Word: blitzstein
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...expert on Blitzstein's life as well, Lchrman directs "I've Got the Tune," an opera with autobiographical parallels, and takes the lead with relish. He plays Mr. Musiker, a composer in search of lyrics and a singer for his melody...
Unfortunately, most others will know Blitzstein only for his adaptation and translation of the Brecht-Weill "Threepenny Opera." Few others will catch the similarities in "I've Got the Tune" between pretentious Mme. Arbutus (the advocate here of art-for-art's-sake) and Blitzstein's mother-in-law or hear the echo of his wife's suicide when, at Mr. Musiker's most despairing moment, a character jumps out the window to her death. Elite indeed will be the group that sees physical resemblance between Blitzstein and Lehrman, who has cut his hair in order to look like...
...finally finds its natural home. Mr. Musiker has already rejected offers from snobby, self-consciously cultured salons, from trashy, materialistic Manufacturers o'Hits in Tin Pan Alley and from a neo-Nazi, Klannish organization that values Mr. Musiker more as a body to beat than as a creative artist. Blitzstein's sympathy with war protesters was lost in the only other production of this opera, when it was given in 1937 as a radio play. Censors transmogrified the workers marching on May Day into school boys on a field day parade. The Cambridge audience is sure to prefer Blitzstein...
Taking his composing seriously, Blitzstein once wrote, "I don't feel there is any difference in the quality of a theatre song as compared to a concert song." And theatre songs had the added appeal for him of the American vernacular...
Simplicity often seems to have the scope of an epigram, and the plays at Lowell House seem to universalize Blitzstein's lyrics even more by their free sweep through time and space. Wakeen Ray-Riv is director and choreographer of "The Harpies," set in ancient Thrace. A farce based on Apollonius, it is Blitzstein's first opera to his own text, performed only once before, in 1953 at the Manhattan School of Music. The new staging here and emphasis on dance is a vital response to Blitzstein's dedication to popular art and depends on the spirit of community...