Word: bolcom
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Arthur Miller looked positively giddy as 3,500 Chicagoans stood up and yelled at him. No, it wasn't a riot, but the final curtain call at this month's world premiere of A View from the Bridge, William Bolcom's operatic version of Miller's 1955 play about love and death on the Brooklyn waterfront. The Lyric Opera of Chicago bet big on Bolcom, giving his American-style grand opera a production worthy of Aida, and the horse paid off: View packs the theatrical punch of a double boilermaker...
...kind of American verismo," Bolcom says of View, using the Italian term for such popular slice-of-life operas as Puccini's La Boheme and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Sure enough, the tale of Eddie Carbone (baritone Kim Josephson), a middle-aged longshoreman who lusts after his young niece Catherine (soprano Juliana Rambaldi), has verismo stamped all over it, right down to the climactic knife fight. In this new version, adapted by Miller and co-librettist Arnold Weinstein, View has acquired a Greek chorus that comments on the unfolding disaster, though the overall effect remains faithful to the original play. Think...
...Arthur Miller's next opening night is not on Broadway but at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where composer William Bolcom and librettist Arnold Weinstein have teamed up with the celebrated playwright to turn A View from the Bridge into an opera. Bolcom, whose eclectic tastes run from ragtime to Sondheim, is just the man to set it to music. "I've written some flat-out tunes," he says happily, "and there's even a doo-wop quartet." The cast includes soprano Catherine Malfitano, one of the most powerful actresses in American opera. "She plays a woman who makes...
...this is another in a series of strong American opera premieres during the past few years, which has also included Philip Glass's The Voyage and William Bolcom's McTeague. San Francisco Opera general director Lotfi Mansouri speaks of sharing Liaisons with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and taking McTeague in return; it is an excellent idea, for both works merit second and third productions, and not just in this country...
...production costs, disastrous deficits, a declining talent pool and a static, aging repertory, American opera companies seemed to be the dinosaurs of arts organizations. In the past few years, however, a string of important and popular new works by composers as disparate as John Corigliano, Philip Glass and William Bolcom has helped improve opera's artistic fortunes. At the same time, audacious native-born stage directors like Peter Sellars and Francesca Zambello have replaced the old histrionic semaphoring with bold, psychologically penetrating productions starring fine singing actors like June Anderson and James Morris...