This is Steven Pisano's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Steven Pisano's activity
Steven Pisano
Recent Activity
Hi Char,
Yes! Yes! Yes! So cool to hear about your past experiences.
Steve
Lez Zeppelin at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Steven Pisano (All photos by Steven Pisano.) Consider, if you will, the following partial description of an object in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which ended this past weekend: Archtop with F-holes and Venetian cutaway; laminated maple body and neck, rosewood fingerboar...
Hi Rosemarie,
Thanks for your message! I was definitely won over!
Steve
Lez Zeppelin at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Steven Pisano (All photos by Steven Pisano.) Consider, if you will, the following partial description of an object in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which ended this past weekend: Archtop with F-holes and Venetian cutaway; laminated maple body and neck, rosewood fingerboar...
"Three Way," a Trio of One-Act Operas about Sex and Love, at BAM
Posted Jun 16, 2017 at Feast of Music
Comment
3
Gerald,
Thank you so much for your comment. When I say the production needed a bigger voice, I didn't mean to impugn either of the performers--and certainly not Amanda Crider, who I agree was first rate--but the production itself. And perhaps what I meant, in hindsight, is that the music was not strong enough, at least in my opinion. The movie the opera is based on is an intense psychological experience. This operatic version is not. Perhaps the small, cramped set was meant to convey a sense of claustrophobia, but I thought the performers were so restricted they could hardly move for fear of stepping on each other or banging into the camera boom. Of course, a stage version cannot convey the wide open windy seashore of the movie, which adds to the isolation, and thereby heightens the emotional intimacy between them in contrast. This contrast is achieved in the movie through the cinematographer's hallmark close-ups, which is not an option on stage. (I found it interesting that Bergman actually wanted to call the movie "Cinematography," but they talked him out of it!)
Alas, I still do not believe that this operatic version "added" anything to the Bergman original, nor did it explore it in sufficiently new ways to be a reexamination. To me, it set its sights too low, too small. And that is why I said it needed a bigger voice. Perhaps turning this story into an opera was not a task for a chamber opera but for an opera more on a grand scale. Thus, a "bigger voice."
Thanks again for your feedback.
Steve
………………………..
Steven Pisano
[email protected]
718-243-1025 home
347-946-4914 cell
"Persona," a New Opera: Finding a Voice at National Sawdust
by Steven Pisano (All photographs by Steven Pisano.) Last weekend at National Sawdust, Williamsburg's hip new venue for contemporary music, Beth Morrison Projects presented Persona, a new chamber opera based on the 1965 Ingmar Bergman film with music by Rome Prize-winning composer Keeril Makan,...
Alarm Will Sound Performs "I Was Here I Was" at the Metropolitan Museum
Posted Jun 25, 2014 at Feast of Music
Comment
0
Steven Pisano is now following The Typepad Team
Dec 16, 2013
More...
Subscribe to Steven Pisano’s Recent Activity