Word: librettos
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...Marxist philosophy to Jungian depth psychology into Richard Wagner's operatic cycle Der Ring Des Nibelungen. Not least among the difficulties of untangling its 16 hours of music and text are the contradictions which Wagner, bursting with knowledge in many fields and expert in none, wrote into his own libretto. Yet Wagner always insisted that his "poetry" was the important thing and that his music existed only to serve...
Paradise Lost was not just any new opera; it came as highly touted as a Cecil B. DeMille spectacular. The libretto was written by Playwright Christopher Fry (The Lady's Not for Burning). Chicago Lyric spent well over half a million dollars on the production, a near record. The musical forces were mighty: a Wagnerian orchestra of 96, a chorus of 100. The preparation was elaborate. Choral rehearsals began in April; the orchestra practiced an unprecedented 110 hours...
Many of Evita's failings are a function of Rice's libretto, which never aspires to much more than a comic-book version of history. The author dutifully chronicles Evita's impoverished youth, her Buenos Aires radio career and her rise to power once married to Colonel Juan Perón (Joss Ackland). But Rice's point of view on his heroine is pure show biz; he's so agog he might as well be describing the career of Judy Garland. By the time Evita dies of cancer at age 33, we know...
Gilbert wrote 71 works for the stage, and his libretto for Iolanthe is one of the best he furnished Sullivan. In addition to his usual plot about young lovers kept apart until the end by some silly rule, he filled the stage with fairies, half-fairies and mortals, aimed his barbed burlesque at the House of Lords and, through the character of the Lord Chancellor, at the legal profession (of which Gilbert himself was a member). Although his libretti were largely drawn from ideas in his earlier Bab Ballads, they show a greater infusion of dazzling wit and a range...
...tall tale recounted by an accomplished barroom raconteur. The story derives from a little civic melodrama that really took place in a small Texas town some years ago, and it is engagingly rich in regional nostalgia and spiced with delicate bawdry. Not surprisingly, the co-author of the libretto is a storyteller of no mean skill, Larry L. King, an accomplished journalist who wrote a compact account of the actual facts underlying Whorehouse after they occurred. To tell it as it is in the show, a rural community, Gilbert, has long tolerated, secretly relished, and certainly patronized a venerable bordello...