Operas at Kennedy Center

Operas at Kennedy Center, National Gallery of Art create a play for younger fanbase

It was an excellent weekend for opera-loving kids in Washington — but several of them there square measure. On Saturday, the Washington National Opera opened its fresh commissioned “The Lion, the imaginary creature, and Me.” On Sunday, the National Gallery of Art conferred, at the side of the the big apple Opera Society, a double bill of children’s operas: the globe premiere of “Supersize Girl” and “Max and Moritz,” that had its public presentation here in 2010. for a few children, together with the squally shaver at the National Gallery, this might are a overmuchness of material resource, however their oldsters, and I, most likely enjoyed it.

Jeanine Tesori, World Health Organization wrote WNO’s opera, and Gisle Kverndokk, World Health Organization wrote the double bill, share some views regarding children’s opera. It ought to be short, embrace completely different musical designs, and sometimes break down the fourth wall. however their sensibilities and goals square measure completely different. Tesori’s piece was touching and all-American, with echoes of musical theater; Kverndokk’s, written with the author Oystein Wiik, was European to the core. wherever Tesori’s score, for little orchestra, was rousing, Kverndokk’s, written for a chamber ensemble of flute, trumpet, string and piano, had a number of the acerbic wryness of Stravinsky.

The subject matter was conjointly less ingratiating. soap and Moritz square measure 2 painting figures of 19th-century German children’s literature, with a number of the lawless unsettledness of Grimm’s fairy tales or untidy Peter: the last word naughty boys, World Health Organization kill nice Mrs. Cackle’s pet hens and get her a tarantula to switch them. The tarantula bites them instead, and Mrs. Cackle and therefore the teller, a tenor named bother (oh, yes), have the audience vote, through clapping, on whether or not the boys ought to live or die. No heat fuzzies here.

There was, though, a bracing, scintillating score that was similar temperament to its subject material, and a production, by composer Schamberger, that conjointly did a fine job equalisation on the road between previous and new. As soap and Moritz, Carlos Feliciano and Gustavo Ahualli went on-line to order up a replacement animal for Mrs. Cackle, their look conjointly clearly elicited Wilhelm Busch’s original illustrations — a detail most likely lost on several within the audience, since the book is hardly painting during this country.

Having a double bill of children’s opera is counterproductive: If the purpose is to put in writing for shorter attention spans, it hardly furthers the cause to gift additional of it. “Supersize Girl” was a pendant to “Max and Moritz,” American-based and contemporary: It’s a couple of teenaged lady World Health Organization, frightened of meeting her web beau personally, meets a homeless sawbones named Merlin World Health Organization performs every kind of ridiculous physical transformations on her. She learns her lesson; Merlin undoes his work; her web beau has already sussed out her real appearance and thinks she is wondrous, and that we get heat fuzzies on balance, however the entire factor is slightly additional diffuse, and, once “Max and Moritz,” anticlimactic.

The singing and enjoying, below the baton of Elizabeth Young, were notably sturdy. married woman Pillow, World Health Organization vie the boys’ mother within the 1st piece and Amanda, the 14-year-old heroine of the second, features a genuinely genre-busting voice, full and vivid. The the big apple Opera Society conjointly fielded 2 respectable tenors, Feliciano and John Tiranno, World Health Organization vie bother within the 1st piece, and therefore the Mirror, complete with shiny suit and Bryllcreemed hair, within the second. Ahualli offered a heat baritone, and Victor Benedetti was a competent Merlin. Feliciano, Benedetti and Ahualli conjointly appeared to have a good time showing as a Greek-chorus trio of judgmental schoolgirls — the horrific “in” crowd — whose music derived from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Three very little Maids from college.” This reference is maybe, alas, lost on most of the under-15 set currently, however was a new example of the sort of literary-musical wit that created this double bill a generally dense however real enjoyment — a minimum of, for adults.