THE REVIEWS:

"One is overwhelmed by the power of quest and loss and by the beauty of the music."

                                                                                                                                The New York Times

"It made me feel alive at a time when little in the musical theater does." - The Village Voice

“One of the most strikingly original works to be seen in New York, Eckert creates theater that touches the   heart and engages the mind. It is an intriguing and often funny evening.”  - Billboard

University of Southern California – September 2009

 “In less than 80-minutes, Rinde Eckert makes a frightfully compelling case for genius.  Some have powers of mind; others of body.  Eckert, miraculously, was gifted with both - a rare privilege to behold.  And God Created Great Whales is the highest kind of performance art – crazily ambitious, deeply felt and occasionally sublime. Eckert’s performance nearly engulfs the room, even in his quieter moments.  He can convey great feeling with the simplest gesture;.  Elation is but a smile; longing, but one far-off glance.  And when he sings – whether in rich baritone, arms fully extended, or vulnerable falsetto, hunched painfully over, nothing can stop him.  In perhaps an even greater feat, Cole matches Eckert’s incandescence.  Eckert and Cole play essentially the same inseparable person, but they are also worlds apart.  She is the lighthouse to his ship, the shore to his sea.  Neither can exist without the other. Cole plays her opera diva to perfection.  Heaven’s gates are flung wide when she opens her mouth.  With piercing vibrato and inhumanly high notes, she does the Muses proud.  Few shows are as good and few men are as visionary as And God Created Great Whales and Eckert. ‘Consciousness defines genius,’ writes Harold Bloom. Eckert proves Bloom right.”                                                                                                                 THE TROJAN

Dance Theatre Workshop in New York: June 2000

“Total magic is what Mr. Eckert delivers. He has the gift of writing both words and music very well, and from one moment to the next for 75 intense minutes he delightfully subverts every expectation he arouses. Mr. Eckert, as Nathan the composer, looks like a great ruin. But he has a command of gesture that lets him fly from fear to fury and from dancing to dying in an instant. To watch Nathan degenerate from a nimble prankster to a blank lump is scarcely bearable. And his singing, whether in falsetto or baritone, can be thrilling. He is a wary explorer of mindlessness in theater and a fiendish detective of moribund trends in opera. There is a constant sense of opening up – intellectually, emotionally and visually.”         

                                                                                                                                NEW YORK TIMES

“Despite its seemingly disjunctive nature, the piece overall has the smooth solidity and assurance of a gorgeous marble sculpture, plus an emotional febrility that keeps it from lapsing into sculptural impassiveness. What Eckert does, cannily, is create the novel’s atmosphere – with particular reference to the musical world on which Melville drew – while letting its drama seep from our memories into the analogous story of Nathan’s mad quest. Big, shaven-headed, seemingly weighed down by woe, Eckert is an imposing figure from the start….a master. Gifted with a heldentenor voice, he can growl out Ahab’s low baritone squalor or render a folk song in unearthly countertenor tones. Easy to take, his compositions always have a songlike clarity of line, over an inventive array of harmonies. Make no mistake, opera’s what we’re talking about here – pure drama expressed by way of music. Rich with ideas, the piece made me feel alive at a time when little else in the musical theater does.”                                 THE VILLAGE VOICE

 “ ‘Whales’ is a tight, polished event that simultaneously stimulates mind, heart and senses, a quirky, visually enthralling and emotionally moving music-theater piece. The richly layered work suggests Melville’s novel. Nathan’s obsession with his opera is as total as Ahab’s quest for the white whale. The depths of art, Eckert implies, are as mysterious and cannot be fathomed. But the joy is the artistry with which director David Schweizer smoothly weaves text, Eckert’s muscular, haunting music, and the performance.  The tall, large, bald Eckert is by turns graceful and purposefully lumbering, even whale-like. ‘Whales’ is the inside of the poet’s mind: striving, confused, human.”                THE STAR-LEDGER

45 Bleecker Theatre in New York: September 2000

“Buoyed by rave reviews at his June opening, lapsed opera singer Rinde Eckert will revive ‘And God Created Great Whales’ – one of the season’s most exciting and accomplished performance pieces. Eckert plays a twisted character who is all his own: a gifted but bumbling piano tuner who attempts to compose an opera while losing his mind and memory.  Inspired by his muse, the tuner relies on dozens of color-coded tape recorders to refresh his mind, alternately singing, mumbling, shouting and rambling in a performance of surprising grace and humor. A terrific production.”                                   NEW YORK MAGAZINE

“There’s nothing inauthentic about Rinde Eckert, a talent whose ‘Whales’…is fashioned around his oddities – the portly, shaved-head, young Alfred Hitchcock look contrasts winningly with his homey, Midwestern accent, manic energy and penetrating singing voice.”                PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

“One of the most strikingly original works to be seen in New York in a while, ‘Whales’ cunningly parodies the conventions of opera yet still manages to take advantage of that medium’s power. Nathan is brilliantly played by composer / artist Eckert. He creates a piece of theater that is able to touch the heart as well as engage the mind. It is an intriguing and often funny evening.”                          BILLBOARD

“Mr. Eckert is mocking operatic conventions, but he is also teasing Melville. Nathan’s muse, a figment of his imagination, is to obeyed in all esthetic matters. She is kind but firm when Nathan’s mind and talk wander futilely. This is Mr. Eckert’s joke, since the last thing Melville wanted or needed was a female muse. What writer explored masculinity more profoundly and abjured femininity more completely? The jokes are fun. But in the end one is overwhelmed by the power of quest and loss and by the beauty of the music.”                                                                                                                    NEW YORK TIMES

Center Stage IN Baltimore: May 2002

“This is a dense, hypnotic little piece about creativity and dying, written in a daring combination of theatrical and operatic styles. Rinde Eckert is a striking performer – acting with brio, dexterously playing a grand piano at the center of the stage, singing with a sturdy classical tenor voice. He even dances with nimble aplomb now and then. Yet this is a deeply intriguing show…and has no trouble making itself clear. It’s a dark emotional journey, and Eckert puts it together in a searching original way.”                                                                                                                                                                          THE WASHINGTON POST

“A JOURNEY TOO DIFFICULT TO FORGET-HEARTFELT AND REWARDING DRAMA.”

No doubt about it, the Center Stage subscription series has never included anything quite like Rinde Eckert’s ‘And God Created Great Whales.’ Part chamber opera and part performance art, as eccentric as Rinde Eckert’s piece may be, it strikes an empathetic chord with themes ranging from mental deterioration to the nature of creativity, the importance of leaving a legacy and even the struggles between life and death. A distinctive and rewarding journey.”                                                  THE BALTIMORE SUN

BITE Festival at The Barbican: June 2003

“In Rinde Eckert’s challenging new music theatre work we get a tantalizing glimpse of a magnum opus that will never be, a huge opera adapting Herman Melville’s Moby Dick for the stage. Director David Schweitzer allows his two multi-talented leads to really take flight, showing the full range of their magnificent voices and acting abilities. And God Created Great Whales is a modern tragedy examining the way cruel circumstance can often put an end to the most noble ventures. It is the type of theatre that we don’t get enough on the British stage.”                                                    THE ALIEN ONLINE

“Madness is rather the point of And God Created Great Whales, a mesmerizing 80-minute piece of music theatre conceived by the American composer, singer and actor Rinde Eckert, and performed with terrific verve by him and the equally virtuosic Nora Cole. Much of the result is wickedly funny. The absurdities of operatic conventions are deliciously mocked in scenes that border on vaudeville, even slapstick, yet never diminish the poignancy of Eckert’s immaculately detailed portrayal of a man pathetically clutching at the shards of his mental faculties. Touching, tragic and witty, this is one of summer’s surprise packages.” 

                                                                                            Richard Morrison: THE (London) TIMES

“Written by the multi-talented Rinde Eckert, this two-hander approaches the novel Moby Dick from a cranky angle. What’s brilliant is how tantalizing Eckert’s incomplete notes are, and how technically polished the performance is within a deliberately rough frame. The music – overlaying American folk and slave songs with ethereal choiring – is thrillingly eerie. And with pulsing bass lines and meandering atonal duets, it conveys both the eddying ocean and a mind adrift.”                   THE INDEPENDENT