In the Wings

Of the Beaumarchais Figaro trilogy of plays, The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro live on both in their own right and through the operas that mark cornerstones of the repertory, while the third play, The Guilty Mother, has provided the foundation for a fascinating, challenging 20th-century work. The enduring character of the wily Figaro, and the other personalities drawn into his orbit by Beaumarchais, have appealed to numerous composers beyond the untouchable Rossini and Mozart.

Neoclassicism in music was an important and striking 20th-century trend…and Stravinsky has often been portrayed as its most eloquent proponent and The Rake’s Progress as its culmination.

Boston Globe: Did the Star-Spangled Banner land Stravinsky in jail? An irresistible headline, a famous photograph…but it may all be just a kind of urban legend, “fake news” before its time. The real story is rather more complex and interesting.

Stravinsky: A face of infinite variety and music of an almost unprecedented range of stylistic mastery.

Perhaps we could all use some diversion from the agonies of Eddy and Oedipus! Tom Lehrer has one of the most remarkable biographies I have come across recently. Check him out: Tom Lehrer. Long associated with Boston, Harvard, and MIT both as scholar and as an ultra-smart satirist, he here memorably sums up the eternal Oedipal dilemma.

John Dryden’s reworking of Sophocles, entitled Oedipus, was one of the most performed plays of English Restoration drama, full of relish in the descriptions of the story’s more violent and bloodthirsty elements that appealed mightily to the public. In 1692 Purcell set parts of it to music, including “Music for a While,” one of his most familiar and striking works…however incongruous it seems in its restraint and calmness compared with the tumultuous drama of the narrative.

BLO is moving into high gear with its upcoming production of Greek, by Mark-Anthony Turnage. Night Journey is a 1947 Martha Graham ballet performed to a harsh, dramatic score by William Schuman, with costumes by Graham and sets by her longtime collaborator, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi. She noted that “the action takes place in Jocasta’s heart at the instant when she recognizes the ultimate terms of her destiny.”

BLO is moving into high gear with its upcoming production of the vivid, disturbing and highly theatrical opera Greek, by Mark-Anthony Turnage. Rehearsal have just started, sets are being built, costumes fitted…all in preparation for a November 16th opening.

Few concepts from modern psychology have entered the cultural and popular imagination to the extent of Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus Complex. At once a source of revulsion and titillation, the theory that young boys desire their mothers and hate their fathers is named for the ancient myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly fulfills an oracle’s prophecy that he will marry his mother and kill his father.

The Sphinx—a creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion (and often with the wings of bird) occurs in many cultures. The Egyptian Sphinx is typically depicted as a man, a benevolent guardian and the bearer of mysterious knowledge and secrets.