Word: mortals
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There’s nothing inherently modern about John Eccles “Semele.” Written at the beginning of the 18th century, the Baroque opera narrates an Ancient Greek myth about a mortal protagonist whose jealousy for her divine lover costs her her life. But Harvard Early Music Society’s production of “Semele,” which ran this past weekend at the New College Theatre, manages to spruce up the antiquated setting quite a bit, perhaps predictably arranging the action in America’s own period of mythical free love...
...familiar story—men will say anything for sex. In this case, the man (or god) is Jupiter (Joshua Taylor), the king of the gods, and the focus is on his affair with Semele (Kathy D. Gerlach ’07, GSAS ’13), a mortal. At the guileful behest of Jupiter’s divine consort, Juno (Stephanie Kacoyanis), Semele withholds intimacy until Jupiter promises to give her immortality and show her his true form, a move which ultimately kills...
...erthrown, / And what strenth I have’s mine own, / Which is most faint…” Prospero opens his epilogue to “The Tempest” with strange and wistful words: his spells are breaking even as he speaks; his return to the mortal world—and to a death that, though outside the comedy’s arc, feels eerily close—is imminent. But Shakespeare’s final play is too full, quakes with too much wonder and life to fall beneath the long shadow of its author?...
...original story of Semele, which William Congreve adapted for his libretto, is a oft-told tale. The titular mortal protagonist falls in love with Jupiter, king of the gods. They have an affair, but when Jupiter’s jealous wife Juno finds out, she swears revenge. Furious, Juno disguises herself as a mortal and appears to Semele, convincing the poor girl to question Jupiter’s immortality. Semele, unaware that the sight of Jupiter in all his divine glory is fatal, demands to see him as a god. He begs her not to, but she stands firm...
...terms of set design and staging, Crutchfield achieves the feeling of the 1970s through what she terms “fantastically ugly furniture” and “fabulous patterns.” This, however, is only true of the mortal realm; the gods reside in the baroque period. This contrast sets up what Crutchfield calls a “war of patterns”—a battle between the wallpapers and fabrics of the two eras that becomes a major aesthetic element of the performance...