Word: sopranos
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...piece of wood that had fallen off a chair," he recalls. "I didn't really know how to carve, but as a scriptwriter I had been influenced by the French theater of the absurd, especially Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Ionesco's The Bald Soprano. So I decided to try to carve a kind of theater of the absurd in wood." Though many foreigners and Chinese alike have been impressed by the energy and originality of his work, he is not recognized as an official artist by the state, and thus cannot make a living...
...bravoes, she dipped her final curtsy with all the grace and enfolding gaiety that have made her the country's favorite diva. It was her last hurrah as an opera singer. For more than a quarter of a century audiences have been captivated by her supple, crystalline soprano voice, the musicality of her every acting gesture and her warm, spontaneous personality, which soared-but never stomped-across the footlights. There was no phony mystique, no overlay of artistic "temperament" in a world notorious for imperious egos. Sills onstage was indistinguishable from Sills in life: a keenly intelligent, shrewd, ebullient...
...least rewarding is the first of the three, Silverman's Madame Adare. Using a libretto by Richard Foreman, his longtime collaborator, the composer has written a fantasy, or more precisely a phantasmagoria, about psychoanalysis and creativity. As the piece begins, Miss Adare, played by Soprano Carol Gutknecht, is seeing her psychiatrist Dr. Hoffman (Bass-Baritone Richard Cross). Her problem: she cannot make up her mind whether she wants to be an opera star or a movie star, and while she dallies, she cannot even make enough money to pay for her sessions. When Hoffman refuses to treat her again...
...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 to shave...
...momentum flags some what in the middle, but then at the end the composer recaptures his inspiration with a beautiful fugue, all six singers joining in joyous celebration. The cast is admirable. Beverly Evans as the maid is a good bit more than admirable, combining a fine mezzo-soprano with a deft feel for low comedy...