalani is presented as the author, Ad Astra Entertainment is associated with the production, Princess Antonia Schaumburg-Lippe is identified as narrator, and the work is presented as an audiobook available for purchase.

The platform also provides a sample function, allowing prospective listeners to hear part of the recording before deciding whether to purchase it. That familiar feature of contemporary audiobook retail has particular usefulness for narrated literature because the relationship between listener and narrator is central to the experience.

A voice must sustain attention across an entire work. The listener spends far more time with a narrator than a reader ordinarily spends considering the typography or physical design of a printed edition. Voice therefore becomes one of the principal elements through which an audiobook is experienced.

The Continuing Reach of Hawaiian History

The lasting importance of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s story rests in the history it preserves. Hawaiʻi’s past cannot be reduced to the imagery that has frequently defined the islands in popular tourism and entertainment. The history of the Hawaiian Kingdom is politically complex, culturally specific, and essential to understanding modern Hawaiʻi.

Queen Liliʻuokalani stands at the center of that history. Engagement with her writing offers audiences an opportunity to move closer to a Hawaiian perspective on events that have been interpreted repeatedly by later historians, institutions, and commentators.

The continued circulation of her work also demonstrates the durability of first-person historical writing. Political circumstances change, publishing technologies evolve, and audiences develop new habits, yet firsthand accounts retain their value because they preserve the perspective of an individual who lived through the events under examination.

For modern listeners, audio can make that encounter feel especially immediate. Spoken language unfolds in time. It asks the audience to follow the narrative sequentially and to remain with the author’s progression of thought.

That characteristic distinguishes listening from quickly scanning a webpage or consulting an encyclopedia entry. An audiobook asks for sustained attention, something particularly valuable when engaging with a historical figure whose life cannot be understood through a handful of dates or familiar episodes.

Princess Antonia’s narration participates in that longer process of preservation and rediscovery. The recording does not replace scholarship, archival study, or the original printed tradition. It expands the number of ways in which an audience can approach the material.

From Royal History to Contemporary Audio

There is an evident historical resonance in a princess narrating the writings of a queen, but the value of the project ultimately rests on the literature itself. Queen Liliʻuokalani’s identity, experience, and historical testimony provide the substance around which the production is constructed.

Princess Antonia’s task is to carry that substance into an auditory form. In doing so, she joins a long tradition of performers who have helped written classics survive transitions in media, from printed editions and radio readings to recordings, digital files, and global streaming and download platforms.

Ad Astra Entertainment’s presentation of the work within the Grand Classics of International Literature series further places Hawaiian history within an international literary context. That positioning can encourage audiences to approach Queen Liliʻuokalani as an author as well as a sovereign and historical figure.

This distinction is meaningful. Historical leaders are often encountered primarily through biographies written by others. Autobiographical and first-person material changes that relationship by preserving the individual’s own structure of memory and interpretation.

For Queen Liliʻuokalani, that literary dimension contributes to the broader cultural record surrounding her life. Her legacy encompasses leadership, political history, creative expression, and an enduring connection to Hawaiian identity.

The audiobook’s availability through Google Play brings those dimensions into a marketplace built around contemporary listening habits. A historical narrative connected with the nineteenth-century Hawaiian monarchy can now be accessed through the same personal devices used for current books, music, news, and entertainment.

That accessibility gives classic literature renewed practical life. Historical works remain culturally active when new generations can find them, hear them, study them, and place them within a larger understanding of the past.

A Voice Carrying a Historical Legacy Forward

For Dr. Princess Antonia Prinzessin zu Schaumburg-Lippe, the recording adds a literary and historical dimension to her work as a voice performer. It associates her narration with a figure whose importance reaches far beyond the conventional boundaries of royal history.

For Ad Astra Entertainment, the production reflects the purpose implicit in a classics series, to maintain the availability of established literature while adapting its presentation to contemporary formats.

For listeners, the most important result is access. Queen Liliʻuokalani’s account can be encountered through another medium, allowing people who favor spoken-word literature to spend sustained time with a work connected directly to Hawaiian history.

The production also demonstrates how cultural preservation can coexist with technological change. Digital storefronts are contemporary, but the fundamental act remains familiar. One person gives voice to written words, another person listens, and a historical narrative continues its journey between generations.

The crown pictured on the audiobook cover establishes the royal context immediately, yet the deeper significance of the recording resides in the words represented by that image. Royal objects can symbolize an institution, while written testimony preserves perspective, memory, and experience.

Queen Liliʻuokalani’s legacy continues to invite serious engagement precisely because her story remains connected to questions of history, culture, governance, identity, and the Hawaiian people. Each responsible new edition offers another point of entry into that record.

Princess Antonia Schaumburg-Lippe’s narration is part of that contemporary life. Through Ad Astra Grand Classics and its availability on Google Play, the recording places a Hawaiian queen’s written legacy within reach of today’s audiobook audience.

More than a century separates Queen Liliʻuokalani’s historical world from the digital platforms through which literature now circulates. The persistence of her story across that distance speaks to the continuing relevance of preserving primary voices and making significant historical writing accessible in formats suited to successive generations.

In this audio edition, Dr. Princess Antonia Prinzessin zu Schaumburg-Lippe provides the performing voice, Ad Astra Entertainment provides the production framework, and Google Play provides a contemporary point of access. At the center remains Queen Liliʻuokalani and a Hawaiian historical record whose continued circulation contributes to a richer understanding of Hawaiʻi and its royal heritage.

Labor Day weekend always arrives with a strange mixture of celebration and denial. Technically, summer isn’t over. Emotionally, however, New Yorkers know exactly what the weekend means. The white shoes are living on borrowed time, evenings are beginning to arrive earlier, and somewhere in the distance September is already sharpening its pencils. Before we surrender to fall, New York is giving us one final long weekend—and there are some wonderful ways to spend it.

For music lovers, begin at Lincoln Center, where The Metropolitan Opera’s 17th annual Summer HD Festival returns to Josie Robertson Plaza from September 2 through September 7. Approximately 2,500 seats are available each evening on a first-come, first-served basis, no tickets or reservations are required, and the screenings include open captions. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts becomes particularly magical on late-summer evenings, and watching grand opera projected outdoors as the city darkens around you is one of those experiences that reminds you why living in New York can still be extraordinary.

The festival opens Wednesday, September 2 at 8 p.m. with Act I of Wagner’s monumental Tristan und Isolde, followed Thursday at 8 p.m. by Acts II and III. Friday brings Bellini’s I Puritani at 7:30 p.m., followed Saturday at 8 p.m. by Tchaikovsky’s exquisitely romantic Eugene Onegin. Sunday offers something decidedly different with Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, a magical-realist reunion of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera set around the Day of the Dead.  What could possibly be more appropriate for the unofficial farewell to summer than ending with heartbreak?

On Labor Day itself, September 7 at 8 p.m., the festival concludes with Puccini’s La Bohème. Parisian garrets, starving artists, impossible love and one of opera’s most devastating endings—under the Manhattan stars and completely free.

For something considerably brassier, head to Bryant Park on Friday, September 4 from 7 to 9:30 p.m., when Bryant Park Picnic Performances presents its first festival devoted to all things brass. Two-time Grammy nominee New Breed Brass Band headlines the free evening alongside Aberdeen and New York’s all-female Brass Queens. Bring your own blanket or snag one of Bryant Park’s on a first-come, first-served basis, find yourself a piece of lawn and let Manhattan become New Orleans for a couple of hours.

Then, on Labor Day evening, Bryant Park changes personalities again. The lawn becomes an enormous outdoor movie theatre for a free screening of the wonderfully ridiculous 1999 sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest. The lawn opens for picnicking at 5 p.m., with Hester Street Fair food vendors beginning at 4 p.m. Arrive early, claim your territory and settle in beneath the skyscrapers.

There is something particularly delicious about watching a movie outdoors in Midtown. Cars are honking a block away, office towers surround you, somebody’s picnic invariably becomes considerably more elaborate than yours—and then darkness falls and several thousand strangers collectively disappear into a movie.

Maybe you want to spend Labor Day weekend somewhere that doesn’t feel remotely like Midtown. Then get on the ferry. From September 5 through September 7, the Richmond County Fair takes over Historic Richmond Town, transforming 25 acres into one of New York City’s most wonderfully old-fashioned end-of-summer traditions.

This isn’t merely a carnival dropped onto an empty parking lot. Historic Richmond Town is an extraordinary open-air museum containing 38 historic structures, with the site’s history reaching deep into Staten Island’s past. The modern Richmond County Fair dates to 1980, while the tradition behind it reaches back to the 19th century.

For three days, costumed historical interpreters bring that world back to life through demonstrations of blacksmithing, tinsmithing, carpentry, hearth cooking and basket making, alongside hands-on crafts and living-history presentations. Then history collides rather wonderfully with the county fair.

There are carnival rides, games, pony rides, face painting, aerialists, a butterfly vivarium and more than 100 local vendors selling crafts, antiques and the sort of food for which nutritional information should probably remain confidential until Tuesday. Naturally, there are eating contests. Hot dogs, Chicken wings, Pie, because apparently merely eating fair food wasn’t sufficiently competitive.

There is also a three-day music festival featuring Staten Island bands, DJs and tribute acts, while the Staten Island Culture Crawl near the entrance introduces visitors to local arts, cultural and community organizations.

The fair runs noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, September 5 through Monday, September 7, with general admission currently listed at $15, $12 for seniors 65 and older, $7 for children ages 3–11, and free admission for children under three. Proceeds support Historic Richmond Town’s preservation and educational work. That makes the Richmond County Fair particularly appealing. You aren’t merely buying admission to another festival. You’re helping preserve a physical piece of New York history.

This Labor Day weekend is the moment to resist doing what we New Yorkers so often do: staying home because everywhere will be crowded, complaining that summer disappeared too quickly and promising ourselves we’ll do all these things next year.

Go hear Wagner under the stars. Dance to a brass band in Bryant Park. Pack a picnic and watch Galaxy Quest surrounded by skyscrapers. Take the ferry to Staten Island, watch somebody forge something the way it might have been done more than a century ago, ride something mildly inadvisable and eat something even more inadvisable.

Summer is leaving whether we approve or not. We might as well give it a proper New York goodbye.

Hollywood legend Hank Garrett has lived a remarkable life worthy of the silver screen — and of the pages of his celebrated memoir, From Harlem Hoodlum to Hollywood Heavyweight. The book chronicles Garrett’s extraordinary journey from the streets of Harlem to a career spanning decades in film, television and entertainment. (Fox News⁠)

Among the book’s special personal contributions is an honoring feature connected to H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe, celebrating the friendship between the Schaumburg-Lippe family and Hank Garrett and his wife, Deanna-Marie.

The memorable photograph reproduced in the book shows Prince Mario-Max, Princess Antonia and Prince Waldemar Schaumburg-Lippe together with Hank Garrett and Deanna-Marie, preserving a very personal Hollywood moment and the close bond between the families.

Garrett became famous for memorable “tough guy” roles, including his celebrated appearance opposite Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor. His remarkable career also included Car 54, Where Are You?, Serpico, The Amityville Horror and many other productions. (Fox News⁠)

For H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe, honoring Hank Garrett in connection with this memoir is more than recognition of an accomplished actor. It is a tribute to a treasured friend, a Hollywood original and a man whose extraordinary journey from Harlem to Hollywood represents determination, humor, friendship and a lifetime devoted to entertainment.

“Hank Garrett is a true Hollywood legend and, above all, a wonderful friend. It is a great honor to be part of the story of a man whose life, career and unforgettable personality have touched so many people.” — H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe