Word: opera
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...book last year, To Be a Man: Letters to My Grandson. But even in that sentimental volume, Heston can't resist a few pot shots: "Somewhere in the busy pipeline of public funding is sure to be a demand from a disabled lesbian on welfare that the Metropolitan Opera stage her rap version of Carmen as translated into Ebonics." Got that, Jack...
...first signs were not auspicious. Just before Clinton left the U.S., Beijing revoked the visas of three Radio Free Asia journalists who had planned to accompany his entourage. The Chinese also pulled the plug on a highly publicized (and relatively racy) Shanghai opera that was due to play New York City next week. More bad headlines came after Clinton arrived in the ancient capital of Xian, when a Hong Kong-based human-rights group reported that some local dissidents had been detained to ensure a smooth visit for Clinton. (National Security Adviser Sandy Berger complained that China was acting...
...major sources of entertainment and reigned for 30 years. Without radio, there would have been no TV. Radio first brought to prominence Jack Benny, Amos and Andy, Ozzie and Harriet, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, Lucille Ball and Edward R. Murrow--not to mention the creation of the soap opera, newscast, quiz show, talk show, domestic comedy and live sportscast. Not bad for one little medium. GERALD NACHMAN San Francisco...
Though the company billed its new Carmen as the next best thing to a rock concert, the results were closer in style to a rip-roaring Broadway show, an impression strengthened by the use of Bizet's original opera-comique version, in which the dialogue is spoken rather than sung, and a refreshingly colloquial English translation by Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof). Updated it was, but dumbed down it wasn't. Assaf made her dramatic points with crisp simplicity and no pandering whatsoever. No less direct was the Carmen of mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman, a fire-eating singing actress...
Houston has funding for four more years of outdoor productions, though no operas have been set yet. Next January the stage will be moved indoors for a production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, starring Frederica von Stade. Several other opera houses have expressed interest in this new approach, and no doubt similar stages will soon be under construction. But the best thing about Houston's contemporary Carmen is not so much the modular stage, impressive though it is, as what Assaf has done with it. How do you get twentysomethings to fall for opera? The answer...