| Stephen Karam & Nico Muhly's chamber opera at Mannes Opera - tonight | |
| Last Edit: singleticket 10:36 pm EST 01/28/23 | |
| Posted by: singleticket 10:22 pm EST 01/28/23 | |
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| Stephen Karam & Nico Muhly's chamber opera DARK SISTERS gave its first of two performances tonight at the Bank Street Theater. The opera is about a wife in a polygamist Mormon marriage who rebels against the upcoming arranged marriage of her fifteen year old daughter. Muhly's music is a kaleidoscope of orchestrated images, gorgeously played by the small orchestra conducted by Geoffrey McDonald. The score has a shapeshifting quality as it moves from suggestions of American folk music; to the painting of the Utah desert landscape; to the mechanical theme of a TV news show; to religious hymns. The quicksilver orchestral shifts are not just from scene to scene but within scenes themselves and it tends to overwhelm and upstage the music written for the very talented young singers. To my ears, Muhly's score is largely illustrations of the lines and passages of the text and not a deeper musical engagement with the dramatic form of the story. That's a shame because Stephen Karam's libretto is more than adequate in giving the story a dramatic interest and making us care about its characters. A more collaborative engagement on the part of the composer could have yielded a more powerful opera. DARK SISTERS has one more performance on Sunday, Jan. 29th. Tickets are free but sold out. However I was told that everyone on the wait list tonight got in and there were still seats available. Proof of vaccination must be shown at the door. |
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| Link | Mannes Opera Presents: DARK SISTERS |
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