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Memories of Callas
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17204 |
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THE ARTS
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2 / 1990 |
1,596 Words |
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Philip Kennicott
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Perhaps because opera has little respect for the territoriality of the other arts, it is seldom represented fairly by them. Film, which has its origins as a popular art form in the opera house, is particularly resentful of this dirty little family secret and has therefore been the cruelest caricaturist of them all. Theater and opera, however, coexist a bit more comfortably, and it is in the theater that opera is now receiving some of its most probing criticisms.
In October the Manhattan Theatre Club brought Terrence McNally's Lisbon Traviata to the Promenade Theatre. It was yet another step up in the world for this two-act play which has already been given two short runs in small theaters. The play was developed, written, and rewritten through workshops and in light of its two previous productions. Although the dramatic flavor has undergone some revision, its cogent representation of the effects of opera on the lives of two gay men remains intact and relevant.
The play opens in a New York apartment of faded elegance, an environment calculated to appeal to a Wagnerian craving for rich fabrics and lush swaddlings. It is Mendy's apartment, and Stephen is visiting for an evening of opera listening and repartee. The topic of conversation is the great soprano Maria Callas, for whom Mendy and Stephen have an extreme, though justifiable, reverence. The talk is fast and spirited, and it occasionally becomes a test of wits between the campy, self-ironic Mendy, played by Nathan Lane, and the confidant but troubled Stephen, played by Anthony Heald. The names of famous divas - from Callas to Tebaldi to Sutherland - fly at a furious, bravura pace, often accompanied by a little lighthearted calumny. The dialogue is immediately recognizable to opera lovers as a rare, vital dialect spoken by those whose passion for music - drama inspires a flair for poetry in their own speech.
Some critics have called the first act "opera buffa," both be cause of its nonstop sparkling humor and because it forms a dramatic contrast to the harrowing second act, in which Stephen and his lover Michael, played by Dan Butler, end their troubled eight-year relationship. But opera buffa is not an accurate characterization. Beneath the humor, the continual jabs of the current opera world add a seriousness not to be overlooked.
Outside this brocaded apartment is an unfriendly world, a world of sickness and danger. It is a world that seems particularly cruel to these men ass they approach middle age and face a terrifying loneliness. "Opera doesn't reject me; the real world does," says Mendy, thus establishing a crucial theme of the evening: Escapism. And anger.
Act 1 gives the play its name. The eponymous Lisbon Traviata is a live recording made of Callas singing Verdi's Traviata in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 27, 1958. At the time of the play, pirated recordings of Callas were much in demand and relished by those for whom every nuance of her style was precious. When Stephen casually mentions the existence of this recording, Mendy's desire to hear it is insatiable.
Highly Melodramatic
This situation establishes the basis of the comic antics, including frantic phone calls to record stores and some highly melodramatic languishing. But it also indicates an important
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