News & Blog
Opera Review: 'Lysistrata': An Ancient Story Fit For The Modern Ear
Date: 5/29/2012 By Wayne Lee Gay, DMagazine's FrontRow
Almost 2500 years ago, the playwright Aristophanes titillated and amused the Athenian theater-going crowd with Lysistrata, one of the first—and still most intriguing—explorations of the inherent power struggle of the genders and the enduring human folly of waging war while yearning for peace.
Seven years ago, American composer Mark Adamo, fresh from his triumph as the composer of an operatic version of Little Women that immediately earned a prominent niche in the repertoire, took on Aristophanes’ fundamental idea—that women could end war by withholding sex—to create the opera Lysistrata, which premiered in Houston in 2005 and was soon after produced by New York City Opera in 2006.
Saturday night at Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth audiences got their first viewing of a piece that, while probably not destined to be performed as frequently as the opera Little Women (face it, millions love Alcott’s novel, while, well, hundreds admire Aristophanes’ play), does everything an opera is supposed to do, and does it in an innovative and, equally important, entertaining way.
-- Wayne Lee Gay, DMagazine's FrontRow
Click here to read the full FrontRow review.
Date: 5/29/2012 By Wayne Lee Gay, DMagazine's FrontRow
Almost 2500 years ago, the playwright Aristophanes titillated and amused the Athenian theater-going crowd with Lysistrata, one of the first—and still most intriguing—explorations of the inherent power struggle of the genders and the enduring human folly of waging war while yearning for peace.
Seven years ago, American composer Mark Adamo, fresh from his triumph as the composer of an operatic version of Little Women that immediately earned a prominent niche in the repertoire, took on Aristophanes’ fundamental idea—that women could end war by withholding sex—to create the opera Lysistrata, which premiered in Houston in 2005 and was soon after produced by New York City Opera in 2006.
Saturday night at Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth audiences got their first viewing of a piece that, while probably not destined to be performed as frequently as the opera Little Women (face it, millions love Alcott’s novel, while, well, hundreds admire Aristophanes’ play), does everything an opera is supposed to do, and does it in an innovative and, equally important, entertaining way.
-- Wayne Lee Gay, DMagazine's FrontRow
Click here to read the full FrontRow review.
