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Benjamin Spierman

Lady in the Dark

January 31, 2023

Unfortunately, this is musical comedy and does not need operatic voices, Lawrence being famously a singer with a very small range, while Kaye came from cabaret and night club. With all of the leads double cast, Sunday matinee’s singers seemed either miscast or poorly directed by Eric Lamp and Benjamin Spierman. Matthew Imhoff’s sets which are carried on and off by the singers took an inordinately long time and there were moments of dead time during office scenes which also seemed underpopulated. While conductor and artistic director Michael Spierman gave a creditable performance of the complete score, it did not seem to hang together but felt like individual numbers, unlike many other Weill scores which feel integrated and whole. [more]

Sacco and Vanzetti: A New American Opera

September 20, 2022

The finished score by Lehrman is 50% music he created based on themes by Blitzstein: pieces of his unproduced 1932 opera "The Condemned" (an earlier work about Sacco and Vanzetti), a march, a cabaret song, a song cycle, a piano piece for mezzo-soprano Brenda Lewis who had starred in Blitzstein’s 1949 opera "Regina" (based on Lillian Hellman’s "The Little Foxes"), and portions of 13 songs from "Reuben, Reuben," his 1955 folk opera set in Little Italy which failed in Boston and which he had been recycling in later works. Blitzstein’s libretto for the three-act "Sacco and Vanzetti"(performed at Lehman College in two parts) was based on transcripts, letters, and interviews with the principals involved in the case. One addition approved by the estate was the inclusion of Governor Michael Dukakis’ exoneration of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1977, the 50th anniversary of their execution, as a fitting new ending to the opera. [more]