#ITALO CALVINO THE TWILIGHT ZONE FREE#

It would not have, thus, been hard for SharonвЂ™s herculean act of coordination and inventive production to overwhelm a delicate and beautiful opera. The worst was an intrusive documentary camera crew, bulls with bright lights in an operatic china shop. Self-congratulating politicians who spoke afterward didnвЂ™t help matters. The homeless also take shelter here, which adds an uncomfortable element of slumming. The opera audience, with our headphones, is ostentatious. The singers include two stately women (Delaram Kamareh and Ashley Knight) who take on a variety of roles and a three-member chorus. They are ravishingly outfitted by costume designer E.B. They seductively take over the ticket booths.

They rush through the station like hurried balletic commuters. Choreographer Danielle Agami installs the eight dancers into a wide variety of scenic elements. There are many, quite literally, moving parts to this production, which is a collaboration with Los Angeles Dance Project. He was heavy-set, in a plaid shirt, hooded vest and carrying a backpack. I missed Marco Polo (Ashley Faatoalia) most of the time. You discover that the angry-looking fellow in a wheelchair - no, not that one but the other one - is Kublai Khan (Cedric Berry). Sooner or later you look up and find the text projected on a wall. SharonвЂ™s production is meant to stimulate discovery. Armilla has no walls, no ceilings, no floors, just pipes and rushing water and slender young women luxuriating вЂњunder the showers suspended in the void.вЂќ Adelma is where the dead come to life. Isidora is a place of spirals and young love enviously observed by the old. Three cities, though, must stand for the rest. That was relatively easy because all you had to do was pay attention to the crowds.Д¬erroneвЂ™s libretto stays close to William WeaverвЂ™s excellent translation of CalvinoвЂ™s Italian text. But most of us, operagoers that we are, scouted out the performers and pursued them. These included buying a drink at the bar or taking off the headphones and enjoying the silence. However, Yuval Sharon - the artistic director of the Industry, the stage director of the performance and the mastermind of the project - provided several helpful suggestions in the program booklet.

#ITALO CALVINO THE TWILIGHT ZONE FREE#

There are fanciful dramatic outbursts as well, but mostly the score sounds as if it floats, very agreeably, on an acoustical cushion slightly lighter than air.ДЄfter the overture, we were on our own for the next hour, free to wander the waiting rooms and other public areas, indoors and out, while listening to the live performance on the headphones. His vocal style is lyrical and owes a debt to John Adams.

The confusion between virtual and visceral had already begun.Д¬errone is a composer based in Brooklyn who turns 30 next year, and his instrumental writing has the quality of glittery, half-lighted surfaces enhanced by Postminimalist patterns. Most on Saturday were not tempted to remove headphones here, although the roomвЂ™s acoustics were first-rate. The performance began communally with a short overture performed by an 11-member ensemble, which stays put throughout the 70-minute performance in a room apart from the main station.

The emperor must invent his own invisible cities.ДЄnd so must we in experiencing CerroneвЂ™s opera. By inventing cities of the living and the dead, of the past and present, of the real and the unreal, he ultimately shows Khan his Venice. Polo answers that cities must be conjured from memory and desire. The emperor asks his Venetian guest why he leaves out the fabled Venice. All are - like latter-day Lake Wobegons - imaginary places defined by the sum of their seemingly quotidian peculiarities.

The idea of putting on an opera in a train station where the characters can be nearly indistinguishable from everyday people in the waiting rooms is a strange and alluring subversion of Samuel JohnsonвЂ™s oft-quoted characterization of opera as вЂњan exotic and irrational entertainment.вЂќ But thatвЂ™s just the beginning of an existential confusion between reality and unreality, of the private experience of listening to the opera on headphones while participating in the activities of a public space.Д¬erroneвЂ™s opera is based on Italo CalvinoвЂ™s 1972 poetic Italian novel, вЂњInvisible Cities,вЂќ in which the explorer Marco Polo entertains and bewilders the aging 13th century Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan with tales of travels to 55 mysterious cities.

Italo calvino the twilight zone