Word: dorinda
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Above all, Sellars's updating never interferes with the music. In fact, many of his innovations involve clever exploitation of the Handel score. The bouncy rhythms of Dorinda's first-act aria on the ineffable nature of love--she's the beach bunny, nee shepherdess--become the excuse for an hilarious mock-disco strut. Later in the opera, when Dorinda sings of love's bitterness, it is Sellars's inspiration that she pour herself a stiff drink between repetitions (all Orlando's arias consist of six or eight lines repeated again and again), with the result that her octave leaps...
...show the puckish sense of fun that characterizes the production at its best. "This will not do," Sellars writes, "and Zoroastro abandons subtlety and launches into his aria, 'Leave Love and Follow Mars: Go Fight!' (The Pentagon, after all, is what is keeping the space program alive.)" Or for Dorinda's final summons to a festival of love, Sellars's version is "Dorinda--the real miracle worker--invites everybody over to lunch...