Word: buffa
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...read as portents. The deck is soon crowded with Serbian refugees, some of them revolutionaries, and their presence brings down upon the Gloria N. an Austro-Hungarian battleship and a noisy climax to what can best be described as an exercise in, perhaps even a parody of, the opera buffa...
...recent Pennsylvania Opera Theater production of Orlando Paladino, a work that alternates buffa elements with more serious moments, showed the best reason for giving Haydn's operas a hearing: their scores. To the lovesick knight Orlando (Tenor John Gilmore), crazed by a passion for Angelica, the Queen of Cathay, Haydn gave a stirring entrance that suggests the depths of the mad paladin's emotion. On Angelica (Soprano Randi Marrazzo), he lavished arias in each act that shimmer with dazzling coloratura and touching pathos. And for the finale, he composed a high-spirited, catchy septet that reconciles the conflicting...
...hints, but no real answer, as the Met staged its first new production of a season shortened by labor disputes. It was a trio of French works, with the umbrella title of Parade. The idea of presenting Satie's slight ballet Parade, Poulenc's absurdist opera buffa Les Mamelles de Tirésias and Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges came from Met Production Adviser John Dexter. The common theme was not World War I (though with effort all the pieces can be connected to it) but the devices of British Artist David...
...shore. Straining the long arm of coincidence, Idomeneo steps on land-and meets his son Idamante. Such subject matter is a problem for 20th century audiences, but not the only one. Idomeneo is written in the style of opera seria, the stilted, ritualistic 18th century Italian counterpart to opera buffa. Even by the time Mozart came of age opera seria was under attack by the reformers...
...Godfather II has the ring of authenticity about it. Its mafiosi mix well with the shadier elements of our government--string-tie western senators up to their ears in corruption, concupiscent executives of multinational corporations, opera buffa, Chiquita-banana-republic dictators. Perhaps the perspective is a strange one for most Americans, brought up on The FBI and The Untouchable--seeing the Mafia and the FBI as merely two competing organizations, more like Macy's and Gimbel's than good and evil. But The Godfather II is not a morally subversive movie--nobody would want to be Michael Corleone after seeing...