Word: bernsteins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ironic Counterpoint. Clearly nothing less than that was Leonard Bernstein's high intention. And with Mass-subtitled "a theater piece for singers, players and dancers"-he rose to an auspicious occasion and splendid circumstances: a new national opera house, an audience ready to assume that anything that works at all is a masterpiece. A cast of 23 skilled dancers, 40 musicians onstage, 40 more in the pit, two choruses, assorted soloists, the best in lights, costumes, alarums and excursions that money could buy. The result, in some ways, was both too much and not enough. Mass is a jumble...
...Catholic Mass, the Kyrie eleison, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. As more or less ironic counterpoint, a populist band of sinners and dancers variously sing, intone or howl doubts and questions in a mélange of musical styles and pop-lyric words by Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz, the 23-year-old creator of Godspell, the musical version of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. The dramatic climax of the work is the disruption of the Mass. It also involves the spiritual shattering of a young man who begins as a simple guitarist and gradually...
...trip. As he lashes out and people look at him, he shouts angrily, "What are you staring at? Haven't you ever seen an accident?" But his inner state has been defined earlier when he sings: "My spirit falters on decaying altars and my illusions fail." Bernstein's own idea of Communion is achieved at the finale when the entire cast begins to exchange embraces and kisses of peace, and boy sopranos stroll into the auditorium, shake hands with the aisle sitters and whisper, "Pass...
...empty because the world still behaves as if it were pretty much the devil's province, that because man has failed on earth God has failed too is common enough. According to individual taste, one can greet it with a hosannah, a miserere nobis or a sancta simplicitas. Bernstein, after all, is an artist and entertainer, not a theologian. But even his stagecraft, his taste and his music, despite many delights and flourishes, reflect a basic confusion...
...unanswered by opening night was how the opera house sounded. As proved by the $3,000,000 already spent to improve Philharmonic Hall at New York City's Lincoln Center, acoustics can involve the pocketbook as much as the ear. Mass proved nothing about the opera house, since Bernstein relied heavily on amplification-body mikes for most of the soloists, hand mikes for the rock singer, floor mikes to pick up the dialogue. But as the week rolled on, it became apparent that the Kennedy Center sounded infinitely better than it looked...