Opera
Despite its aura of “Gidget Goes Hawaiian,” and the profusion of cute props like rubber duckies and ukeleles, The Hypocrites’ production is smart enough not to mess (too much) with the original score and lyrics.
Indeed, for much of the latter part of his career, Colin Davis was that rarest of breeds, a conductor seemingly without ego, one who made music simply for the love of it.
Composer James MacMillan’s musical strategy in this opera is a stylistic patchwork that seems to mean to convey that each character inhabits a different, mutually misunderstood world.
The tremendous success and rave reviews elicited by this “Orfeo” are due in large part to Boston Early Music Festival’s superb orchestra and cast of eight singers.
When the performance ended and I sat there, silent, reveling with the rest of the audience in the goose bumps that inevitably occur after such an experience, I knew, in my bones, that no movie, however good, could be as good as this.
Under the baton of its Artistic Director, Susan Davenny Wyner, Boston Midsummer Opera has become an annual highlight of Boston’s classical music line-up during the summer.
Orango is one of the tantalizing “what might have been’s” of musical history: a biting social commentary on Soviet society on the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution, written when Shostakovich was at the height of his musical powers and popularity.
Although there is room for improvement, the singers engage each other, as well as the orchestra, with vigor and skill, making for a satisfying “Snegurochka” in Russian.
Aside from the intrinsic entertainment value of these operas, they show Ravel in quite a different light than we are used to from his chamber and other orchestral music.
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