Review "An Actor’s Revenge"
performed in London in October 1979 by the English Music Theatre |
|
|
"Opera returns to Old Vic with triumph:... a score of an exact, sophisticated and self-effacing skill, not only in its blend of Eastern and Western elements, but in the way in which it slowly and compellingly marshals its power. Precisely reflecting the tradition in which the opera has been conceived, it is music in which every gesture tells, its lean, subtly refined idiom trenchantly accommodating the utmost ferocity and the utmost pathos."
|
|
Robert Henderson : The Daily Telegraph
|
|
|
|
"James Kirkup's excellent libretto of child-like directness is epigrammatic rather than rhapsodic in its poetic set-pieces... Minoru Miki's music centres around the voice parts. There is little ensemble; voices are used in a generally smooth conjunct style which is paralleled in all ages, all cultures. Details of accentuation and word-setting suggest that he may have taken Britten's operas as models in matters of word-setting and accentuation; but the absence of regular patterning or theme development take the music out of known Western categories...Miki is a dramatic composer of real flair."
|
|
Hugo Cole : The Guardian
|
|
|
|
"The Music played by the EMT ensemble of seven was neither pseudo-Eastern nor evocative and atmospheric, but of a style modern enough to incorporate certain melismatic and rhythmic gestures which have long since ceased to be the hallmark of the Far East and are eminently suitable for the accompaniment of the singers on the Stage... If all this suggests a mixture of incompatible elements, then I have badly failed to describe a musical experience that was entirely enchanting and that revealed new ways of rapprochement between East and West."
|
|
Brigitte Schiffer : Contact
|
|
|
Review "An Actor’s Revenge"
The Opera Theatre of St.Louis, Loretto-Hilton Center, June 11,1981 |
|
|
"A completely successful, engrossing lyric drama. Its impact was immediate, its intelligibility almost total. You don't need to know anything about Japanese theater...to be caught up immediately in the wonderful sights and sounds of "Revenge,'' and to be moved deeply by it. Everything worked. Miki's music was a kind of sheer but colorful fabric...artfully varied in rhythms and texture."
|
|
Frank Peters : St.Louis Post Dispatch
|
|
|
|
"An Actor's Revenge adds up to an absorbing evening of music drama, spiced with wonderfully convoluted intrigues... In the Kabuki tradition, there were imaginative theatrical effects that drew gasps from the audience. The music itelf is an unlikely marriage of Japanese and contemporary western idioms, but the union works."
|
|
Donal Henahan : The New York Times
|
|
|
|
"The audience seemed to be quite taken by it. This is...one of the most stunning productions ever mounted by the Opera Theatre - traditional Japanese costumes and the highly stylized movements of Kabuki theater... make for a visual treat that's hard to beat...orchestral interlude(s) that are impressive simply by virtue of being so wonderfully exotic."
|
|
James wierzbicki : St.Louis Globe Democrat
|
|
|
|
"The composer manipulates a few simple musical motifs to achieve great emotional resonance."
|
|
Michael Walsh : Time Magazine
|
|
|
|
"A skillful blend of East and West and a fine marriage of music and theater. Miki's score melds the various instruments."
|
|
Jopo. : Variety
|
|
|
