Word: operetta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...mother of the grandee's solo retainer, Luiz, a lowly but virtuous drummer boy who is carrying on a secret but virtuous affair with Casilda. Although not exactly Newsweek cover story material, this complicated nonsense is just right for part of the plot of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Gondoliers now playing at the Agassiz Theater...
...Gondoliers was written to have no shining stars (Gilbert created seventeen leads in a fit of pique that members of D'Oyly Carte Opera Co. had just won large pay raises.) At least on stage, lovers tend to display stalwart sincerity--such unchanging goodness making them a bit dull. operetta has not just one cooing couple but three. It does not have to be so monotonous: only Luiz and Casilda (ably played by Willy Falk and Linda Cameron) need stand out as the sincere romantic leads. Faced with the prospect of renouncing principles for great wealth and wives for gorgeous...
...words. Commissioned to do the job were the two original authors, who had been paid 100,000 rubles ($19,000) when they composed the lyrics in 1943. They were two-time Stalin Prize-winning Poet Sergei Mikhalkov and Harold El-Registan, a pop songwriter best known for his operetta Only Love...
...continued to work on larger shows, however. Curiously, he first met librettist-lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II at the funeral of operetta-composer Victor Herbert in 1924, and they decided to work together. Their collaboration yielded Sunny the following year, and, most notably, Show Boat, which will have its 50th birthday next December...
...biggest disappointment is Reginald (Paul Jackel). In many ways, this role is the juiciest in the operetta; as a fleshly man who merely feigns ethereality, Reginald is the butt of most of Gilbert's jokes, and as the frustrated lover of the simple maiden Patience, he gets to sing many of his funniest lyrics. Jackel is far from incompetent: he has a loud, if not operatic, voice, ample stage presence and a talent for looking discomfited...