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The Broadway Bomb: 200 skateboarders have a death wish on Saturday
Published on 10/10/08
Published on 10/9/08
Video
What do you get when you put nine countertenors together onstage? More androgyny than Bowie Night at the Pyramid Club, for one thing. Cross-dressing goes classical when period-instrument orchestra Les Arts Florissants presents the North American premiere of Il Sant’Alessio. Composed in 1631 by Stefano Landi, with a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi—who later became Pope Clement IX—this rarely seen Baroque opera recounts the life of 5th-century St. Alexis, and is considered the first opera on a historical subject.
Directed in a semistaged production by Benjamin Lazar, Il Sant’Alessio features a seemingly record number of countertenors (a flock of falsettists? a gaggle of…?) who sing virtually every part, including Alessio’s mother and wife. (Originally written for soprano voices, such roles were performed by boys or castrati, as women were banned from the stage.) The title character will be performed by up-and-coming French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky. Three basses and noted French boys choir Maîtrise de Caen provide vocal contrast.
With no predominant musical aesthetic in the 1620s and ’30s, Il Sant’Alessio is a stylistic stew, featuring an unusual mixture of melodic simplicity and rhythmic drive, complex counterpoint and delicate lyric lines. Rospigliosi’s libretto is an equally atypical assortment of tragedy, commedia dell’arte and supernatural spectacle. Yet despite these seemingly disparate ingredients, the result is a well-balanced, tasty morsel of all-male music-making. So how many countertenors does it take to screw…oh, never mind.
Rose Theater (at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall); Mon 29, Tue 30
