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"How many opera companies have dared to offer as their debut production the American premiere of a work by a sixteen-year-old genius, its vocal writing of jaw-dropping difficulty, its allegorical 'action' virtually nonexistent, and yet managed to elicit whoops, stomps and whistles of approval from a captivated audience? Not many, to be sure, but one is the Henry Street Chamber Opera...Director Christopher Alden and scenic designer Andrew Cavanaugh Holland concocted a piquant opening tableau for Metastasio's stale book: a groovy bachelor pad, with Scipio dozing à trois alongside the luscious goddesses competing for his favor...Alden deserves praise for a valiant and winning attempt to bring life to a forbiddingly inert azione teatrale...
"Henry Street's splendid young singers proved an unfailing delight...There are probably few singers before the public capable of performing this high-flying music with similar verve and gumption...All were well served by the tart, assertive playing of the Henry Street Chamber Opera orchestra under Goren." - Marion Lignana Rosenberg, Opera News, August 2001
"Opera can transfigure in unexpected ways. One of the most promising new ventures around is the Henry Street Chamber Opera...There is much to cheer about the arrival of this new company in one of the city's rare jewel-like settings-and elegant 350-seat auditorium...Until now, New York has lacked a true chamber-opera company capable of mining the largely neglected repertory of small-scale works from the Baroque era to the present. Such works can only be properly staged in an intimate setting-a virtue that cannot be claimed by either the New York State Theater or the Metropolitan Opera House. Moreover, the city has badly needed a new opportunity for young singers to show what they're made of before landing at the overly scrutinized New York City Opera and the Met, as well as for stage directors to let loose their imaginations without fear of arousing the sort of booing from the crypt that attends so much radical innovation at those houses...
"What made the evening such a delight was the sheer energy of the enterprise-Mr. Goren's fleet-footed conducting of a well-trained Baroque ensemble...But the really transfiguring element was the singing...[The entire cast, which sang] with so much beauty of sound and intensity of projection brought opening night's largely uptown, opera-jaded audience to its feet, and sent me out into wherever I was, impatient to hear what else this intrepid little company has up its sleeve." - Charles Michener, The New York Observer, April 23, 2001
"On Friday night the company [Henry Street Chamber Opera] made a propitious debut with a delightful production of Mozart's Il Sogno di Scipione...[Stage director Christopher Alden], working with the scenic designer Andrew Cavanaugh Holland and the costume designer Fabio Toblini, has produced a fanciful and funny show...
"Il sogno, performed in Italian with English supertitles, has impracticably difficult vocal parts. Though these young singers were pushed to their limits, they gamely dispatched Mozart's da capo arias, replete with elaborate Handelian passagework and high C's galore...The company's music director, Neal Goren, drew a buoyant performance from the 25-piece chamber orchestra...[The character Licenza] aptly directed praise to the audience that had turned out to support this plucky new company." - Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, April 10, 2001
Read more about Il Sogno di Scipione
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