Word: tosca
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...crack. It's a far cry from the men's World Cup, where teams often dam the goalmouth with defenders and play dull, negative, just-don't-lose-it soccer. Nor do the ladies act like the prima-donna strikers who turn the slightest foul into a scene from Tosca. And, blessedly, there is little danger of the field being overrun by beer-sotted English hooligans or other so-called fans. Pack a lunch. Bring the kids...
...whose very name suggests the world of opera he was to lambaste. Bernard seemed for all the world to be reprising Kevin Kline's role in A Fish Called Wanda, only with a better grasp of Italian. His onstage, offstage, and backstage impromptu arias paid tribute to "La Traviata," "Tosca," "Turandot," "L'Elisir d'Amore," "Der Rosenkavalier, "Aida," and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." As Rosalinda's lover, his goodbye kiss at the end of act one, when he was being falsely arrested as Eisenstein, was perfect--a kind of Big Red commercial in triple...
Wallace has furnished eclectic, listener-friendly music (allusions to Puccini's Tosca, which Milk attended the night before his death, abound), but he lacks the skill in building ensembles that would have made the end of Act I (the 1969 Stonewall riot) or Act II (a high-camp, dikes-on-trikes gay and lesbian rally) really stirring. His most effective work-in what surely is an operatic first-comes in the tender love duet for Harvey and his boyfriend, Scott Smith, sung while they lie in bed together...
...evening's tour de force is Act II of Tosca, with a lavishly bejeweled Galupe-Borszkh in the title role and the Hungarian baritone ``Fodor Szedan'' as her nemesis, Baron Scarpia. A much-brandished leg joint of a roast pig, a servant with an infectious body twitch and the wicked baron's narcolepsy (which becomes most pronounced during the heroine's stupendous singing of the work's signature aria Vissi d'arte) all figure heavily in a send-up that shatters every cliche in the trunk. Opera buffs can delight in spotting references to great, legitimate performances--from Tosca...
...company's founder and artistic director, Ira Siff (a.k.a. Mme. Galupe- Borszkh), was introduced to opera in high school in New York City. "In the beginning, " he says, "it was Callas, Callas, Callas. I slept three nights in the streets to get into her 1965 Tosca at the Met. It was at once thrilling and hilarious, riveting and funny, especially because the performance was so devoid of humor. My giggles have always been appreciative, but once at the old Met I laughed so loud a dowager clobbered me with her program...