Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning opened last night in a production by the Howland Company in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s. This is a play about a group of people who have assembled in the wilds of Wyoming for the inauguration of a new President at a small, extremely conservative, Catholic university. All of them, to greater or lesser extent, buy into the mix of ideas; an essentially pre-Vatican II Catholicism, traditional American Conservatism rooted in an idea of “Western Civilization:” and a kind of neo-Spartan survivalism, taught at the university in question. The play is a long (over two hours without a break) conversation between these characters about ideas and values. I strongly suspect these ideas and values are not shared by the author or the director (Philip Akin). but they are treated in the play on their own terms with no attempt at satire or parody. I don’t share those values either but I shall try in this review to keep my own feelings out of it as well.
Handel’s Israel in Egypt is one of the less well known of his English language oratorios. It’s also got a bit of an ofdd performance history with the first of the three acts often omitted. The new recording from period instrument ensemble Apollo’s Fire includes all three acts but omits some numbers and shortens others in a selection made by music director Jeannette Sorrell. This appears not to be uncommon. A quick scan of available recordings revealed performance durations of anywhere from 75 minutes to 150 minutes. This one comes in right on the bottom end of that range.
Tapestry Opera announced a season that includes:
The Happenstancers latest concert We’re Late! happenstanced on Saturday evening at Redeemer Lutheran. It was a typical Happenstancers sort of event with chamber music works for various forces split up into their movements with the components then rearranged to make an interesting line up.
operaramblings 