|
- Opera review for Don Pasqualino - When living in Los Angeles, one has to admire and appreciate all the good amenities that this Great City can offer its inhabitants except when Opera is the soggetto. You would expect from the LA Opera (full Of cash $) a much more professional operation. I know that all the great singers are dead, but there are still few out there who are great enough to take on the task. The LA Opera, except once in a great while, manages to screw up great musical works by using incompetent performers. Who is minding the store here? And who is responsible for all the mess here? Take this latest performance of Don Pasquale di Donizetti, currently on display. It is a classic buffo opera and a masterpiece. But without great singers, it fails miserably. With all the good will displayed by the gang, they have no skills enough to make this opera come alive. It is a minestrone of a cast put together, a little from here and there, and whom barely go through the motions. The fact is that none of these fellows has any clues of what an Italian comic opera is. Take the orchestra, they are one way musicians. They always sound the same, no matter what they play. For these guys, composers are one and the same. The conductor, waving all the time, cannot lead. On the stage we see an oversized Norina, misrepresenting the character. She ought to be called Norinona. See "Norina" means "little, cute, delicate, petite," singing with a lot of conning voice. And this lady on the stage is none of that. Malatesta is too much of an English man in his manners to play an Italian con artist. Then Don Pasquale, with another director, would have done much better. And then the Ernesto who has some voice but just cannot sing. Like someone else said, the light is on but no body is home. Forget it, it's not worth the money. But then, they have already cashed my check. - Publius Ovidius Nasonem - Nos quoque per totum pariter cantabimur orben, 
|
