Word: opera
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...make good use of your small (only a dollar) donation Duck Soup. Hail, hail, Freedonia, land of the brave and free. Forget what anyone else says; this is quite simply the best film the Marx brothers ever made. Where their other films confined their revolutionary energies to Florida, the opera house, the racetrack, and so forth, Duck Soup gives the Marxist troika a world--or at least a nation--to win. Groucho is Rufus T. Firefly, the President of Fredonia; his slogan, an eerie anticipation of Proposition 13, is "Whatever it is, I'm against it." Chico and Harpo...
DIED. Keith Moon, 32, frenzied drummer for rock's veteran group, The Who; of a drug overdose; in London. Moon joined the band 14 years ago and took part in its greatest artistic success, the rock opera Tommy (1969). A manic performer, he was equally spirited offstage; he estimated having paid $400,000 in hotel and restaurant damages during his touring days. The day after he announced his engagement, at a party given by ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, he was found dead in his apartment by his fianc...
...cynicism, Deb joins in lament and tooth-grinding agony after her own love affair with Danny. Like Debbie, Danny merges character and cro-magnon consciousness with Bernie (who thinks all women should be wrung like lemons and then "dropped like a fucking hot potato"). But enough of this soap opera...
Illuminating this lurid world is equally unsettling music. Oliver, who studied electronic music at Oxford, composed his Duchess for an undergraduate production in 1971 and revised it last year. The opera opens with a blaring cacophony of brasses and winds. Voice and orchestra lines seem to begin and end with little regard for each other. Only once, in the final act, does Oliver use a straightforward melodic passage. A chorus of madmen, a ghoulish group in feathers and rags, sings an elegant baroque masque to the imprisoned Duchess (Soprano Pamela Myers). The contrast between stately chords and hideous faces...
Oliver's racing dissonances are as fitting to the bloody drama as Debussy's dreamy impressionism is to Pelléas et Mélisande. But as opera, the music is flawed: the vocal lines are so dense and undramatic that the voices of the mostly young cast get lost. The production is often riveting. In one of the most bizarre scenes, Ferdinand, superbly sung and acted by British Tenor David Hillman, passionately kisses his strangled sister, then rips the red satin lining from her coffin and rushes from the stage...