Word: pasatieri
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Theater: NEW YORK CITY OPERA-WHERE OPERA COMES ALIVE. And so it did last week, as the City company presented new works by U.S. composers. In an evening titled "An American Trilogy," the company premiered three one-act works by two well-known New Yorkers, Stanley Silverman and Thomas Pasatieri, and a relatively unknown Middle Westerner, Jan Bach. The results were mixed, but overall the night was a success and a must for anyone interested in the state of American opera...
...second one-acter, Pasatieri's before Breakfast, is considerably more successful. Adapted by Director Frank Corsaro from a play by Eugene O'Neill , it is a melodrama similar in style, if not in score, to Poulenc's La Voix Humaine. The setting is a grim Depression flat. Soprano Marilyn Zschau is preparing breakfast for her husband before leaving for her own job as a waitress. While she flops around the room in her slip, she carries on a one-way conversation with the silent and unseen spouse as he gets up and goes into the bathroom...
...intense work, musically as well as dramatically, and both the composer and the singer make the most of it. Pasatieri's music is pleasing rather than profound, but his lyrical gift is real. There are beautiful swelling orchestral lines in before Breakfast, and a touching, plangent piano solo. The influence of Gian Carlo Menotti is obvious, but in this, his 14th opera, Pasatieri speaks nonetheless in a voice all his own. Zschau is generally impressive in a role that was originally written for Beverly Sills. Zschau is a fine actress, as well as singer, and her only fault...