Tuesday, November 14, 2023

San Francisco Opera: Omar

 


Jamez McCorckle and members of the San Francisco Opera Chorus
Omar, Act 2
Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

I filed my Omar review early this morning, after wrestling with it quite a bit: I have two different saved version of it, and when I filed, I was somewhat unhappy with it. My editors tightened it up, but I realized I was more equivocal about it than my review conveyed. So I added a bit to make that clearer. Still, the length of my review kept it less focussed than it could have been.

Previously:
  • Maura Hogan, The Post and Courier
  • Alex Ross, The New Yorker. "...the strength of the conception lies less in its narrative energy than in its ritual atmosphere."
  • Charles McNulty, LA Times theater critic. He notes right off the bat that Omar is "too fluid to be classified in discrete musical or dramatic genres."
  • Edward Ball, NY Review of Books

2 comments:

Kendra Leonard said...

Thanks for providing this review and the links to others. I'll be interested to see if the creative team makes any revisions before the opera goes out to other companies.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Not likely. It's already been done at two or three other companies.