Word: libretto
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...spot. That was in 1911. It was eight years, however, before the shadow became a reality, and then, despite wide critical acclaim, it was 40 years more before it was staged in the U.S. Trouble was, with all those ships and rocky passes, the technical demands of the fanciful libretto were more than most opera houses could handle, especially the matchbox confines of Manhattan's old Met. Now, with a new stage that could accommodate the Punic Wars, the Met has finally mounted its first production of Die Frau ohne Schatten...
...nothing approached Die Frau ohne Schatten. Poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal's libretto requires a primer course in the mythology of six cultures in order to be fathomed, moves murkily between the spirit world, the human world of an impoverished dyer and his sensuous wife (Baritone Walter Berry and Soprano Christa Ludwig), and the go-between world of an emperor and his wife (Tenor James King and Soprano Leonie Rysanek). The empress, alas, is without a shadow-she cannot bear children-and with the aid of a Mephistophelean nurse (Mezzo-Soprano Irene Dalis) she attempts to divest the dyer...
What saved the opera from its pretentious libretto was the soaring music of Strauss, conducted with thunderous brilliance by the late composer's gifted friend, Karl Bohm. By turns raging and receding, mischievous and mystical, the orchestration powerfully underscored the mysterious gulfs between the two worlds and buttressed each role with bold, contrasting shades of vocal writing. Big, robust, infinitely rich, Die Frau was symphonic opera music-and Metropolitan Opera-at its best...
...troublesome score and libretto of Trouble in Tahiti isn't worth the trouble. Leonard Bernstein's pretentiously modern one-act opera is an attack on hollow suburbia. Even in 1952, when it was written, that was a boringly standard iconoclasm. The music is generally wearisome, the libretto, also written by Bernstein, generally clumsy...
Directors David Sloss (the music) and George Hamlin (the staging) have adopted this problem child and provided a musically competent, visually disastrous production unhappily married. The suburban couple (Richard Lee and Miriam Boyer) have adequate voices, but are sorely tried by Bernstein's libretto. Only Danny Kaye could enunciate some of the convoluted lines without dragging the tempos. Those scenes, which like Leete's locker-room soliloquy were more musical comedy than opera, were the most successful...