Welcome home, TC. Did you bring me something neat from Cairo? Some sexy veils? A little pyramid? Omar Shariff?
I thought of you last night at the opera. I wish you had been there for I would have loved your reaction to this production of FLedermaus. It was rather---different. They always allow for a great deal of latitude in their Christmas productions but I thought this was over the top.
Directed by Charles Nelson Reilly, it had some of my favorites in it-- Suzanna Guzman was terrific as the Prince, the trousers role, and I've had a huge crush on Rodney Gilfry since he did Billy Budd. (He plays Gabriel)
dallasopera.org
But the third act opened with Reilly as Frosch, (sp?) the jailer, and he did a half hour stand-up comic monologue on opera.
Some of it was very funny-- he had brought in some of the major operatic characters in costume,arrested for being too violent in opera- (Hansel und Gretel who pushed old ladies into ovens to get her SS Check, Pinkerton charged with bigamy, back child support) but it seemed somehow inappropriate to me. ("You can contact Turandot at her web site-- Turan.com")
I don't think I'm a purist, but this felt awfully self-serving somehow. And it made the opera have a running time of 3 1/2 hours. THe boys enjoyed it, but they didn't like him. Stuff you would have loved (at least I did) was the constant singing of lines from other operas (Rosalinde mourning Gabriel's having to go to jail, sobbing, Vissi d'arte.)
BUt it was my first Fledermaus--- so maybe this kind of license is acceptable in an operetta??
Ammo, who endured DIe Walkure a couple of weeks ago, said,
"Mom, isn't there like some happy medium here?" |
