but alive
La Cieca’s old, old, old (and yet somehow ageless) friend Anne Midgette isn’t just sitting around for The Season to begin like us lazy bloggers. She’s been listening to new recordings of operas by living composers including Michael Nyman, Scott Wheeler and Douglas J. Cuomo. Mr. Cuomo is best known (as they say) as the composer of the theme for Sex and the City, but La Cieca is not going to hold that against him.
Oh, that didn’t come out quite right, because what La Cieca should say is that it’s hardly Mr. Cuomo’s fault that his music is about the only thing that survived unscathed as that TV series so massively overstayed its welcome. Anyway, Cuomo’s most recent opera, Arjuna’s Dilemma, will show up at BAM in November, and, if the excerpts available online are any indication, the piece might best be described as “Satyagraha Meets Confessions on a Dance Floor.” Which, again, don’t get her wrong, La Cieca thinks is pretty cool.
your mini-review, kashania, hit the nail right on the head. I completely agree with you. I saw it in Toronto back in ’04 (my very first opera!). The vocal writing is a bit clumsy, to say the least, except maybe for Aunt Lydia.
It’s a screamfest.