Fairy Tale Opera
May. 31st, 2009 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariLast night I went to Guerilla Opera's premier of Marti Epstein's one-act chamber opera Rumpelstiltzkin. It was amazing, and I would highly recommend going to the final performance at 8pm tomorrow night at Boston Conservatory.
Ms. Epstein wrote her own libretto, and did a very good job of it. In the program notes she stated that her aim was to explore and explain the motivations of the characters in the story. Her version of the tale does all that and brings in some surprises, too. The end result is a tale that is both more interesting and more meaningful (and also a bit more disturbing).
Rumpelstiltzkin is scored for soprano (Rumpelstiltzkin), mezzo (Gretchen), countertenor (Miller), and baritone (king), violin, cello, saxophone, and percussion. I'm not quite sure whether or not I liked having the Miller be such a high voice, but since both the music and Matthew Truss' performance were so good, it wasn't a real detractor. The music itself was very beautiful. It was haunting and at times almost delicate. The use of pitched percussion against the high voices was particularly lovely.
Aliana de la Guardia was amazing as Rumpelstiltzkin. She has a gorgeous voice, with none of the hardness or shrillness I sometimes hear in sopranos. And her acting abilities are very impressive - she gave her character a set of strange mannerisms and tics that really worked as a way of illustrating his status as a lonely and magical creature outside the bounds of society. Leslie Leytham was also wonderful as Gretchen.
Ms. Epstein wrote her own libretto, and did a very good job of it. In the program notes she stated that her aim was to explore and explain the motivations of the characters in the story. Her version of the tale does all that and brings in some surprises, too. The end result is a tale that is both more interesting and more meaningful (and also a bit more disturbing).
Rumpelstiltzkin is scored for soprano (Rumpelstiltzkin), mezzo (Gretchen), countertenor (Miller), and baritone (king), violin, cello, saxophone, and percussion. I'm not quite sure whether or not I liked having the Miller be such a high voice, but since both the music and Matthew Truss' performance were so good, it wasn't a real detractor. The music itself was very beautiful. It was haunting and at times almost delicate. The use of pitched percussion against the high voices was particularly lovely.
Aliana de la Guardia was amazing as Rumpelstiltzkin. She has a gorgeous voice, with none of the hardness or shrillness I sometimes hear in sopranos. And her acting abilities are very impressive - she gave her character a set of strange mannerisms and tics that really worked as a way of illustrating his status as a lonely and magical creature outside the bounds of society. Leslie Leytham was also wonderful as Gretchen.
