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Date: | Tue, 17 Dec 2002 17:10:10 -0600 |
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Bernard Chasan:
>Indeed, what Jan calls "concept opera" seems in some instances at least
>to be characterized by effects of mind boggling triviality. Putting a
>Mozart opera in the Trump Tower, dressing Wagnerian characters in Armani
>suits- these hardly rise to the level of "universal themes, expressed
>symbolically with a minimum of superficial stage effects." They are
>sophomoric and callow .(IMHO, of course.)
As a callow sophomore myself (only emotionally, of course), I found
Marriage of Figaro in the Trump Tower dramatically effective. It clarified
the power relationship between Countna (in this production, a woman with
a green card) in a way that the powdered-wig versions I'd seen had pretty
much obscured. In the Sellars account, the "saucy, eighteenth-century
bawdy" sex comedy retreated to the background and the revolutionary
aspect of the Mozart-da Ponte-Beaumarchais story came front and center.
Indeed, the specifics of the libretto for me, at any rate, hide to a
great extent the moral ugliness of the Count behind quaint costume and
scenery and an intervening distance where something that mattered has
become farcical froth. The Beaumarchais was, after all, a scandal in
its day and in fact has been cited by several historians as a signpost
to the French Revolution. You get some of that in the Sellars production.
Do I think the production a version for the ages? How can I? Pretty
soon our own era will itself degenerate into the quaint. Someone else
will have to shake things up.
Steve Schwartz
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