Word: operas
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...original, Leonidas (Phantom of the Opera's Gerald Butler) goes to the swinish holy men, the Ephors, for permission to wage a defense against the million-man army of the Persian monarch Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro, from Lost). The oracle waffles, but Leonidas, saying he's just going out for a stroll with his private guards, leaves his wife Gorgo (The Brothers Grimm's Lena Headey) and leads his loyal band to their desperate and storied destiny. He might have triumphed, if the homunculus Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan, from British TV) had not betrayed the Greeks and told Xerxes their strategy...
...Rosenkavalier,” the brainchild of Straus’ second collaboration with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Straus’ most popular opera, is rarely performed due to its demanding size and musical difficulty. Drawing upon over 150 performers frolkm across the Boston area as well as Harvard students to form a rotating cast whose members often alternate performance dates, “Der Rosenkavalier” has been an ambitious endeavor from the start...
...soap opera among operas, the artistic aspirations of the Lowell House Opera are also high, and “Der Rosenkavalier” fills the stage with four hours of romance, intrigue, and deception. The performance—sung in German, with projected English subtitles—opens on the affair of the Marschallin, Princess Marie Therese von Werdenberg (Annette Betanski), with her young lover, Octavian (Emily Marvosh...
...that could easily be solved by either giving the performers microphones or having a smaller orchestra—detracts from the overall enjoyment of the show. In addition to reading subtitles, watching the stage, listening to the music, and trying to follow the comedic complexities of the opera, having to labor to hear melodies feels like excessive effort...
...stage director, Eaton makes excellent use of space and blocking throughout the opera, but his directing could also do much more to unify the ensemble—and cast—as a whole. Much of the size of “Der Rosenkavalier” lies in the ensemble; while they should add to each scene, they are more often clutter than anything else. They do not aid in directing attention to a certain character or dialogue, but rather serve as a source of confusion. It often seems as though even the members of the ensemble themselves are uncertain...