A Jazz Opera Makes Its Bow
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
ON STATE A Jazz Opera Makes Its Bow By Joseph T Shipley Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras). A jazz opera. Music by Sol Berkowitz. Libretto by Herbert Hartig. Presented by and at the Tamiment Playhouse in...
...Mitzie Cottle could not add the depth that the libretto failed to provide in depicting Selina, the lass who flits from despairing Hawkins to disillusioned Ben to the waiting "boys" in her quest for freedom for her fun...
...the Music Circus at Lambertville, N.J...
...Among the players busied in this type of theater are Henry Morgan in The Seven Year Itch...
...One wonders, therefore, why the accompanying music is in full jazz idiom but the voices (except for Monk's) come in the arias and flowing style of lyrical or romantic opera...
...The scenery and lights gave a sense of spaciousness and depth to the street scenes of the Carnival, while two revolving platforms on opposite sides and different levels gave scope for the "Toujours Gai" cafe and the flat where Hawkins, Selina and Ben work out their sordid story...
...Its promotion of cultural growth in the United States, under director Ben Josephson, already includes annually a spring conference on public affairs, a concert series, a national college essay contest, and an award for the best American biography...
...This summer has witnessed there the world premiere of an American opera...
...One almost expected her to pound the floor in a tantrum...
...What struck one first was the superb production by the Tamiment company...
...the Brandy-wine Music Box at Concordville, Pa...
...The Golden Egg, by Philip King...
...Out of these Tamiment shows have come many notable performers, such as Carol Charming, Julie Munshin, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca and Danny Kaye...
...This Pennsylvania resort presents concerts and theatricals for its thousand and more weekly guests...
...It is a great defect in the structure of American life that the young playwright and the young composer have little chance to try their fledgling wings...
...The Frankie-and-Johnny theme can be and has been done in jazz...
...Material for the spectaculars that Max Liebman brought to television was first written and produced by him at Tamiment...
...there is hope for riper things to come...
...Ben Josephson's presentation of the world premiere of an American opera at Tamiment offers a new experience to the summer audience and a new outlet to the aspiring artist...
...Best of the major singers were Wayne Sherwood as Ben and Larry Kert as Hawkins's friend Monk in a jazz-styled performance that fit the work...
...A few offer new plays in tryout, with hopeful eyes on Broadway...
...Colleges and off-Broadway houses, too often merely imitating Broadway, have recently become more receptive to such fresh if not wholly formed spirits...
...It is pleasant to see professional competence at this theater in the woods of the Poconos...
...The general effects of the Mardi Gras street crowds were well managed, though the "strippers, tassle dancers, and women of the quarter" were obviously not professionals of these sorts...
...Among such plays are Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap...
...Sloan Simpson in Tea and Sympathy...
...And now, at its attractive theater in the Poconos, Tamiment has added a new cultural activity to its entertainment program...
...With a libretto set on so shallow a philosophy and girl, composer Berkowitz had one strike against him...
...Zero Mostel, Beatrice Kraft and Avon Long in Kismet...
...Based on a New Orleans story by librettist Herbert Hartig, Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) is a jazz opera by Sol Berkowitz, professor of music at Queens College...
...Most of the summer theaters offer plays that have had their hearing on Broadway and are adorned with a visiting star...
...Another was the absence of songs...
...A Sudden Spring, by Halsted Welles...
...Distinct from all these playhouses is the theater at Tamiment...
...Original skits are written by the resident playwright, enacted by the resident dancing and acting staffs...
...Beasop's Fables, a revue with Beatrice Lillie...
...Some theaters specialize in musicals, as the Finger Lakes Lyric Circus at .Skaneateles, N.Y...
...The opera ends with her wailing and throwing herself to the ground because "everyone" wants her to stay put, be faithful, stop running around...
...Presented by and at the Tamiment Playhouse in Tamiment, Pa...
...Chico Marx in The Fifth Season...
...perhaps we will not have plays in the American folk-music mode, or a rich development of "jazz opera," until all the aspects of the work are fused into a whole...
...and Welcome, Darlings, a revue with Talullah Bankhead...
...Meanwhile, Fat Tuesday is much more cheerfully presented than the similarly banal books and echoic strains of Menotti...
...And it is encouraging to find Tamiment offering an outlet to the American composer, who has too few opportunities to be heard and thus to hear himself and move to better things...
...In the 150 summer theaters that dot our Eastern countryside from Maine to Kentucky, several patterns are manifest...
...Without effective separable songs, the voices here are instruments in the composition, like the tympani or violins...
...the Arundel Opera Theater at Kennebunkport, Me...
Vol. 39 • August 1956 • No. 35
