Mainly Opera and Ballet
The ‘Other Mary’ in John Adams’ new work is Mary Magdalene, along with her sister Martha and their brother Lazarus, who work to help the poor and disenfranchised in mid-1970s America. To many in an English audience the name César Chávez, co-founder of what became the United Farm Workers Union, may not be well known. Beloved …
This opera has sparked controversy at its first staging in London. Why? The essential story is that in 1985 an Italian cruise ship at dock in Alexandria was hijacked by four Palestinian terrorists, who seem to have had a confused idea about freeing prisoners in Israeli jails. Many of the people on the cruise were away …
Peter Sellars exuded enthusiasm from his toes to the end of his extraordinary hair-do, extolling Adams’s music and saying “it builds and has tension . . . rather like Mozart”.
The music by John Adams is wonderful, but the libretto by Peter Sellars falls far short of expressing the potential drama of this story. As a piece of theatre this opera fails …
