An Operatic Monday

If I wasn't seeing Dr. Atomic tomorrow night, I would certainly be tuning into my local PBS affiliate who will be broadcasting 'The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.' For once, channel 11 is getting with the program (ha!) and showing this when the rest of the country is getting it. Naturally, I won't be home to see it, but will be getting the DVD so it is all good.

But I have to warn you, Chicagoans. The Chicago Tribune's TV week has this to say about Mahagonny:
"Mahagonny, Mahagonny, that toddlin' town... An opera for people who think they don't like the genre, Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a satrirical tale of a town that was built for pleasure, but not immune to pain..." And goes on to list the stars as Audra McDonald, Patti LuPone, John Doyle and Anthony Dean Griffey.

First of all - John Doyle's not IN it, ya morons!
And second of all "An opera for people who think they don't like the genre?" Really? I have news for you, TV Week writers - if someone doesn't like the genre of opera, watching this ain't gonna turn no converts. I DO like the genre a whole bunch. I sat through R&FoftCoM live three times (once in Chicago with that god awful production with Malfitano and the polar bear, and twice in LA for this Patti/Audra/John Doyle/Anthony Dean Griffey production). And I liked this production better than the Chicago one, which I didn't understand at all. I still didn't really understand it, but at least I had Patti to watch (seriously. I missed an entire scene the first night because I was watching Patti downstage).

Mahagonny was the second opera I'd ever seen at Lyric - I saw it right after Mourning Becomes Electra (another one presented in English). That production at Lyric was such a disaster, I think I would have cried if that had been my introduction to opera.

It's very dense material (I think I read somewhere that Patti said that the material was hard to understand...) although there are one or two great tunes in it... "Moon of Alabama" which is stuck in my head right now!