Word: labyrinthes
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Première (ABC, 10-11 p.m.).-Salome Jens and Patrick O'Neal in an adaptation of Lawrence Durrell's novel, The Dark Labyrinth...
...cripple. Though Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), like Maria Golovin (1958), was written primarily for television, the composer carefully followed all the conventions of stage presentation, and both works have been sung in theaters. But Menotti has finally gone all the way. His latest opera, Labyrinth, commissioned like the others by NBC and shown for the first time this week, would be impossible on the stage. It is an out-and-out TV show. Says Menotti: "I thought I might as well do something not tied to the stage. I fought it in one way, because...
Menotti's surrender has been almost too complete. Labyrinth is full of video trickery: there is a gravity-free tea party aboard a rocket, which is halted by the untimely arrival of a meteor; there is an ancient railroad car used as a swimming pool, which, as its water gurgles down a drain to the accompaniment of some electronic movie music, becomes a high-and-dry day coach; and there is a dear old lady who puffs into a cloud of dust as the hero sits down...
Chess & Counterspies. Labyrinth takes place in a murky sort of mahogany Marienbad. Endless corridors and countless doors make the plight of a bridegroom who has lost his key and forgotten his room number on his wedding night seem hopeless indeed. As he and his bride flounder around with understandable impatience, a series of personages appear, each bearing-according to Menotti-a strong allegorical identity. An old man in a wheelchair, who represents The Past, lures the groom into a cobwebby conservatory filled with jungle plants to play a possibly symbolic game of chess. Another door leads him into a drab...
Menotti himself sums it up best: "In Labyrinth, I tried to see how unoperatic an opera could be. I defy all operatic traditions-for example, there's a hero who never sings an aria. In opera the score meditates upon the action-what moves you is the song of what is about to happen, or what happened. Here I have musical comment while things are still going...