The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 75, No. 11, Ed. 1 Friday, November 6, 1987 Page: 11 of 20
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THRESHER Fine Arts Friday, November 6,1987 1J_
New version of Mozart's Abduction worth seeing
Abduction From The Seraglio a in the whole
Abduction From The Seraglio
Houston Grand Opera
Perhaps Placido Domingo and
Mirella Freni have been capturing
Houston's "operatic eye" for their
performances in Houston Grand
Opera's truly grand production of
Verdi's Aida. Yet, running concur-
rently in the smaller CullenTheater of
Houston' s celebrated and world-class
Wortham Center is a production of
Mozart's "Abduction from the Sera-
glio" which deserves some of that
respect and attention. In the spirit of
HGO's first season in the new
Wortham Center, HGO presents a
new version of this traditional comic
opera based on a new libretto by
Donald Pippin entitled "Yanked
From the Harem."
Those of you familiar with Milo
Foremen's Academy Award-win-
ning film Amadeus may remember
this opera as being the first written by
Mozart after his arrival in Vienna.
Following the dramatic closing scene
with the ship taking the hero and hero-
ine safely from theTurkish shores, the
Holy Roman Emperor Joseph gives
his criticism 'Too many notes!" If
there was any basis at all for this
criticism, it is eliminated by this new
production directed by Mark Shifter.
Shifter explains,"Mozart wrote the
opera to entertain the audiences of his
time and I believe he meant it as a
comedy...but I've been to a lot of
performances of Abduction where I
haven't heard a laugh in the whole
piece." Observing the tremendous
latent humor in the opera, he says that
he int ended to make it "a roller coaster
comedy, where you laugh in some
places, but you also cry in some
places and you're moved by the
beauty of the music."
What results from Shifter and
Pippin's efforts as a staging so new,
so complex, and so perfectly executed
that it is difficult to describe it fully on
paper. I will say from the beginning
that to get the full experience, you
must actually see the production.
The opera is set, of all places, in a
1930's Hollywood sound stage. At
the first cords of the overture, the
curtain to reveal a tremendous, full-
stage placard advertising a new
movie,"The Abduction from the Se-
raglio" in which luscious American
beauties are rescued from the grips of
"pagan love" in a 1930's harem. As
the overture sets the musical back-
ground for the opera, the placard rises
and the audience observes the "plot-
background" for the opera; the film-
ing of the movie. In the simpliest
sense, the filming of the movie is the
opera.
At first, this may sound so bizarre
as to lack any aesthetic appeal, how-
ever, what results is staging that rein-
forces the tremendous beauty of
Mozart's music with more lively and
moving action. The opera proceeds as
the filming proceeds in three" fash-
MarkThomsen stars in Abduction From
ions. Some individual arias are sung
"off-stage" as the "actors" read over
their scripts in preparation for upcom-
ing filming. The bulk of the action
takes place "on-stage" as the per-
formers are filmed for the movie. The
most dramatic and novel method of
filming occurs as a large screen is
lowered on stage and clippings of the
actual "movie" are shown. As I ex-
plained before, and as now becomes
apparent, it is difficult to convey fully
the effects of this new staging on
Fatal Beauty a rehash of Cop II
continued from page 9
folks last week. Luckily, a ACLU
Crack Discrimination Team was
there. With blurring, mind-numbing
speed, they seized the theater for evi-
dence, slapped a writ of caveat emptor
on the guy holding the bag, and sued
the distributor for $4.4 million law-
suit. "It happened so fast...there were
people screaming...I puked," said one
distressed patron.
After a half an hour of this monkey
business that sometimes includes a
floor show and a full-scale roman
orgy, but never free food like at press
sneaks, as they are called in the trades,
they get around to showing the sneak
flick, as they are— you get the pic-
ture.
Trouble is, the sneak flick usually
turns out to be a real piece of dogpie
that only somebody who would listen
to "Like a Virgin" three times in a row
and carries aKRAPKashKarry would
like or even begin to comprehend. But
that's okay, because the popcorn has
a special ingredient that temporarily
raises your dreck tolerance.
Well that's about it for this week—
Oops, sorry.
Fatal Beauty is yet another
Whoopie Goldberg vehicle much like
the Beverly Hills Cop series was for
Eddie Murphy. This time around she
plays a streetwise detective named
Rizzoli. Yes, it's Italian and I don't
get it either.
In fact, if you do get to see this one,
you may begin to get the feeling that
the part was originally written for
some other actress. After Rizzoli
dukes it out with a character played by
Jennifer Warren, you may even get
the feeling it was written for some
other actor.
Fatal Beauty is the name of some
cocaine that is distributed by a
wealthy shopping center magnate.
Rizzoli knows it, but just can't prove
it. We only know it because she
knows it but never proves it.
The weirdness starts when one of
the makers of Fatal Beauty goobers
up the cut and the labels, and then boy
does it earn its nomenclature! But the
only people who know this get
gunned away by these crazies who
therefore take all the coke for them-
selves.
After people start dyin', Whoopie
gets crackin'. She falls in love with
the crooked developer's security guy,
played by Sam Elliot. She tracks
down the bad stuff from the worst
parts of Encino to the ritzy parts of
Van Nuys. She gets in a major shoot-
out in a shopping center owned by
you-know-who. Everybody except
her and Sam Elliot gets killed.
If you like the kind of wiseacreing
that made Beverly Hills Cop II. amus-
ing, then by all means eat some magic
popcorn and see this flick. After all,
the plots are identical.
—Harold Bunniemeister
the Seraglio.
paper.
One final item resulting from this
staging is the appearance of a new
subplot. Due to the fact that Mourt
cast the part of Pasha Selim as a non-
singing part (after all, everyone
knows that Pashas don't sing), Shifter
was able to have director of the
"movie" play the role of the Pasha in
your opera. Just as the Pasha falls in
love with the beautiful Constanza on
stage and tries to take her away from
Belmontz, the director falls in love
with the leading lady and tries to take
her away from the leading man.
What results is an excellent pro-
duction of Abduction, which takes
nothing away from Mozart's moving
music, butrather adds to its timeliness
and attraction. When the opera was
over, I had a hard time explaining to
my date, who had never before seen
an opera, that this was by no means
what all operas are like.
Though there were no glaring
problems, one thing that bothered me
was the ending. Mozart seems to have
had an eye for the dramatic and al-
ways make it a point to build to tre-
mendous climatic endings. In tradi-
tional productions of Abduction, the
ending is a ship sailing offstage with
the hero finally rescuing the heroines
from the Turkish "imprisonment" to
the tumultous cheers of peasants on
the dock.
In this production, the ending has
the "director" of the "movie" stand-
ing on stage after receiving an acad-
emy award. It just does not have the
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CHRIST
KINGLW
lvtheran E3
CHVRCH
Rice at Greenbriar In the Village 523-2864
Sundav Worship 8:00 and 11:00 a.m.
Pastoral Staff available for consultation by appointment
Tansportation available for students by request
For additional information see our campus newsletter
the CALENDAR
Providing Lutheran Campus Ministry at Rice
Ed Peterman and Fred Haman, Pastors
same dramatic effect.
In HGO's production, Evelyn de la
Rosa, an American soprano, plays the
role of the bold and beautiful Con-
terza and Jeanine Thames, another
American soprano, plays the role of
the plucky, air-headed but resource-
ful Blonde, both of which were taken
captive into a Turkish harem. The
harem belongs to the Pasha Selim
along with the director, portrayed by
Red Coomis (who has guest-starred
on General Hospital). The role of the
strong, Islamic fundamentalist head
harem guard, Osmin, is sung by the
Swiss bass, Francois Loupe (inciden-
tally, my favorite scene in the opera
has this fundamentalist, Osmin,
dancing on the tables singing praises
to Coca-Cola). Pedrillo, the sly
piccaro, boyfriend of Blonde, is sung
by the British tenor Bonaventura
Bottone. John DeMain is conducting.
Remaining performances are No-
vember 6 at 8p.m., November 8 at
2:30 p.m. and November 10 at 8 p.m.
—Steven Spears
HAIR SALON
i ' ■ uU"hj tui mon rind women
'ii, i dim make up
i t'lliiph.ini' colors $10
"iv. students fust i ut si1)
243712 University Blvd.
In the Village
522-2350
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Raphael, Michael J. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 75, No. 11, Ed. 1 Friday, November 6, 1987, newspaper, November 6, 1987; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245677/m1/11/?q=%22~1~1%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.