I hadn't realized that An American Tragedy's younger Clyde, Graham Phillips, was also the lead for half of NYCO's run of The Little Prince (closed 11/20). Not a bad few months' work for a sixth-grader.
The current show uses his actual voice. I'm sure it's a stretch to expect a child to sing for the hours' length of Little Prince -- even on and off -- but NYCO's solution of massive (by opera-house standards), jarringly different-sounding amplification really made a mess of that production. Surely it wasn't quite so bad in Houston? (The unwise innovation of this time casting the Rose as a teenage soprano meant they did much the same for her.) But I suspect I'm the only one grinch enough to so complain, though Peter Davis does trash most everything else.
Meanwhile, if any readers went to this American Tragedy event yesterday, I'm curious to learn what was said.
I was at the lecture and it was very interesting. They discussed the development of their characters mostly, but there was a lot of joking and banter back and forth. Graham is quite the comedienne.
ReplyDeleteThey talked about the music being more difficult to sing than it might sound and trying to find pitch with the orchestra once it came to the stage as opposed to singing with the rehearsal piano on C level. It seems there were constant changes and rewrites up until opening night and the Met is bringing it back in two years, so there may be more changes at that time.
They were asked about the mixed reviews and they seemed to shrug them off and said that the audience seems to like the opera so that's all that matter. Predictable response, I guess.
Thanks for the report!
ReplyDelete"the Met is bringing it back in two years"
Unsurprising but heartening.