{"id":12164,"date":"2013-07-13T17:15:05","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T22:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.berkshirelinks.com\/?p=12164"},"modified":"2013-07-13T17:15:05","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T22:15:05","slug":"the-great-gatsby-opera-at-tanglewood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/the-great-gatsby-opera-at-tanglewood\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Gatsby John Harbison’s Opera performed at Tanglewood"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Great Gatsby John Harbison’s Opera performed at Tanglewood<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

July 11, 2013 performance; by Dave Read<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Ryan<\/a>The concert performance in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood<\/strong> of The Great Gatsby<\/em>, by the orchestra and chorus of Emmanuel Music<\/a>, was so enjoyable that we’re tempted to propose a corollary to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s adage, There are no second acts in American lives<\/em>, to wit, American novels can get third lives<\/em>. <\/p>\n

None of the movie versions of The Great Gatsby has achieved anything near the stature of the novel, but we think the opera has legs and can give the book a run for its money. Whereas Fitzgerald’s standing as a prose stylist cannot be ignored, his choices relating to plots and characters can make it easy to overlook his books. But it is precisely the contrivedly tragic plot and one-dimensional characters that make Gatsby such a good fit for Opera.<\/p>\n

\"Cast<\/a>We particularly enjoyed the performance of baritone David Kravitz<\/strong> as Nick Carraway<\/strong>, the steady narrator, and we came to prize soprano Devon Guthrie<\/strong>, who got Daisy Buchanan<\/strong> off to a slow start, only to hit her stride and then practically blow the roof off the joint in the middle of Act ll.<\/p>\n

Composer John Harbison<\/a>, recipient this month of the BSO’s Horblit Award<\/strong> and present tonight, was commissioned in 1998 by the Metropolitan Opera<\/strong> to compose the opera in honor of James Levine’s<\/strong> 25th anniversary there. Since then, there have been several related projects including the compilation of a Gatsby Suite<\/em>. In the program notes, Mr. Harbison, whose Tanglewood relationship includes stints as a TMC Conducting Fellow, faculty member and coordinator of the composition program, calls tonight’s performance a revival. <\/p>\n

Ozawa Hall was a lovely accompanist for the performance on a rare comfortable July evening, with a near-capacity audience indoors and a good compliment of West Eggers peering on from the lawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Great Gatsby John Harbison’s Opera performed at Tanglewood July 11, 2013 performance; by Dave Read The concert performance in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood of The Great Gatsby, by the orchestra and chorus of Emmanuel Music, was so enjoyable that we’re tempted to propose a corollary to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s adage, There are no second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12168,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-12164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tanglewood-3","tag-2013-tanglewood-reviews","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}