Word: aria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stage, all the characters rise to moments of lyrical grandeur. Peter Cody, a visitor to the Harvard stage, begins his Nemorino with a strong tenor voice and a characterization even more bumbling than the plot requires, but the magical elixir appears to ease his stiffness. His second-act aria to Adina surmounts the frilly animation of the production, creating, somehow, a wrenching summer-night sweetness between the cardboard storefronts...
...woman, as in the legend of Pygmalion. The most entertaining example is the life-size doll Olympia, a luscious soprano in Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. At the end of every verse in her main aria, however, she droops and swoons until revived by several noisy turns of a crank in her back...
...with billowing flair by PierLuigi Samaritani and meticulously painted in Italy. Samaritani is experienced in designing sets for operas. His visions gloriously summon up the richness of legendary India, but sometimes overpower delicate, intricate movements. In scale and detail they seem more suited to leisurely appreciation during a long aria...
...amazon of a woman, sporting gold sequins, helmet and spear, rambles onto the stage to tell us she got lost in this forest running away from a clumsy abductor who dropped her from her balcony. This lady of the lowlands. Donna Ribalda (Melody Scheiner) feigns gusto in her aria, but soon gives in to boredom...
...progress that sinks deep into the layers of Shakespeare's meanings, to emerge restored and invigorated. Stage movement as much as language becomes a spade they use to unearth poetic ambiguities, in several mimes enacted to bits of Purcell's score: while a soprano sings a mournful aria, Stephen Rowe's Demetrius and Lisa Sloan's Helena wander about in a ghostly love-dance, with Helena reaching for and grasping Demetrius just as he turns away; after the night of illusion in the forest is over, and the lovers are rubbing the sleep and dreams from their eyes, they recap...