Word: orchestra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Well, for all who missed the show for whatever reasons, it's your loss. You missed one of the most charming and engaging musical productions to appear on a Harvard-Radcliffe stage this season. The entire cast gave strong performances, the orchestra played well without overwhelming the singers, and the simple set combined with a variety of lighting for a fantastic effect...
Just last week WYNTON MARSALIS, musician, composer and keeper of the flame of jazz tradition, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Blood on the Fields, a three-hour, 22-movement oratorio for orchestra, ensemble and vocalists. It was the first jazz-based composition to win the Pulitzer since music was added as a category in 1943. The prize clinched his position as the man doing the most to bring jazz, a great art form of the 20th century, into the 21st...
...spoken dialogue, in its attempts at wittiness, wanted the finesse that characterizes even the most canned Broadway concoctions. The music was for the most part deftly scored and generally quite suitable for the purposes of musical comedy. Unfortunately, it ended up sounding dismayingly cacophonous in the hands of the orchestra, which was consistently squeaky, poorly unified and out of tune. Most of the cast members were obviously not experienced singers and did not have much more success blending during the ensemble pieces than the orchestra...
...orchestra had extended a similar musical promise with its sparkling performance of the overture. The music-making was superb from the outset: members of the chorus blended well with each other and sang fortissimo without overwhelming Christina Harrop's slight Giannetta. Gregory Turay turned Nemorino's first tenor solo into a great vocal cadenza. Soprano Lisa Saffer's Adina soon demonstrated that her coloratura could amply meet the demands of the bel canto style...
Though the finale of Act I, where a duet becomes a trio and then a quartet, is the opera's grandest moment, there are more musical gems in Act II. This is true partly because the orchestra's role becomes more important: it offers sympathy for the lovelorn Nemorino. Adina's emotional volatility is manifest in ever-higher notes and ever-wider leaps. Turay and Saffer, by far the most talented singers in the production, were brilliant throughout. His rendition of "Una furtiva lagrima" got more applause than any other aria; her passionate confidence in the panacea...