- Anne Midgette is quite positive, though there's this: "Heggie’s music can be a little facile, a little derivative: references in this piece range from Glass to Puccini to Britten. It also has a slightly anodyne quality, lulling the listener with through-composed pleasantness, in spite of Patrick Summers’s spirited, committed conducting."
- Joshua Kosman likes it, but calls out what sounds like howling bad judgment at one point in the opera. He mentions, also, a "long, torpid silence" when the whale is approaching. Well, now, Heggie also bailed on composing any music to accompany the death of the condemned prisoner in Dead Man Walking.
Lisa Hirsch's Classical Music Blog.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.
Berce mollement sur ton sein sublime
Ô puissante mer, l’enfant de Dindyme!
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Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Or Maybe Not
More on Moby-Dick; everybody is more positive than Brian:
"everybody is more positive than Brian"
ReplyDeleteI think that is officially the new Out West Arts tag line, don't you?
Hahahaha, yeah, maybe! But you love the Freyer Ring (quite rightly!) and plenty of people were very negative about it!
ReplyDeleteInstead, Heggie's score suddenly lapses into a long, torpid stillness that is presumably meant to inspire nervous apprehension. Then Moby-Dick's deadly presence is announced by a saucy and entirely un-menacing Latin rhythm, as though he were some kind of marine-mammal Carmen Miranda
ReplyDeleteHahaha, but a Latin rhythm at that point? Huh? That point in Dead Opera Walking where he has the music just stop was baffling when I heard it at the premiere; it was the one point in the opera that *needed* music and...nothing.
I also noted this in Mr. Kosman's review: $43-$450. $450?!?!
Jeez. That's an amazing ticket price. Does this hall hold 300 people or what??
ReplyDeleteIt is rather intimate in a moder kitchen sort of way. Of course it is Dallas and the premiere was far from a full house. Dallas is enamored of prestige and big ticket prices probably make somebody there feel god about themselves. The house has all the mod cons including video equip to die for. Their LED chandelier that retracts into tiny individual holes in the ceiling rocks though.
ReplyDeleteOooo, that sounds cool!
ReplyDelete