Word: sopranos
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...play is an essay on the artistocracy of the insane: Whom the gods wish to embrace, they first drive mad. Agnes is a strange young woman, singing in an Angelus-clear soprano and obey voices no one can hear. It remains for Martha and Miriam to translate these sounds into the lumbering prose of reason. Pielmeier orchestrates the examination deftly and leavens the weightier speculations with airy talk-show humor. But as Agnes soars into catharsis and Martha tries desparately to anchor her in the explicable, Pielmeier allows himself to take leave of dramatic sense. He offers too many motivations...
...best reason for giving Haydn's operas a hearing: their scores. To the lovesick knight Orlando (Tenor John Gilmore), crazed by a passion for Angelica, the Queen of Cathay, Haydn gave a stirring entrance that suggests the depths of the mad paladin's emotion. On Angelica (Soprano Randi Marrazzo), he lavished arias in each act that shimmer with dazzling coloratura and touching pathos. And for the finale, he composed a high-spirited, catchy septet that reconciles the conflicting emotions with warmth...
...Vividly directed by Otto Schenk and imaginatively designed by Günther Schneider-Siemssen, Hoffmann is the Met's most successful, satisfying effort in months. It is all the more welcome because the season, still somewhat colored by 1980's labor disputes, began in a lackluster fashion. Soprano Renata Scotto was booed in her opening-night performance of Norma, and a Ring semicycle (Das Rheingold and Siegfried) fizzled out in something less than Wagnerian glory. It was in December, with Franco Zeffirelli's lavish cast-of-thousands production of La Bohème, that the company began...
...outdone, however, are the two leads played by Harvard students. Margery Hellmold '83, who will star in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers next month, brings her beautiful, seemingly effortless soprano to the title role. She plays one half of a pair of street singers in Peru and is lured away from her partner Piquillo, by the Viceroy, played by Dominic A.A. Randolph '84. Through a series of Contrivances, she is married to Piquillo without Piquillo's knowledge. Piquillo later discovers the secret but then comes to believe that La Perichole is the Viceroy's mistress; her task is to convince...
Richard Slade's Piquillo combines with La Perichole to make a purposely awkward but rather endearing pair. They are quite comical as they fail to impress the local townfolk with their singing and dancing. Slade's soft tenor blends nicely with Hellmold's soprano, although the occasionally overpowers him. Hellmold's more natural stage presence also steels situation from Slade; she moves slowly but gracefully, suiting her steps and value to each song. After becoming "tipsy," for instance, she hiccups and belches her way through a number, teetering back and forth on the stage. And Hellmold's voice, even...