Word: zoroastro
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...much of Orlando's appeal lies in the sheer playfulness with which Sellars has approached it. Where the original staging calls for Zoroastro the magician to conjure up a fountain to hide a furtive lover, Sellar's project supervisor summons up a drinking fountain, from which Angelica casually takes a sip. In the conclusion of the original, when Zoroastro calls for a potion, he receives it from the claws of an eagle descending out of the sky. Sellars's Zoroastro receives his potion in the claws of The Eagle--the Apollo 11 lunar module, that is. (In both cases...
...THERE IS ANY FLAW in Peter Sellars's recasting of Orlando it is his tendency towards cryptic, coyly symbolic staging. Why, for instance, is there so much rolling around? Why does Zoroastro mug and wave at the audience incessantly? And why are all those cardboard boxes littering the stage in the last act? No doubt each of these elements has its place in Sellars's masterplan, but too often, his is an aggressively private vision...
...considered outlandish and daring in the 18th century, Orlando crosses the river Styx...) and occasionally pretentious ("What is man? What is a man?), for the most part, the notes show the puckish sense of fun that characterizes the production at its best. "This will not do," Sellars writes, "and Zoroastro abandons subtlety and launches into his aria, 'Leave Love and Follow Mars: Go Fight!' (The Pentagon, after all, is what is keeping the space program alive.)" Or for Dorinda's final summons to a festival of love, Sellars's version is "Dorinda--the real miracle worker--invites everybody over...
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