Comic Opera

Choreographer Mark Morris' lively staging of Rameau's comic opera, "Platee," will open the Eclectic Orange Festival 2001 on Sept. 28-29 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Rameau's 18th-century opera-ballet will be presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County in association with Opera Pacific. French tenor Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, who created the role for Morris' production at the 1997 Edinburgh Festival, will sing Platee.

Inevitably, our tastes change as we grow older. Most of the pop songs that once served as anthems are now exercises in nostalgia, calling up happy ghosts rather than anything new and urgent. The dense romantic adventure novel that we swore by in our teens no longer holds our interest, but we can lose ourselves in the hitherto-impenetrable nuances and shadows of Henry James. The sentimental sweetness of Charles Chaplin remains affecting, but we are increasingly grateful for the stoniness of Buster Keaton and the petty but hilarious cruelties of W.C. Fields.

What's Cinderella without her wicked stepmother, fairy godmother or pumpkin coach? A hoot. Children's theater versions of the tale are often Disneyesque in nature; "Cinderella!," at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank, springs from a different source: the 19th century Rossini comic opera "La Cenerentola." Smoothly adapted and directed by Dimitri Toscas, this is a rollicking "Cinderella!," a fresh, funny blend of classical singing and sly buffoonery.

The showbiz adage that dying is easy, comedy is hard applies to opera as well. Though there are plenty of great comic operas — including Rossini's "Barber of Seville" and "The Turk in Italy" and Donizetti's "Elixir of Love" and "Don Pasquale," all presented by L.A. Opera in the past — their number pales next to the multitude of melodramas that more frequently occupy the operatic stage. "Comedy is extremely difficult," said Paul Curran, whose Santa Fe Opera production of Benjamin Britten's comic opera "Albert Herring" opens at L.A. Opera on Feb. 25. "It requires more concentration and skill than anything else.

Cal State Northridge exhumed a worthy rarity from the French rococo period in offering what was billed as the United States premiere of Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny's 1761 comic opera "On s'avise jamais de tout" over the weekend at the Gallery Theatre at Barnsdall Park. While the production seen Friday made a strong case for reviving repertory such as this, there were major problems. None of the small cast, a mix of professionals and students, had the limpid vocal resources to make the composer's deceptively simple songs bloom.

Mention the classic 1936 film "Rose Marie," and most people will recall Nelson Eddy in his Canadian Mountie uniform or Jeanette MacDonald crooning "Indian Love Call." San Diego Comic Opera hopes there will be sufficient nostalgia for this tuneful romantic saga when it stages the original 1924 Rudolf Friml operetta "Rose Marie" Thursday through April 7 at the Casa Del Prado in Balboa Park.

San Diego Comic Opera made its bow Friday night with a raucous period production of John Gay's bawdy musical parody "The Beggar's Opera." It would be refreshing to report that, after a decade as the San Diego Gilbert & Sullivan Company, the revamped company emerged from its cocoon a glorious Monarch butterfly. In fact, this caterpillar was barely given a face lift.

You may think of a used-book store as bookshelves jam-packed and rising to the rafters of a small, rather dingy space. Stacks and boxes full of musty, dusty books and magazines covering every square inch of the store give the feel of rummaging through an attic for a true find. Then the feeling you get as you leave with your new acquisitions--arms full of literary treasures for just a few dollars. To every rule there is an exception.

Has there ever been such a grotesque spectacle as the commotion over Monica Lewinsky, which, the TV anchormen portentously inform us, may force Bill Clinton from the White House? In its superficial guise the scandal offers unusually ripe examples of hypocrisy and moral posturing. At a deeper level, the conduct of independent counsel Kenneth Starr is profoundly sinister, a travesty of his supposed function and an outrageous assault on civil liberties.

The showbiz adage that dying is easy, comedy is hard applies to opera as well. Though there are plenty of great comic operas — including Rossini's "Barber of Seville" and "The Turk in Italy" and Donizetti's "Elixir of Love" and "Don Pasquale," all presented by L.A. Opera in the past — their number pales next to the multitude of melodramas that more frequently occupy the operatic stage. "Comedy is extremely difficult," said Paul Curran, whose Santa Fe Opera production of Benjamin Britten's comic opera "Albert Herring" opens at L.A. Opera on Feb. 25. "It requires more concentration and skill than anything else.

A handsome Army private catches the eye of the irrepressible Countess of Gerolstein, and soon he's promoted to the post of commander in chief, much to the consternation of the countess' staff and the private's girlfriend. Offenbach's comic opera "The Grand Duchess" gets an English-language update as Los Angeles Opera opens its 20th season. The work is directed by film and television legend Garry Marshall in his opera stage debut. Frederica von Stade sings the role of the Countess.

A Mozart opera modernized to feature prostitutes, full-frontal nudity, drugs and sadistic violence has created a storm in Berlin. The premiere of "The Abduction From the Seraglio" at the Komische Oper last week was met with shouts of "Scandal!" and "That's not Mozart!" and threats by opera house sponsor DaimlerChrysler that it would pull its $24,000 annual funding.

What's Cinderella without her wicked stepmother, fairy godmother or pumpkin coach? A hoot. Children's theater versions of the tale are often Disneyesque in nature; "Cinderella!," at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank, springs from a different source: the 19th century Rossini comic opera "La Cenerentola." Smoothly adapted and directed by Dimitri Toscas, this is a rollicking "Cinderella!," a fresh, funny blend of classical singing and sly buffoonery.

Scale isn't everything, even in opera. What this weekend's Ventura College Opera Workshop program lacks in grandness, it makes up for in resourcefulness and daring. It will present a pair of fully staged, compact comic operas, plucked from wildly different sources. Mozart's "The Impresario" is a satire of the music business (a ripe target even in the 18th century), about feuding divas. From a more recent vintage and an odd corner of the music world comes "Oedipus Tex," by P.D.Q. Bach--a.k.a.

"Agon" and "Mavra" are the colorful novelties, "The Rite of Spring" the visceral and radiant climax at this week's installment of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's monthlong Stravinsky festival. Under Esa-Pekka Salonen's deeply focused leadership, all three works held a festive audience in thrall, in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Thursday night.

Choreographer Mark Morris' lively staging of Rameau's comic opera, "Platee," will open the Eclectic Orange Festival 2001 on Sept. 28-29 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Rameau's 18th-century opera-ballet will be presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County in association with Opera Pacific. French tenor Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, who created the role for Morris' production at the 1997 Edinburgh Festival, will sing Platee.

Inevitably, our tastes change as we grow older. Most of the pop songs that once served as anthems are now exercises in nostalgia, calling up happy ghosts rather than anything new and urgent. The dense romantic adventure novel that we swore by in our teens no longer holds our interest, but we can lose ourselves in the hitherto-impenetrable nuances and shadows of Henry James. The sentimental sweetness of Charles Chaplin remains affecting, but we are increasingly grateful for the stoniness of Buster Keaton and the petty but hilarious cruelties of W.C. Fields.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist has taken the Lord Chancellor in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera "Iolanthe" as his robe model ("Gold Stripes Adorn New Rehnquist Robe," Jan. 18). The Lord Chancellor in the comedy is a buffoon, a caricature of British pomposity, a love-sick geezer whose main preoccupation is his infatuation with his pretty young wards. It's his robe that our chief justice is adopting? The Supreme Court as comic opera--so that's what the revolution inside the Beltway is all about.

Two years ago, composer John Biggs, one of Ventura's illustrious musical residents, put on what could reasonably be called the musical event of the summer, a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest" called "Ernest Worthing." Especially in Ventura, where opera is still a medium in search of an outlet, the production, put on by the Ventura College Opera Workshop, made news and drew plenty of avid fans.

Has there ever been such a grotesque spectacle as the commotion over Monica Lewinsky, which, the TV anchormen portentously inform us, may force Bill Clinton from the White House? In its superficial guise the scandal offers unusually ripe examples of hypocrisy and moral posturing. At a deeper level, the conduct of independent counsel Kenneth Starr is profoundly sinister, a travesty of his supposed function and an outrageous assault on civil liberties.