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- <text id=91TT1926>
- <title>
- Aug. 26, 1991: View Points:Opera
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Aug. 26, 1991 Science Under Siege
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIEW POINTS, Page 63
- OPERA
- Under a Spell of Love
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By Emily Mitchell
- </p>
- <p> What U.S. cultural magnet is located in Cooperstown, N.Y.?
- Easy: GLIMMERGLASS OPERA. Well, yes, the Baseball Hall of Fame
- is there too, but in contrast to the Hall of Fame,
- Glimmerglass's hits (and its basses) are onstage. Set along the
- sylvan shore of Otsego Lake, the festival is noted for its
- ambitious repertory and stable of budding American singers. This
- summer's season features a Jonathan Miller production of
- Beethoven's Fidelio, in which Miller does not change the 18th
- century prison locale to one of those voguish operatic places
- he calls "nowhere and nowhen," but instead treats the work with
- standard, even standoffish respect. The surprise is Il Re
- Pastore, an 18th century trifle about a shepherd king who is
- prepared to give up the throne for his sweetheart. Director Mark
- Lamos uses a scene-shifting crew of children in T shirts and
- sneakers, who playfully push four large letters together,
- forming AMOR. Later, two more letters appear to create the
- enigmatic TRAZOM. For the happy finale, the letters are
- reversed. The composer, who often used the backward spelling in
- correspondence, would have enjoyed the joke.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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