Word: libretti
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...action is on such a grand scale as to be visually intelligible from only the briefest of briefings of its plot; though the three audiences, open rehearsal and two formal performances, were aided by libretti, Professor W.W. Goodwin's translation into English prose, the Greek text on opposite page. Many of the audience were repeaters, saw all three representations, and were finally able to follow the speeches almost line by line. Your reviewer had an unfair advantage--the great good luck to have studied the text in Sidgwick's edition under the instruction of Professor Herbert Weir Smyth...
...value of such a music-drama is therefore dependent to a very large extent on the text used. And while Purcell or Mozart could always easily transcend or merely ignore their libretti, Vaughan Williams' Riders can be, ultimately, little better than the J.M. Synge play from which it was adapted. And that play, unfortunately, is not a very good...
Gallic gangster movies are like opera libretti; there are certain characteristics common to each succeeding story. These essential ingredients are, in random order: the daring under-world leader, known to one and all as a "real friend," his faithful but careless partner who consorts with loose-tongued women, a rival gang that never plays fair, an array of luscious showgirls, half-naked or otherwise, a huge bundle of stolen money that both sides are after, and various lesser mobsters that are always either being tortured or getting killed. This formula is slightly varied for each production, but the denouement...
...Offenbach problem is that though the music is at least as intoxicating now as it could have been ninety or a hundred years ago, most of the libretti (including the one for La Belle Helene by Meilhac and Halevy) appear to be not for all time but of an age. The most obvious solution to the problem would be a recording or concert performance in the original--and, to most of us, impenetrable--French. But the music is so gracefully opposite to its subject matter that something of precious value is lost when there is no palpable context...