Word: puccini
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...death of a promising theatrical talent is always tragic, but Larson's legacy makes his all the more painful. Rent, a rock opera based on Puccini's La Boheme, opened in New York City just three weeks after Larson's death and got an ecstatic reception. Critics hailed it as the breakthrough musical of the '90s. Theatergoers began streaming downtown, to the way-off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop; within a week, the show had sold out its entire run, through the end of March. Hollywood studios and record executives began calling, as did Broadway. By late last week...
...melodic richness, of Hair or Jesus Christ Superstar. But it is the most exuberant and original American musical to come along this decade. Larson has updated La Boheme and set it among the artists, addicts, prostitutes and street people of New York City's East Village. In place of Puccini's Mimi, dying of tuberculosis, is Larson's Mimi (Daphne Rubin-Vega), a drug-addicted dancer in an S&M club who is suffering from AIDS. The Rudolfo she falls for is Roger (Adam Pascal), an HIV-positive rock singer who longs for one great song to leave behind...
...PUCCINI La Boheme (Erato). Conductor Kent Nagano restores the freshness and bloom to Puccini's heart-tugging tale of young love won and lost. Soprano Kiri Te Kanawa as Mimi and tenor Richard Leech as Rodolfo are with him every step...
...approached in the right , Faust is among the most entertaining opera in the repertury. Rooted in the French graud opera tradition, Gounod did not attempt to infuse his opera with social realism, as did both Verdi and Puccini in different ways and with equally lachrymose results. Faust is unapologetically fantastic; it is the familiar story of the scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for youth and the love of Marguerite, a chaste beauty. Gounod's music is as extravagant and emotional as the story demands, but the emotion is produced through charming melodies and dazzling orchestration...
...creative heyday, Gian Carlo Menotti, 83, was noted more for his dark, neo-Puccini operas, such as The Saint of Bleecker Street and The Medium, than for comedy or farce. In later years, however, the aging composer more than made up for it. The setting was the antebellum-in-aspic city of Charleston, South Carolina, where in 1977 Menotti founded an American counterpart to his annual Spoleto Festival in Italy. Two years ago, Menotti resigned in a huff after a petulant, embarrassing two-year power struggle with the festival's board and management. First the board insisted on including...