Angry and depressed, he finds hope with a nurse. NYC Opera’s ‘Séance’ A Thrilling, Chilling Afternoon, https://bachtrack.com/review-seance-on-wet-afternoon-nyc-opera, To add a comment, please sign in or register. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. And boy, did they! A disgruntled veteran recruits a group of disgraced colleagues to perform a bank robbery with military precision. A drunken, abusive tavern-keeper's adulterous wife uses the backward son of a rigid, puritanical pharmacist who makes his entire family miserable. Goosebumps, gasps of horror, sobs and tears. Reviewed at Lincoln Center: David H Koch Theater, New York City on 23 April 2011. The stakes couldn’t be higher when Myra and husband Billy embark on a plan to make Myra the next psychic celebrity. The production already has many extraordinary features working in tandem to deliver a first-rate show. Richard Attenborough played her husband, Bill Foster, as an asthmatic, broken man caught in a pathetic yet dangerous co-dependency with his willful wife. In Act II, with the kidnapped girl made to believe she is being kept in a hospital, Myra sings a bucolic aria about calm summer weather and other homey images. Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a two-act contemporary opera with music and libretto by American composer Stephen Schwartz, whose original productions such as Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked are considered blockbusters within the annals of musical theater. SÉANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON is a psychological thriller about a medium, Myra Foster, who convinces her weak-willed husband to kidnap the child of a wealthy couple, so she can use her abilities to locate the child and thus achieve fame. Yes, the chorus provides all these functions as well as entertainment and shards of comic relief in some powerful, well-written numbers. Her soprano voice alternately soared to the ceiling and pierced our hearts like a rapier in each of her arias. The film starred Kim Stanley in an Oscar-nominated performance as Myra Foster, the emotionally fraught medium who communes with her dead son, Arthur. A single, pregnant woman moves into a London boarding house where she meets a group of fellow misfits. Anu Komsi on Nordic composers, the importance of musical education and Lindberg's, A way to celebrate the human spirit: Marina Mahler on the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, One of the players: Karina Canellakis on her journey to the podium, Nodoka Okisawa takes First Prize at the 2018 Tokyo International Music Competition for Conducting, Based on the East Coast, Gale is an award-winning writer on the performing arts, books, literature and popular culture. Goosebumps, gasps of horror, sobs and tears. It is accessible and also grand opera at the same time. Add the first question. The problem is Mr. Schwartz’s easygoing and harmonically tame score, which at every opportunity breaks into cloying lyrical flights and set-piece arias, fortified by swelling strings and sonorous brasses. With just one intermission, it lasted nearly three hours. Different process yielded a vastly different product. Where the role allows her to, she viscerally conveys Myra’s instability and obsession, especially during the séance scenes. This product includes GeoLite2 data created by MaxMind, available from, Séance on a Wet Afternoon (New York City Premiere), 2011-Apr-23, Lincoln Center: David H Koch Theater: Séance on a Wet Afternoon, https://bachtrack.com/listing-seance-on-wet-afternoon-nyc-opera, https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode, https://bachtrack.com/themes/bachtrack2013/mastheadlogo.png. “Séance on a Wet Afternoon,” the first opera by Stephen Schwartz and based on the 1964 film of the same title, arrived at the New York City Opera on Tuesday. And make no mistake. Not very, I’m afraid. The composer Stephen Schwartz narrates a look at his opera "Séance on a Wet Afternoon," at New York City Opera. Like opera composers before him Mr. Schwartz has the right to adapt any source to his own ends. With the help of her husband, she plans to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy couple, then use her "powers"to reveal the girl's whereabouts. It’s a tremendous challenge to distill a full-length work of fiction into an opera of even moderate length—this one ran two-and-a-half hours. The piece arrived at the New York City Opera on Tuesday night in the Santa Barbara production, directed by Scott Schwartz (the composer’s son) and conducted by George Manahan. In his libretto Mr. Schwartz tells the story well. The audience felt her abject hopelessness, her despondency at having lost her beloved daughter. In post-WW2 England, a taxi driver is ostracized by society after he's accused of murdering a school-girl and his untried lawyer must find the real killer to save his client from the hangman. Use the HTML below. There was no reason for him to write an opera. Fast-talking wheeler-dealer Corporal King is stuck in a Malaysian P.O.W. Yet the rich experience that was Séance scarcely ended there. Certificate: GP With Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, Margaret Lacey, Marie Burke. This great, seldom-scene movie stars Kim Stanley as an unbalanced woman who holds seances in her home and concocts a plot to gain celebrity with her so-called "powers". Yes, Myra Foster was a bonafide psychic. This opera explores the extraordinary capacity of love, its paradoxical ability both to save and to destroy. And, to his credit, he sets the text to vocal lines that make the words come through clearly, a skill that many composers writing operas do not share. Cat burglar Henry Clarke and his accomplices, the Moreaus, attempt to steal diamonds from the château of millionaire Salinas. The compelling soprano Lauren Flanigan and the baritone Kim Josephson (in his City Opera debut), who created the roles of Myra and Bill Foster in Santa Barbara, perform them here, throwing themselves into Mr. Schwartz’s work. Only the most-skilled performer can make a character who is so flawed, who commits a truly heinous act, worthy of pity. The story will follow a medium who convinces her husband to kidnap a child so she can help the police solve the crime and achieve renown for her abilities. So, Arthur conceives of a plan for Myra to get the recognition for her supernatural talents she so craves, which involves kidnapping an innocent little girl. A Crime Lurks on the Dark Side of a Clairvoyant Realm. Yet while his opera is not melodramatic, it romanticizes and softens the story, which here becomes a tale of a grieving mother driven to kidnap a girl who becomes, for a while, a surrogate child. Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a two-act contemporary opera with music and libretto by American composer Stephen Schwartz, whose original productions such as Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked are considered blockbusters within the annals of musical theater. So “Séance on a Wet Afternoon,” his first work in the genre, which had its premiere in 2009 at Opera Santa Barbara, was a labor of love. Drama. It answers every criticism leveled at the state of opera performance today—it has the relevancy and immediacy of great straight theater. Directed by Bryan Forbes. Guilty as charged. The value of this annual showcase for developing new works and providing venues for emerging productions and composers was evident in every facet of Séance on a Wet Afternoon. He had nothing to prove. Sign in to use alerts, your personal diary/wishlist, to save your recent searches, to comment on articles and reviews or if you want to input events. Choose an adventure below and discover your next favorite movie or TV show. – but for a good bawling session, the fabulously maudlin finale of Fanciulla is the place to be. Title: It is sure to spark a discussion about whether it is a true opera, whatever that means. Every time Mr. Schwartz’s score had more complexity and nuance (asymmetrical riffs of five beats, sustained harmonies that create tension through astringent dissonance, piled-up voices in intricate ensembles), the opera would gain intensity and start to grab me. One opinion that found consensus among the panelists was that music critics disrespect operas that are too accessible. Myra works as a medium, who holds weekly meetings, séances, for a regular group of customers, while Billy supports her in these ventures, as he does not otherwise work, due to his asthma. “Séance on a Wet Afternoon,” the first opera by Stephen Schwartz and based on the 1964 film of the same title, arrived at the New York City Opera on Tuesday. The drama of these two families is interrupted periodically by crowd scenes with chorus members as intrusive reporters in pursuit of a sensational story. One of the most efficient contrivances is Schwartz’s use of a Greek chorus of paparazzi to encapsulate plot highlights and quickly advance the storyline while also providing a commentary on how American media stereotypically respond to human tragedies in the headlines. (1964). Yet too often the character breaks into ambling arias recalling days gone by or the latest communications from her son. I wanted to shout out: “Not true! Mr. Schwartz participated in a City Opera panel discussion this month, moderated by the company’s general manager, George Steel, on the topic of what defines opera and musical theater. The issue is more complicated.”, Yet it is true that “Séance on a Wet Afternoon” came across as trying too hard to be an accessible contemporary opera. What caused Mr. Schwartz’s reticence in this score? "Séance on a Wet Afternoon" is the story of Myra Foster, a professional medium who goes to desperate lengths to gain recognition for her supernatural gift, the ability to communicate with the dead. Myra, with Billy's support, devises a scheme to raise her public prominence as a medium: kidnap Amanda Clayton, the young daughter of a wealthy couple, and using her psychic powers provide information to the Claytons and the police of Amanda and the requested ransom money's whereabouts. A medium and her husband stage a kidnapping in order for her to pretend to solve the crime and achieve fame. As the story unfolds, the audience is shown the reasons behind the woman's emotional problems and the growing inevitability of disaster that her plan holds. Mr. Josephson has a smooth, appealing voice, and he brings a kindly disposition to Bill Foster. If that sounds like a plan destined to fail, it most certainly will fail, but that’s all that should be said about it. Bill’s defining moment comes with a saccharine aria he sings to the kidnapped girl about how beautiful and loving his wife was when they first met.

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