L'ORFEO.L'ORFEO BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC Brooklyn Academy of Music, performing arts center located in the borough of Brooklyn, N.Y. and popularly known as BAM. Founded in 1859 and opened in 1861, it is the oldest such institution still in operation in the United States. OPERA HOUSE BROOKLYN, NEW YORK New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of JUNE 10-13, 1999 Watching the stage come alive at the outset of Claudio Monteverdi's 1607 opera L'Orfeo, one couldn't help but philosophize phi·los·o·phize v. phi·los·o·phized, phi·los·o·phiz·ing, phi·los·o·phiz·es v.intr. 1. To speculate in a philosophical manner. 2. . It takes a great meeting of imaginations to produce the simplest of effects; often they do not appear to be effects but are part of some universal truth. There was a huge blue circle rimmed in black. Suddenly it became a cirrus sky across which a nymph nymph, in Greek mythology nymph (nĭmf), in Greek mythology, female divinity associated with various natural objects. It is uncertain whether they were immortal or merely long-lived. There was an infinite variety of nymphs. serenely flew. As she swirled and swooped, and as a row of sackbuts let out their clarion call from the theater's highest balcony, one entered a world of the purest sound and bravest action. Trisha Brown was the director-choreographer of this production, first done last May at Brussels Theatre de la Monnaie. Rene Jacobs presided over the brilliant orchestra. Brown seemed inspired by the surge of the sea on a sunny day. The dancers of her company and the singers of the Collegium Vocale worked side by side or flowed smoothly among one another. Sometimes they added formally designed arm shapes. All were clad in softly draped, off-white trousers and jackets with a bit of black at the neckline neckline The line that connects the two lowest points on the intermediate declines of a head-and-shoulders chart pattern. In an inverted head-and-shoulders formation, the neckline connects the two intermediate tops. . Only Orfeo wore golden yellow to identify him as the son of the god Apollo. The key characters, such as Plutone, Proserpina, and Caronte, wore wildly daring garb with tall headgear headgear, n the apparatus encircling the head or neck and providing attachment for an intraoral appliance in use of extraoral anchorage. headgear, radiologic, n a device that is used to protect the head from injury by radiation. and fanciful appendages on their cloaks. Designed by Roland Aeschlimann, the effect was playful against the austere, but by no means cold, decor. Brown devised gracious, recumbent recumbent /re·cum·bent/ (re-kum´bent) lying down. re·cum·bent adj. Lying down, especially in a position of comfort; reclining. postures for Orfeo. Baritone Simon Keenlyside negotiated them and sang with appealing naturalness. As a messenger of doom, Graciela Oddone set her own fate by gliding into the orchestra pit after her touching aria. Pale Knudsen as Apollo circled the sun disk like the hands of a clock, while basso Paul Gerimon, as Caronte, sang from a perch so high above the stage that it would have turned most males into sopranos. The only character I found a trifle wooden was Euridice, sung by Patricia Biccire. As the action progressed and the sun glided in and out of eclipse, one became more and more aware of the unity of nature and myth in Brown's sensitively realized world, where dance and song went hand in hand--and where dancer Katrina Thompson, perhaps the embodiment of Brown herself, continued to fly high above it all. |
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