Monday, September 26, 2011

West Edge Opera Announces a Repertoire Change

Out: Ezra Laderman's Marilyn, which I was deeply looking forward to, owing to budgetary constraints and difficulties in casting the title character. Ezra Laderman lived in Teaneck when I was growing up, and one of his kid was a buddy of mine back in the day, so I was looking forward to this.

In: A tasty double bill called Sin City, consisting of Weil's Mahagonny Singspiel and Daron Hagen's Vera of Los Angeles. I don't know a thing about the latter, but it's a promising program!

Kudos to West Edge Opera for honesty, for getting the word out early, and for imaginative repertory. I hope y'all can put on the Laderman some day. And I'm looking forward to Ariadne.

5 comments:

Joshua Kosman said...

You were looking forward to Marilyn because you've never heard it. I flew to New York whenever it was for the premiere (mostly because City Opera paired it with Hugo Weisgall's Esther, which SFO had commissioned [under McEwen} and then scrapped [Mansouri]). And believe me, this was the right call on the merits.

I'm assuming that "budgetary constraints and difficulties in casting" is a euphemism for "Oh shit, we just looked at the score."

Lisa Hirsch said...

Oh, hahahaha! I yield to your superior, that is to say actual, knowledge of the piece.

What did you think of Esther? I have an unopened recording of it at home.

Joshua Kosman said...

Oh, you know I wasn't trying to pull rank :) It's just, I couldn't believe it when West Edge announced this piece, because if I've ever heard the premiere of a piece I was pretty certain was a once-and-done, Marilyn was it.

Esther isn't much better IMO -- well, no, I take that back. It's a respectable example of a certain kind of dull, upright sort of thing that I personally don't have much use for. And I think I probably stand with a majority of audiences on that point. But for people who appreciate midcentury American modernism, it's probably catnip.

Lisa Hirsch said...

You were not pulling rank.

Pulling rank is "I'm the reviewer for [some print publication here] and you're not, so I know better," which is not the same as "I've heard the piece and I agree with their decision to perform something else."

Webmaster said...

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