Aluna Theatre’s production of Jorgelina Cerritos’ On the Other Side of the Sea (translated from Spanish by Dr. Margaret Stanton and Anna Donko) opened at The Theatre Centre last night. Cerritos is from El Salvador and the play is set on a beach somewhere in that part of the world. There are two characters (three if you count the sea). Dorothea is a no longer young civil servant sent from the capital to a remote fishing village to issue birth certificates, ID cards and the like. Every day she sets up her desk on the beach but she has no clients until the Fisherman arrives. He has come from the Other Side of the Sea in his rowing boat. He needs a birth certificate; “something that shows who he is”, but has none of the information needed for Dorothea to issue one. She gets angry at his bugging her day after day; especially as he is her only client and she can’t do anything for him. They quibble about the possibility of names (he wants his ID to read “Fisherman OftheSea”) and argue the finer points of grammar concerning what may, or may not be, possible. This is often very funny but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Invocazioni Mariane is a new CD from counter-tenor Andreas Scholl and his long time collaborators the Accademia Bizantina and their conductor Alessandro Tampieri. It consists of 18th century music from Naples; all of which is in some way connected with the Virgin Mary and is mostly drawn from oratorios or similar pieces designed to be performed during Holy Week. Back in the day, with women not permitted on the stage in Naples (or the Papal States) the high parts would have been sung by castrati. That, of course, is where Scholl comes in.
It’s an interesting idea for a CD; couple the well known (and original) orchestral version of Richard Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder with the less well known piano version (the first three songs are arranged by Max Wolff and Im Abendrot by John Gribben). It’s exactly the sort of bold, slightly off the wall idea one might expect from Asmik Grigorian. So how well does it work?
operaramblings 