Word: sprechgesang
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...widely split a character to be captured in the broad terms that opera thrives on. Certainly Kirchner, who conducted the première, has come up with nothing musical to match the rich flow of language in Bellow's novel. Instead, he has given Henderson a kind of Sprechgesang (the style of half song, half speech developed by Arnold Schoenberg) in which to rant and rave...
...songs. Like the pupils' Latin lessons, the lyrics will not pass scrutiny ("He smiled. I smiled. We smiled. And the sky smiled too."); the melodies are scarcely more tuneful than a piece of hard chalk drawn across a blackboard. Even with O'Toole's oddly moving Sprechgesang and Clark's perfect phrasing, the numbers never add up to a score...
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