ADDENDUM
posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel
I forgot to mention that you can also find in the latest Tucson Weekly my Q&A with departing Tucson Symphony Orchestra principal horn player Jacquelyn Sellers.
I forgot to mention that you can also find in the latest Tucson Weekly my Q&A with departing Tucson Symphony Orchestra principal horn player Jacquelyn Sellers.
From the intentionally ridiculous to the potentially sublime in the latest Tucson Weekly … First, my review of the latest Gaslight put-on:
At a theater where the scripts can have more holes than Prairie Dog Town, Gaslight Theatre's latest musical melodrama has only one gaping absence, an unforgivable lost opportunity: The bitter, limping Phillippe, twin brother to King Louis XIV of France, is being prepared by evil forces to seize the throne, but not once does he break into "Great Pretender."And then a preview of the UA Opera Theater’s laudable effort this weekend:
Really, what is Gaslight coming to when the bad guys miss a chance to turn into The Platters for three minutes?
Otherwise, Peter Van Slyke's adaptation of The Three Musketeers trips along smartly enough. It's not one of Van Slyke's funniest, most out-of-control shows, but it doesn't fall with a thud as if skewered by the Musketeers themselves. What this production has going for it most of all is an ensemble that swings through the show with an infectious joy. They may not have a lot to work with, but they're having tremendous fun.
It's new, it's popular ... and it's an opera.You’ll find the rest, if you so desire, here.
Hard to believe, but true. Mark Adamo's Little Women, written for Houston Grand Opera in 1998, is being produced all over the country in an era when operas don't generally get performed after their premieres—and few enough are premiered in the first place. Even the University of Arizona Opera Theater is having a go at Little Women this weekend.
As I’ve written before, I’m not enthusiastic about how classical music fits into the world of iPods and downloads. It’s not that I’m a Luddite; the quality and organization simply aren’t good enough, and I believe that innovation should bolster quality along with—or ahead of—increasing convenience. Last week in the Times of London, Amanda Holloway issued a list of demands that the content providers must meet soon if they expect to be taken seriously by the classical audience. My thoughts exactly.
Regarding my little rant about British critics and Elgar, the most civilized Bernard Chasan responds:
I have been using my ears for many many years and my ears tell me that Elgar is one of the greats—the concerti, the two official symphonies, Sea Pictures, are all first rate. I am not English, although I have to admit that I spent a week in London in 2001. Perhaps they drugged me. You are right however, that the Brits really promote their own.
Regarding my post on the imminent departure of Tucson Symphony principal hornist Jacquelyn Sellers, my colleague Michael Dauphinais writes:
I was struck by your blog entry on Ms. Sellers. This past weekend, I had the privilege of substituting for principal keyboardist Paula Fan for the TSO's "Picnic in the Park" concert, and was seated in a rather adventurous spot, sonically speaking: smack in between the bass drum and the horn section. The bass drum didn't bother me as I am a recovering percussionist and know full well what those guys have to do during works such as "1812" Overture. But what struck me throughout the progam, what little I played of it, was the quality of the horn section as a whole. They made those stereotypical horn offbeats seem as easy as childsplay most of the time and played with wonderful crisp articulation as a group (5 horns in this particular gig). Shostakovich's "Festive Overture" was a showpiece for them, and I admired their execution of it in every rehearsal and performance. I'm sorry to see Ms. Sellers go, as she obviously has imparted a high artistic level to her section over her years at the TSO.
By coincidence, death threads its way through all three of my contributions to the latest Tucson Weekly. We go from the ridiculous to the sublime, and end with a situation that is sui generis. First, a review of an Agatha Christie production:
Agatha Christie's Black Coffee so relishes its murder-mystery conventions that the suspects are gathered and locked in the drawing room together in the beginning, not just the end. Even if you can't guess who done it, you always know what to expect from Agatha Christie, and Live Theatre Workshop happily fulfills our expectations. …Then, a review of something far more serious:
Local Agatha Christie productions in the past few years have made the mistake of camping up the material, but here, director Jodi Rankin wisely takes the script at face value, avoiding parody while teasing out the play's natural humor with appropriate subtlety.
The Rogue Theatre has awakened The Dead. James Joyce's superb short story has come to life in an adaptation by director Cynthia Meier that honors the author's text while translating it into something viably theatrical.Finally, a preview of a new production of the one-hour children’s opera Brundibar, whose most famous performances came under harrowing circumstances:
This is no small task, for Joyce's story is even more interior than his more stylistically difficult Ulysses. Joyce provides little dialogue; much of the story consists of observation and an account of the tumultuous inner state of the outwardly circumspect central character, Gabriel Conroy.
Meier has scattered lines of narrative among the 17 actors, who tell the story as much as show the action. There's no other good way around this project, for "action" is not the point of The Dead.
One autumn, a group of kids in a camp put on an opera about two children who outwit a nasty organ grinder who stole the money they'd raised to help their sick mother. The composer, a leading musician, was on hand to help them; another excellent composer volunteered to play the piano, and the set designer from the original production a few years before even built some of the scenery.Click the links above for the full texts.
The show was a great success, and the government even incorporated part of it into a documentary it was sponsoring.
And then, soon after all the cast members and musicians performed the final victory chorus, most of the children were sent to Auschwitz and murdered.
