Word: librettist
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When Composer-Lyricist Stephen Sondheim and Director-Librettist James Lapine completed their Pulitzer-prizewinning musical Sunday in the Park with George in 1984, they began exploring two new ideas: to create from scratch a classic myth or fairy tale for the stage and to bring together Lucy, Ralph Kramden and other memorable sitcom characters in a single overlapping story for a TV special. Eventually the two plans sort of fused. Instead of the sitcom figures, the authors decided to jumble larkingly together the characters and archetypes popularized by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. The strikingly original yet completely...
...result of Mackintosh's invitation to Sondheim and Librettist James Goldman to "have a wee think" about revamping the show, the pair has come up with four new songs and a completely new book. According to a program note by the creators, "scarcely a line of dialogue remains from the original." The central story of two couples, old friends, who married the wrong partners used to end in nervous breakdowns for some of them; it now closes with self- understanding and at least hints of reconciliation. What felt in 1971 like a put-down of old-fashioned musicals for their...
...composer who employs himself as a librettist has a fool for a collaborator. Goya's scan-deep profundity is revealed in such apercus as "I have to paint to live. But I only live to paint." Never once, though, does Goya show its hero in the throes of creation. There is little sense of the penetrating psychological insight of his official portraits, and important events like his rise to court painter are only alluded to, or take place offstage. The horrors of the Napoleonic invasion, reflected in Goya masterpieces like the stark, brutal The Third of May, 1808, are suggested...
Even if these worthy but obvious sentiments had been set with the wit of a Brecht or the irony of a Weill, the piece would still be weak. But Librettist Tage Danielsson is no Brecht, and Werle shares with Weill only three letters of their surnames. In an opera as dependent as this on sure- handed pastiche, Werle's parodies of American lounge acts and soulful Russian folk songs consistently fall flat. Surely, the company that premiered Conrad Susa's magical chamber opera Transformations in 1973 and has championed resident Composer Dominick Argento could have chosen a better piece...
This poses a problem that MacDermot and his librettist, WilliamDumaresq, never quite overcome. Indomitability is all very well, but a concept cannot sing...