Monday, August 5, 2013

KING FOR A DAY: Verdi's UN GIORNO DI REGNO at Glimmerglass Festival 2013


Patrick O'Halloran as Edoardo, Ginger Costa-Jackson as Marchesa and Jacqueline Echols as Giulietta in  Verdi's King for a Day. Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

***   (out of five)

Reviewed by James Karas
 
Whether you call it Un Giorno di Regno or King for a Day, Giuseppe Verdi’s second opera and his first comedy is mostly unknown. That has not stopped the Glimmerglass Festival from mounting a spirited production for its 2013 season in the Alice Busch Opera Theatre on the shores of Otsego Lake in upstate New York..

The production takes advantage of the comic elements of the opera and in fact enhances them by using an English adaptation of Felice Romani’s creaky libretto by American writer Kelley Rourke. She has moved the opera to the 1950’s (with beehive hairdos and a young Elvis Presley as “The King”) and director Christian Rath treats it as the silly comedy that it is.

My full review of this production may be read here:

http://www.bachtrack.com/review-glimmerglass-2013-king-for-a-day

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