Word: thea
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Norfolk launches Thea Musgrave's newest opera
Last week, in a giant step, the V.O.A. abandoned the standard repertory and embraced 20th century music by presenting the American premiere of Mary, Queen of Scots, a grand opera by Scottish Composer Thea Musgrave, 49. The choice was audacious. Mary calls for 13 principals and a 32-member chorus, a taxing assignment for V.O.A.'s limited resources and tiny (28 ft. deep) stage. V.O.A. gambled and won-to prolonged applause...
...Hedda always occupies the play's center, Ibsen's profound insight and tight structure integrate the other characters as complex personalities in their own right. There is Hedda's bumbling, self-important husband George Tesman; his well-meaning spinster aunt; the gifted and unbalanced Eilert Lovborg; the parasitically devoted Thea Elvsted Hedda's rival as Lovborg's muse; and the suave dissolute Judge Brack, whose cynical attempt to blackmail Hedda precipitates her defiant suicide...
...scorn, matching Hedda's intelligence and selfishness in an intricate struggle for power. But Sam Merrick's wooden caricature blunts Aquino's subtlety. By the end of the play, his languid arrogance and unvarying inflection--each line curved with a sneer--have become thoroughly tiresome. While Ibsen undoubtedly intended Thea Elvsted to be a bland contrast to Hedda, Jennifer Mohr's dull, anxious characterization offers no emotional range or sense of internal processes whatever...
...Voice of Ariadne burnishes Thea Musgrave's reputation for excellence and innovation. She is today's leading woman composer, but is just as happy to keep sex out of it: "The battle's been won. hasn't it?" she demands in a gentle Scotch burr. "Look, I started out to be a doctor, and could have done it well. But I've come to feel that these days it's more important to re-establish that side of humanity which is imaginative, and lyrical, and all those other things. The fight...