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| The movie Foul Play | |
| Posted by: dramedy 11:17 am EDT 08/31/20 | |
| In reply to: Gilbert & Sullivan - SUBRCCS 10:57 pm EDT 08/29/20 | |
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| I watched the 42 year old movie (I loved it as a kid) last night. The mikado is the opera that the pope goes to see in San Francisco (love that the lobby is city hall but the auditorium is sf opera house. There are some segments of mikado near the end of the movies (it’s a ny opera company). It does raise my question why opera companies don’t do G&S productions. I guess they aren’t serious operas. But sf opera has done Sweeney Todd and showboat in the last decade. |
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| re: The movie Foul Play | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 07:26 pm EDT 08/31/20 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 07:22 pm EDT 08/31/20 | |
| In reply to: The movie Foul Play - dramedy 11:17 am EDT 08/31/20 | |
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| New York City Opera is the company seen in the movie, and they used to do G and S. Lyric Opera of Chicago did Mikado in 2010. Here is an excerpt from a Windy City Times review that may help explain why companies in particularly large houses don't do G and S more often. "The problems begin when the voices are not singing. After seeing G&S for 40 years in many different theaters, I've concluded that G&S is far too dialogue-driven for a vast opera house. Even with amplification, it just doesn't work." Most G and S operas were written for the Savoy in London (hence, Savoyards), a theatre that seats under 1,200. Yes, opera companies in theatres seating 2,000 or more have done musicals, and dialogue is often a problem. Often (not always) when opera companies do musicals, they are the more serious ones. But G and S wrote comedies. The dialogue is funny. The lyrics are funny. The words need to be heard and understood crisply (not with echo or some fuzziness). And perhaps more than with Sondheim or Rodgers and Hammerstein, the lyrics can easily get lost because the tessitura of the vocal lines is generally higher, which pretty much has to lead to less precise diction and altered vowels. Lyric of Chicago did do its series of productions of musicals in recent years, including some that have a good deal of comedy in them. Because they were broadcast on radio, we can hear how the comedy landed. Pretty well, at least sometimes. I am so grateful in particular for the Oklahoma! broadcast, which I love (despite some uneven casting). I think it may also be that nowadays it is believed, probably correctly, that the classic American musicals will sell better in opera houses than G and S. G and S probably doesn't sell as it did even 20 years ago. |
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| re: The movie Foul Play | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 09:45 pm EDT 08/31/20 | |
| In reply to: re: The movie Foul Play - AlanScott 07:22 pm EDT 08/31/20 | |
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| I am so grateful in particular for the Oklahoma! broadcast, which I love (despite some uneven casting). Actually, of all the broadcast musicals they did, I think Oklahoma was the weakest. As I've said before, it feels like it was conducted by a metronome. Musically very disappointing to me in general - not so much with the cast, but with the lack of nuance in the music. |
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| re: The movie Foul Play | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 09:59 pm EDT 08/31/20 | |
| In reply to: re: The movie Foul Play - Chromolume 09:45 pm EDT 08/31/20 | |
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| Maybe I need to listen again, but I had not noticed the conducting being metronomic. In fact, I remember loving the conducting because I felt that for the first time I was really hearing those orchestrations, hearing so many details that I had not heard before, although that could have had to do more with the miking than the conducting. And it's nice to get more of the score than we have on any recording. I was not nearly as happy with Carousel or The King and I, but I recall thinking Sound of Music was rather good. Have not heard the Show Boat. |
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| re: The movie Foul Play | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 07:06 pm EDT 08/31/20 | |
| In reply to: The movie Foul Play - dramedy 11:17 am EDT 08/31/20 | |
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| Opera companies DO do them on occasion. And there are plenty of comic operas out there that are done all the time, so I don't think the issue of not being "serious" has much to do with it. (And Yeomen Of The Guard definitely is darker than the others as well.) Though I would say that operettas in general are less done by opera companies than other fare - it seems to me that while Fledermaus and Merry Widow are still pretty common, and occasionally an Offenbach operetta (La Perichole used to be done a lot more than it is now), there are a lot of operettas that never get done. | |
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