Word: houdinied
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...certain that any of the mysteries Mailer touches upon are worth this huge effort. Still, his mastery of detail is superb. The story has its startling, bizarre touches: Gilmore's father, it seems, was the illegitimate son of Houdini. Gilmore himself remains a punk, though a moderately interesting one. He spent more than half of his life in jail, and, like other intelligent prisoners, had a routine. He could con intellectuals and other innocents on the outside who tend to be fascinated by violent criminals-literate ones-in the same way that Gladstone was fascinated by prostitutes. Gilmore used...
...occasion was the U.S. premiere of Houdini a "circus opera" by Dutch Composer Peter Schat and British Writer Adrian Mitchell. A note in Mitchell's libretto says that the work-originally produced in Amsterdam in 1977-"isn't a documentary but a celebration." What it celebrates is the spirit of human freedom symbolized by Houdini's ingenious escapes from every form of shackle and confinement...
...useful" to a broad public. Schat, 44, a political radical, was one of the collaborators on the 1969 Dutch opera Reconstruction, a political fantasia on Don Giovanni in which the Don represented imperialism and the Commendatore turned out to be Che Guevara. Thus it comes as no surprise that Houdini is suffused with a romantic-and at times sentimental-populism. In the final scene, Houdini appears from beyond the grave with the message that "there is no heaven but the people/ Let the people of the world/ shake off their chains/ and sing." To move from a vaudeville artiste slipping...
...Houdini, Tenor Jerold Norman was re-creating his role in the Amsterdam production, and the experience showed in his secure, if rather monochromatic, performance. Other major roles were ably filled by Rita Shane as Houdini's mother, John Brandstetter as his manager and Viviane Thomas as Bess. Conductor Richard Dufallo, who heads Aspen's annual Conference on Contemporary Music (at which Schat is one of this year's composers-in-residence), had the work firmly in hand. His youthful chorus and orchestra managed most of the score's difficulties, though without making them sound any less...
...both the music and text were upstaged by the magic. Several of Houdini's feats, including his water-can escape, were authentically and grippingly duplicated by Mark Mazzarella, a 19-year-old college sophomore. But the cost of going for such theatrical pizazz was a loss of psychological depth. Houdini offered almost no plot, almost no human interplay. Throughout the evening, a large portrait of the magician stared out at the performers from the ear of the stage, as if challenging them to account for his mysterious driven nature. The tricks, the career, the public appropriation...