Latest Operas Stories
By Anna Picard Grimm's fairytale lacks psychological fibre but there is some rather tasty singing and the London Philharmonic plays sweetly Classical Hansel und Gretel Glyndebourne EAST SUSSEX Street Scene The Young Vic LONDON Twice sanitised by the Brothers Grimm, the bloody tale of Hnsel und Gretel was wrapped in musical tinsel by Wagner's lapdog, Engelbert Humperdinck. As delicately scored as a Mendelssohn symphony, and as sentimental as a fairytale's apple-cheeked granny in its...
By George Loomis The Maryinsky Opera Company will supply the bulk of the opera offerings at the Edinburgh International Festival next month, the company's first engagement in Britain since Wagner's "Ring" cycle in Wales two years ago. Three presentations are planned, of which Karol Szymanowski's "King Roger," the newest addition to the Maryinsky repertoire and a work long championed by a cult of admirers, will likely draw the greatest interest. It will be seen in a production shared with...
By D.S. Crafts For the Journal It was the toughest ticket in London. Scalpers were charging ludicrously inflated prices. And if one could get in, the theater was so crowded that pushing and shoving led to several injuries. The Beatles? Rolling Stones? Sex Pistols? Pet Shop Boys? The year was 1720, and it was Handel's opera "Radamisto" that was the talk of the social season. A German composer, residing in England, writing Italian opera for the most sophisticated audience in Europe. What...
By Sue Gyford THEY raised eyebrows when they opened up the doors of their church to take confessions from non-Catholic festival revellers. Now the priests at St Patrick's in the Cowgate are set to court controversy again - by staging a play which features the severed head of John the Baptist presented on a platter. Those behind the production of Oscar Wilde's Salome insist it will all be done in the best possible taste. The church's Father Michael Henesy said it followed the success of...
By Howard Shapiro, The Philadelphia Inquirer Jul. 22--The only thing more outstanding than the ungainly nose on the title character in Cyrano de Bergerac is the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival's impressive production itself. The festival's final offering this summer, Edmund Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, is gorgeous in many ways: its melodic translation by Anthony Burgess, the one used on Broadway last season in a production with Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner; an inspired portrait of...
By RHODA KOENIG Theatre STREET SCENE Young Vic LONDON **** Kurt Weill called Street Scene "a Broadway opera", but there aren't too many operas with a wild jitterbug that segues into a slutty blues or a children's chorus who chant, "My father's name is Rockefeller./He shovels diamonds in the cellar." Into his 1947 musical version of Elmer Rice's 1929 play, Weill emptied a cornucopia of influences - Wagner, Puccini, folk song, jazz, operetta, and his predecessors on the Great White Way...
By Charles Ward, Houston Chronicle Jul. 20--The Yeomen of the Guard, this summer's production of the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Houston, is not marquee-quality G&S, but Friday's performance lovingly caressed every moment of beauty in the score. Yeomen has the usual convoluted machinations of a plot for a W.S. Gilbert/Sir Arthur Sullivan show. Colonel Fairfax faces death because a relative with influence has accused him of sorcery to get his estate. To thwart the greed, Fairfax...
By Colin Dabkowski, The Buffalo News, N.Y. Jul. 19--What do Jackie Gleason, Chris Farley, John Goodman and Homer Simpson have in common? If you guessed fat and funny, you're on the right track. But each owes a considerable debt to Sir John Falstaff, Shakespeare's infamous "fat knight," whose bumbling escapades over the course of three plays laid a solid foundation for most every comedic boob in English-language drama and literature since. His appearance in Shakespeare's comedy "The Merry...
By Doug Haberman, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif. Jul. 17--RIVERSIDE -- These young campers were singing, but it wasn't 'round a crackling fire. Three boys and 19 girls sat in chairs in a semicircle, the boys off to one side. They sang a heartbreakingly beautiful rendition of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in a round, their unamplified voices filling the auditorium at Bobby Bonds Park. "God, you got it together!" said vocal coach Manuel Aybar. After a week of coaching,...
By Sue Gilmore, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif. Jul. 16--It would seem obvious from the get-go that an opera called "Il Trovatore" (The Troubador) would have to have a really talented singer in the title role to lay claim to any success at all. But in the case of Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 masterwork on themes of obsession, vengeance, thwarted love and tragically mistaken identity, four full-throated, powerhouse vocalists on equal footing are needed to meet the evenly meted-out demands...
