Word: librettos
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...term became fashionable. He hired such experienced directors as Frank Corsaro and Tito Capobianco, and gave then free dramatic rein. In those hands even old familiars like Gounod's Faust became provocative productions. In 1968, for instance, Corsaro transformed the simple good-conquers-evil parable of that libretto into a chilling Gothic horror tale of clashing wills between God and the devil. A year later, Capobianco launched Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele a a space-age sonet lumière production in which the devil seemed about to vanquish the music of the spheres until he was whistled down...
...when he could have the benefit of mass communications to teach his followers? Armed with a paperback edition of Fulton J. Sheen's Life of Christ, which compares and calibrates the Gospel stories, Lloyd Webber and Rice burrowed and borrowed from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to create a libretto. The first three Gospels, says Rice, seem more dependable, since John "was much hotter on visions and supernatural things." They concentrated on Christ's reputation as a humanitarian thinker, the charismatic leader of a dissident movement and a victim who might variously suggest latter-day martyrs like Martin Luther King...
...recalls. As a small child, he accompanied his father on theater excursions to Chicago. On his first day at school, Tom insisted on inspecting the stage and declared it "lacking." With his father's help, he installed footlights and a wind machine. At twelve he wrote the music and libretto of his first opera ?entitled The Doom of the Earth. Soon after, he was laid up for a year with incipient TB, and he used the time to "structure my life." In high school he ran his own drama and choral groups, and at De Paul University he wrote...
...tragedy, it tells how a young Roman noblewoman (Soprano Arlene Saunders) is seduced by her choleric, morally corrupt father. Count Francesco Cenci (Bass-Baritone Justino Díaz), then revenges herself by arranging his murder. In the end, she is found out, tortured on the rack, beheaded. Not a libretto to every composer's taste, naturally, but just the thing for the savage, harshly dissonant musical style already familiar , from Ginastera's equally grim Don Rodrigo and Bomarzo...
Auden's touch in the libretto is the saving grace of the plot, which is actually not as ludicrous as it sounds, The book is extremely well done, enough to carry even the weak moments in the music...