|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
New York: Opera's Second City
| Article
# : |
19726 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1991 |
1,784 Words |
| Author
: |
Lawrence O'Toole
Lawrence O'Toole writes for Entertainment Weekly and other
national publications. |
Comparisons may be odious, but they are often quite useful. Take, for example, the case of opera in this country. One of the most erroneous assumptions made by the general opera-going public is that New York's Metropolitan Opera is the ne plus ultra in this country as far as music drama is concerned. However, among those with voracious appetites who have traveled extensively around the country to see opera, it has become clear that the Met is a mummified institution. Its new productions tend to the vulgar and overproduced or just plain dull; its repertoire is safe and relatively uninteresting. To be truly stimulated, one usually has to travel elsewhere: San Francisco, Santa Fe, Chicago.
If one compares the two new productions this past fall at the Lyric Opera of Chicago--Dominick Argento's The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor--with those of the Met--Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera and Rossini's Semiramide--the balance sheet definitely comes up in Chicago's favor.
In terms of ambition and intention, the Chicago Lyric Opera's new production of the Argento work is the most exciting. It is, in fact, the inauguration of artistic director Ardis Krainik's "Toward the 21st Century" initiative, a ten-year program of new or relatively new works by American composers, outstanding works from the twentieth-century repertoire (a production of Wozzeck by Patrice Chereau), and a new Ring cycle conducted by Zubin Mehta. In the 1992 season, the company will give the world premiere of William Bolcom's McTeague (based on the book that was turned into the classic Erich von Stroheim film, Greed), with Robert Altman directing.
Argento's The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe is not a new work (it was first performed in 1976) at the Minnesota Opera Company), but Chicago gave it the first large-scale production it requires. With a libretto by Charles Nolte, Argento's opera revolves around a bizarre incident in the writer's tortured life. In September 1849, Poe took a steamer from Richmond to Baltimore. The ship, strangely and in true Poe fashion, stayed at sea for several days more than it should have and, less than a week after arriving in Baltimore, Poe died, impoverished, at the age of forty.
Voyage as Metaphor
Nolte and Argento use Poe's voyage as a metaphor. Through the music, which creates sound-pictures of almost unbearable poignancy, we apprehend Poe's crisis of conscience as to whether he willed the terrible events in his life
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
