Word: verismo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...Bruce Willis) against a wily, chatty nut case with a fondness for TNT, the viewer simply suspends belief and coolly appraises the things that go boom. Say, wasn't that a nicely staged Wall Street explosion? My, that runaway subway train crashed onto the platform with a certain vigorous verismo. Oh, look-more actors playing dead people! So little wit is expended on the dialogue and so much on the imagination of disaster that you may as well sit back and enjoy the jolting ride...
Many consider "La Boheme" to be Puccini's best score, as well as the embodiment of verismo, dramatic ideals in which real people lead real lives that just happen to be tragic. The simplicity of this type of tragedy, as well as the idealistic view of youth and love, which appealed to late nineteenth-century audiences still appeals to modern ones. Aside from this opera, and a handful of others, only in recent years has the Lowell House Opera featured Italian works. keeping with this spirit of testing Mediter-ranean waters, this year's "La Boheme" courageously unleashes the amore...
This act is weaker than the first. Husovsky and Dawson perform their parts well if unremarkably, and Bubriski remains strong. The problem mostly lies in the transition from "opera buffa" to "verismo tragedy," as McNally has labelled it. That contrast contains the play's power, but it also puts a strain on its credibility. It is a difficult trick to plausibly turn a witty, realistic play about aging professionals' romantic entanglements into a violent and grand tragedy, no matter how many references to operatic emotion are strewn throughout. Despite the fine acting, the second act drags a little...