Word: corsaro
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Koanga's dramatic strength makes it all the more remarkable that this was the first staging ever of a Delius opera in the U.S. The man responsible for the revival was Stage Director Frank Corsaro, on loan from the New York City Opera. He reinforced Koanga's quality of poetic make-believe and pantheistic sultriness perfectly by using slides and films (photographed especially in the Louisiana bayous), as well as surrealistic light patterns. So well did production and opera blend, so superb the singing of Baritone Eugene Holmes and Soprano Claudia Lindsey in the lead roles, that sellout...
...that offers no arias, no immediately whistleable tunes but is nonetheless marked by a considerable genius. Last week, when the New York City Opera produced it, a sellout audience responded with a twelve-minute ovation, a generous part of it in praise of the ingenuity used by Director Frank Corsaro and Mixed-Media Experts Gardner Compton and Emile Ardolino...
...Corsaro's production, slides and movie films projected upon shifting, oddly shaped screens clarify the former identities of the heroine. Thus handled, Janacek's propulsive overture is accompanied by a surrealistic visual nightmare of running figures, time travel, characters that melt from one person to another, and a Gestapo-like chauffeur who symbolizes death. During the opera's action, the films subside into ghostly suggestions of thoughts and memories, some of them unabashed recollections of the heroine's erotic past. When the secret-of-life document is burned, the entire stage ignites into a holocaust...
...opening-night audience sat in stunned silence, then broke into shouts of enthusiasm. They called for Composer Floyd and for Director Frank Corsaro. With Baritone Julian Patrick as George, Tenor Robert Moulson as the doomed half-wit Lennie, and Soprano Carol Bayard as the ranch-house temptress who teases Lennie once too often, Of Mice and Men seems uniquely American. Like Steinbeck's depression-depressed characters, Floyd's opera has calluses on its hands and hot blood in its heart. It will probably be around a long time...
...Corsaro also concluded early on that he was not going to be influenced by Gounod's score, either. "It's sweet, it has charm and grace, and it's romantic -but it can bend any number of ways," he explains. Fortunately, Soprano Beverly Sills (Marguerite), Tenor Michele Molese (Faust), Bass Norman Treigle (Mephistopheles) and Conductor Rudel were on hand to see that it did not bend too much. Some traditionalists felt that it was going too far to deprive Marguerite of her usual departure for heaven in full view of the audience. But Corsaro decided that angels...