Word: frome
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Edith Wharton's well known novella, Ethan Frome--a tale of love, forbidden passion and its tragic consequences--lends itself particularly well to a genre whose main intention is to represent and express human feelings on a grander scale. And that genre is none other than opera. Opera vows to unite music and poetry so as to engage the audience in feeling as much empathy, compassion and even terror as possible...
Opera, whose birth coincided with the advent of enlightened ideas in the late 17th and 18th centuries, is a relatively young genre. Opera is as "modern," as epic is "ancient." So it comes as no surprise that the decision to transform Ethan Frome from literary text into opera would be made by an innovating Harvard alumni. Written by Douglas Allanbrook '48, the libretto is also the work of fellow Harvard graduate (John Hunt '48) while the production itself is headed musically by Douglas Allenbrook's son, John Allanbrook...
...Ethan Frome's only flaw is its set and production design. Although it is certainly cozy to be seated near the orchestra and to see all of the musicians, it eventually becomes distracting; the orchestra even drowns out the singing at some points. The stage itself is sparsely decorated: though not out of sync with the plain New England farmhouse of Wharton's novella, it still appears lacking. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the stage is so small that the actors often have nowhere...
...often distorting reality. It is difficult to see Mattie, in the epilogue, walk through the audience and climb right onto the stage, only to pretend to be paralyzed from a sledding accident. Although we all fundamentally realize that what happens on the stage is not reality, the opera Ethan Frome could use some fine tuning--from the unpolished scene changes to the deficient set to the fact that one might have a better view of the orchestra than the stage...
According to John Allanbrook, "Edith Wharton communicated verbally that the story might have been better without flashbacks" so there is "a precedent to tell the story in a different way." "People are turned off by Ethan Frome simply by the way it's narrated. Wharton had the story down, then mechanically applied this 19th century device which distances the reader from the characters...