Word: libretto
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...murder, intrigue and frustrated love, Ines de Castro builds to a climax in which the demented hero Dom Pedro places the cadaver of his true love Ines on the throne and declares her queen. Stage Director Tito Capobianco has conceived a stunning production that conveys most of the libretto's horror. What is called for musically is the power and sweep of a Verdi, or the psychological insight of a Moussorgsky. Pasatieri Instead has written in a bland, old-fashioned style that might be suitable for an O. Henry short story- say, The Gift of the Magi. Easy...
...evening is a disappointment. Bilby's Doll confirms the composer's ambitious reach, but not, alas, his grasp of the subject. The story is drawn by Floyd himself from A Mirror for Witches, a historical novel by Esther Forbes. The libretto is as cluttered with conflicts as an O'Neill play, but it does not have half the dramatic impact. This comes as something of a surprise. Floyd's creed is that opera can succeed today only if the composer pays as careful attention to plot as if he were writing a play: the audience must...
Like most operas, The Magic Flute has its cultists, opera purists have harrumphed at Bergman's "popularization" of the original libretto. But he's done the rest of us a service--to the uninitiated The Magic Flute's message can be hard to fathom, seeming alternately simpleminded and ponderously abstract. The opera is an allegorical celebration of the ideals of the Masonic brotherhood, a secret, illegal society to which Mozart belonged, and the elaborate rituals that take up over half the opera are closely modeled on the initiation rites of the Order. Eighteenth century audiences would have instantly recognized...
...sardonic snap of the libretto's gallows humor is virtually untranslatable except through the music. Ullmann's eclectic style produces a constant interplay between the melancholic and the light comic in Germany's rich musical tradition. Death, in the shabby uniform of a Central European functionary, could be a sadly tired Wotan. The Emperor's edicts are sung in the piercing soprano of the German cabaret...
...twelve and was so enthralled that he wanted to mount a production in his marionette theater (an idea that was finally thwarted because he could not afford the 78 r.p.m. records). The Magic Flute contains some of Mozart's most glorious music but has a truly unmanageable libretto. Staunch knights, knot-headed serfs, mythological animals and cunning spirits amble around, stumbling over plot threads about thwarted romance and Freemasonry. One of Bergman's accomplishments is to take all this rich confusion, condense it by about 40 minutes and turn it into a pageant that is exuberant without ever...