Word: sopranos
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...kind of American verismo," Bolcom says of View, using the Italian term for such popular slice-of-life operas as Puccini's La Boheme and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Sure enough, the tale of Eddie Carbone (baritone Kim Josephson), a middle-aged longshoreman who lusts after his young niece Catherine (soprano Juliana Rambaldi), has verismo stamped all over it, right down to the climactic knife fight. In this new version, adapted by Miller and co-librettist Arnold Weinstein, View has acquired a Greek chorus that comments on the unfolding disaster, though the overall effect remains faithful to the original play. Think...
...turn A View from the Bridge into an opera. Bolcom, whose eclectic tastes run from ragtime to Sondheim, is just the man to set it to music. "I've written some flat-out tunes," he says happily, "and there's even a doo-wop quartet." The cast includes soprano Catherine Malfitano, one of the most powerful actresses in American opera. "She plays a woman who makes bad calls," says Bolcom. "That's not typecasting by any means, and it'll be interesting to see what she does with it." WHEN Opens...
...Opera Theater. This makes it possible for productions to be opened and polished in Cooperstown, then moved to New York City, where they can be seen by bigger audiences (and telecast over PBS). The two companies also share an ensemble of theatrically savvy young American singers, foremost among them soprano Lauren Flanigan, whose Olivier-like immersion in her roles has won her a well-deserved reputation as the thinking person's diva. Flanigan sings two sharply contrasting parts in Central Park--a frustrated divorce in The Festival of Regrets (book by Wasserstein, music by Deborah Drattell) and a desperate...
...York City who works with underprivileged children, selected by lottery, at public schools. Labi used to study violin, but says her "fingers could never quite master the vibrato." She became a journalistic prodigy instead, mastering subjects ranging from grief counseling to the Tae-Bo phenomenon. But Labi, who sang soprano in choir as an undergraduate at Harvard, has not given up on music. "The kids at the school showed such heart, it made me want to pick up the violin again," she says. "Maybe I'll work on that vibrato...
...singing, it's good enough, though no better than that. She sounds like a reasonably talented boy soprano who accidentally swallowed half a tab of human growth hormone. Alas, even the most mature-sounding teenage voices are too physically fragile to stand up to ruthless exploitation, and Church's is already afflicted with a wobbly vibrato that has TOO MUCH, TOO SOON stamped all over it. If she continues to pump it out night after night, the only place she'll be singing Cio-Cio-San is in the shower...