Monday, November 12, 2007

PSA

by Tom Bozzo

Readers in the Chicagoland area should run (I mean it, RUN!) to the Lyric Opera's revival of the Glyndeborne Festival's Giulio Cesare, playing through December 1. It's the fastest-moving 4-1/2 hours of Baroque opera you could see.

Some have criticized the production as being "hampered" by the enormous swings of tone associated in large part with its anachronistic Romans-in-Wellies design, but Suzanne and I agreed that the production's notorious "Bollywood" elements set in the Egyptian palace did a good job of following enormous swings of tone in the score. I will grant that the appearance of a telegraph in the background of the first scene was distracting — the clackety-clacking of the dispatches to, er, Londinium was out of sync with the music and interfered with David Daniels's warm-up. Otherwise, it was a highlight of our eight years of Lyric Opera-going.

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