Word: corsaro
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...responsible for the transformation is Stage Director Frank Corsaro, 43, who believes that operatic tradition is often nothing more than a catalogue of yesterday's clichés. As he showed with his productions of La Traviata and Madama Butterfly, Corsaro is a determined spoiler when he confronts the creaking plots of traditional opera. If he wants to bring on familiar characters at unexpected moments, he does so. If he decides to invent minor characters, he does that...
...Corsaro has the broadest theatrical background of any American director now working in opera. He plays the self-doubting undertaker in the new Joanne Woodward movie, Rachel, Rachel. His play, A Piece of Blue Sky, was done on TV in 1960. On Broadway, he directed A Hatful of Rain and The Night of the Iguana. What all this experience has given him is the confidence to look at an opera as though nobody had ever staged it before...
Sneaky Monk. When City Opera General Director Julius Rudel asked Corsaro to stage Faust, he got a wild-eyed stare in return. "I loathed Faust," Corsaro admits. "In fact, I've started off by basically disliking every opera that I've done so far. They all seemed like such old salami." But as he began thinking about it, he became fascinated with the prospect of doing Faust as a grim Gothic tale in which sheer horror and grizzly humor intertwine. He decided to introduce Mephistopheles in different guises that would fit credibly into each scene. After materializing first...
Despite its failings, Rachel, Rachel has several unassailable assets. The spiderweb score, written by Jerome Moross with the cooperation of Erik Satie and Robert Schumann, is the best of the year. Estelle Parsons, as Rachel's fellow schoolteacher, and Frank Corsaro, as a friendly neighborhood mortician, extend their roles beyond the boundaries of the movie...
Repeat performances scheduled for last week were canceled in the shambles of the opening night. But there remained a good question as to why Il Corsaro was chosen in the first place. Except for his disastrously bad Alzira, it represents Verdi's single lapse from musicianship and inspiration, and the preposterous libretto, inspired by Byron's The Corsair-the story of an Aegean pirate whose ill-starred romance leads to murder and suicide-scarcely helps matters. The one pleasing aria and the single engaging duet could hardly be expected to mollify a fastidious audience. Even the most pious...