Word: libretto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...17th and 18th centuries, is a relatively young genre. Opera is as "modern," as epic is "ancient." So it comes as no surprise that the decision to transform Ethan Frome from literary text into opera would be made by an innovating Harvard alumni. Written by Douglas Allanbrook '48, the libretto is also the work of fellow Harvard graduate (John Hunt '48) while the production itself is headed musically by Douglas Allenbrook's son, John Allanbrook...
...power of love as represented by choir boy Amor, but it never really loses the saucy-sin feel that Quilici and D'Amelia develop in the first act. Furthermore, Drusilla and Otto's relationship blooms very suddenly and seems rather flat, although this has more to do with the libretto than with acting...
While Poppea's libretto certainly sounds better than it reads as a plot, this production's singing was so fluent that I could follow the plot almost continuously. Also, I never really noticed that the actors were singing. The color and expression of various voices were at the forefront of the production, but none of the singing seemed staged. The four leads were particularly strong. Quilichi and D'Amelio occasionally swung a flat, everyday-speech exclamation into their performances, and Buff, in her transsexual role as Otto, single-handedly built the tension of the play, bellowing out against Poppea...
...obscure piece that opened last Friday's concert was all those things. The all-Mendelssohn performance began with the overture to a comic opera, The Uncle From Boston. The overture is rarely heard, and this performance marked its Boston debut. The libretto of The Uncle From Boston has been lost, but it is always refreshing to discover and hear a composer's lesser known works, much like finding more sonnets by Shakespeare or short stories by Hemingway. The beginning of the Capriccio Brillant, Op. 22, was more lovely than brilliant. Short and sweet, it was one of Mendelssohn's three...
...letters Lewinsky sent to Clinton, and on and on to 2,800 pages. Tucked inside were Monica's most graphic accounts of her sexual episodes with the President and the effect they had on her; blessed with what seems like a phonographic memory, she provided Starr with a voluptuous libretto of their phone-sex encounters...