Word: violas
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...future of English literature is imperiled. For his new play he has a title--Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter--but not a clue. This is a man in search of a muse, which fate, in the form of screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, brightly provides. Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) has it all: beauty, poise, a dowry and a titled suitor. But what she really wants...
...children's symphony, Peter and the Wolf. Its plot, however, was drastically different. The Miraculous Mandarin unravelled in the salacious milieu of a brothel bedroom, where a young prostitute, working in tandem with three ruffians, would lure and rob her customers. The ruffians were depicted with a chromatic viola sequence that sounded as shifty as their characters. The girl attracted her victims with the sound of a solo clarinet that was as seductive as sad. And their story climaxed when they attacked a victim who did not die easily...
...slip of pale magenta light shone out between red velvet curtains. It and the musical prelude could have gone on for three hours, and I would not have missed the opera. Three violins and a phat viola fiddled while Nero was ostensibly still in the dressing room. They made up the feisty, devilish flank of the Early Music Society Orchestra, balanced by a quietly attentive harp and two awfully long lutes (allegedly a "chitarrone" and a "theorbo") on the right, with two harpsichords rammed together in the middle like poorly parked flagships...
After the intermission, Cunningham got her solo moment with Marais' Suite No. 4 in A minor for Viola da Gamba and Basso Continuo, prefacing her performance with a definition of what a viola da gamba is-a string instrument more closely related to the guitar than the violin and its ilk, despite its name and appearance--and a discussion of the "softer side" of baroque music, explaining that baroque music was played at a softer volume than music today is. She then proceeded to play the quietest piece in the program, with a rich and hazy sound which made...
Helen Hunt, garlanded with Oscars and Emmys, plays Viola in Nicholas Hytner's production; but the show's real star is Crowley. He has joined the short list of masters in a fertile era for stage designers. Such wizards of pencil and paint as Tony Walton (Guys and Dolls), Robin Wagner (Crazy for You), John Napier (Cats) and Heidi Ettinger (The Secret Garden) create unique worlds from a playwright's words and a director's hopes. When you leave a show "humming the sets," these are the folks to thank for those sumptuous visual melodies...