Word: ashmedai
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...awaited US. premiere of Roger Sessions' Montezuma. At the Baltimore Opera Company, it was 14th century Portugal in the world premiere of Thomas Pasatieri's Ines de Castro. At the New York City Opera, the setting was the land of Talmudic legend in the U.S. premiere of Ashmedai by Israel's Josef Tal. All three operas were sung in English. Though the music varied in worth, all three productions boasted brilliant stagecraft and demonstrated once again the vitality of U.S. regional opera...
...ASHMEDAI. Josef Tal, 65, is Israel's leading electronic composer. He works in a universally recognized style: 20th century eclectic. This grab-bag approach blends traditional composing techniques, rigorous twelve-tone segments reminiscent of Schoenberg with some electronic buzzes and drones. There are some striking orchestral passages. This kind of writing is not designed to display the human voice, despite vivid characterizations by Soprano Eileen Schauler and Baritone Paul Ukena...
...Ashmedai is the story of a demon who corrupts an idyllic kingdom that has been at peace for 500 years. The work is really more a theater piece than an opera. The evening owes its success mainly to Hal Prince's (West Side Story, Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof) making his debut as an operatic director. He is a master of illusion. There is a scene of villagers applauding a fire-eater that visually recalls Bruegel, a ridiculous pas de deux between the queen and a giant rooster. In a final Princely touch, darkness envelops the opera house. Then...
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