Plink. A marble drops into a bowl. A brief yelp from glass, and a dozen, a hundred, a thousand years pass. Eventually the bowl is full of marbles, each one a tiny globe.
The performance of an opera, indeed, seems almost a third narrative, atop the dreamer under the scientific microscope and the larva turning into a butterfly, and the mingling is not always clear—but then, clarity never seems to be the intention.
We live in a time of open-season for jokes on ancient myths, mixing and matching, sometimes with great success, as The Book of Mormon and Hadestown demonstrate.
UrbanArias’ recording of Paul’s Case is an antidote to the intellectual pretensions that regularly drag contemporary opera performance toward tediousness and boredom.
A Countertenor Cabaret, starred no fewer than 14 of these once-rare songbirds, in the cabaret space of the Duplex on Sheridan Square.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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