Word: libretto
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Benjamin Britten's Carlew River is in many ways the direct antithesis of The Play of Daniel. Contrasted with the spontaneity of Daniel. Britten is extremely self-conscious and studied. The libretto, by William Plomer, based on a Japanese Noh-play, presents the story of a madwoman in search of her lost son, in straightforward, narrative manner. It is the music however, not the libretto, which is responsible for the overly calculated effect of the work as a whole. Through his use of a highly declamatory vocal style, with jagged melodic lines. Britten concentrates attention of presentation of the words...
...PRODUCTION of the two works is admirable in nearly every respect. The Britten, in fact, receives the better performance, which is fortunate, for it needs the best possible performance to come off at all. The singers are unusually attentive to the pronunciation of the English libretto and project their parts with authority. Special mention should be made of David Evitts, who gives an intensity to the role of the Ferryman which surpasses even the excellent work of the other principals: James Paul, Robert Toren, Martin Kessler, and the talented boy soprano William Wright...
...last days of Julian English, a doomed young member of the upper middle class, was a great success. O'Hara's career was truly launched. Novels like Butterfield 8, A Rage to Live and From the Terrace flowed from his restless typewriter. In 1940 he wrote the libretto for Pal Joey, an instant Broadway sensation. Though he got the National Book Award, he never won either the Pulitzer or the Nobel Prize, to his unconcealed annoyance. "It used to hurt, never winning an award, but I've never been the pet of intellectuals," he said. His small...
Jerry Rubin is the hero of the romantic side of many of these split personalities. In a classic libretto-radical transformation he changed from a normal, middle-class liberal student to the leader of the Yippies. As he says in Do It . "I dropped out, dropped out of the White Race and the American nation. I live for the revolution. I'm a yippie. I am an orphan of America...
...revealed the loneliness and longing behind their failure, and given them music that raises their foolishness, vanity and ambition to the level of high tragedy. The music is extraordinarily singable; its effect is that of glowingly lyrical, somewhat familiar music that one has never heard before. Floyd's libretto transforms Steinbeck's tragic tale of a misunderstood simpleton into a threnody for lost men haunted by a dream-in this case, the dream of a farm of their own. Sings George...