View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (April 1999, week 4) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Ê Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 23:12:10 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Le Cinesi, Bloomsbury Theatre, 28Apr99 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Lisinga Janet Murphy Tangia Gabriella Morton Sivene Jessica Walker Silango Richard Theiss Director Kate Huchinson Music director Jan Waterfield Music Theatre Kernow, Modern Baroque Opera Gluck's wrote Le Cinesi, a short "comic" opera with a libretto by Metastasio, 1754, before his Reform days. The Chinese women of the title are Lisinga, a princess, and her two companions in a harem. The fourth character is the princess' brother, who has travelled in Europe and boldly sneaks in to see Sivene, one of the companions. They are all bored rigid, so they decide to performs scenes from operas, in different styles: tragic, pastoral and satirical. They find that all the styles have their drawbacks, so they have a dance instead. This production had a witty set, with giant dasies, fly agaric mushrooms for seats and an exotic tea-set. The costumes were amusingly excessive, but in period: Lisinga, who performs the tragic aria, had a red dress with black spots like a ladybird, and red hair in a severe bun; Sivene, pastoral, wore light blue covered in daisies, and had blond curls; satirical Tangia wore melancholy brown and a complex high brown hairstyle. Silango wore green and red, with a sequined waistcoat and an abysmal wig with red bows in. (Probably the funniest moment of the performance was when he first appeared powdered and painted, and the women all said "Eek, a man.") The libretto was translated reasonably accurately, as far as I could tell, using the language of decorum, sentiment and innocence. The arias were sung in Italian, with "surtitles" provided in amusing ways, for example, on the petals of one of the giant daisies as Silango does "she loves me, she loves me not". The "translations" of the arias were wittier than the English libretto, with Tangia's satire on a pompous young man newly returned from abroad translated as simply "I'm gorgeous". Unfortunately, the clever and well thought-through performance couldn't do much for what is essentially a decorative excercise. The arias themselves aren't parodies, just pretty good Italian arias, and the singers performed them effectively as standalone pieces. And the frame is interesting mainly for the joke about exotic harem women arguing in contemporary European aesthetic terms, which is lost on both sides in a modern context. Kate Huchinson sensibly didn't try to replace the meaning with schtick, but what was left was simply genteel academic argument. The small orchestra, however, kept everything lively. I'd take Gluck's early music over quite a lot of Italian opera from the period, so the whole experience certainly wasn't painful.But the appeal of this work is very limited indeed. The smallish audience consisted of reviewers, friends and relatives of the performers, and me. Regards, Helen H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Powered by LISTSERV(R)] Back to the [CataList - online list search] LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.