A song cycle reborn
In the darkest, cruelest depth of winter, a frozen landscape accosts your splintered heart that was broken by a maiden who found love in the arms of another. Misery is your only companion as you wander aimlessly in the cold. So what do you do? Naturally, you break into song about it. Or so decided Franz Schubert, the 19th-century Austrian composer who set his bleak and moving 24-song cycle “Winterreise” (“Winter Journey”) to poems about lost love by German poet Wilhelm Müller. The words and music add up to an unabashed, unrelenting tribute to grief. But the forlorn and sufferers from seasonal affective disorder can take heart. The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) is offering a bright twist on Schubert’s solemn composition with its production of “Three Pianos.” In the hands of a trio of talented actor-musicians, Schubert’s work is transformed into both a silly and soul-searching house party with, as its title suggests, three...