Reported From Area 51.
By T.R. Reid, SANTA FE, N.M — The- odyssey of the battle-scarred warrior making his precarious approach back to a lover waiting at house is the oldest tale in Western literature — the stuff of epic poems, plays, novels, movies and lots of operas. So it’s a delight to report in that the most recent manifestation of this oft-told tale — the opera version of the best-selling novel “Cold Mountain,” just given its world premiere showing in Santa Fe — captures all of its journey, romance & pathos in a fresh, vibrant musical idiom. In “Cold Mountain,” composer Jennifer Higdon — one of the very popular figures in modern classical music — & her librettist, Gene Scheer, have embraced the saga of W. R. Inman, a Confederate deserter within the last many months of the Civil War trekking across the Blue Ridge to reach Chilly Mountain, N.C., & the arms of the long-suffering Ada Monroe. With the facility of music & the impact of a shocking set, the brand new opera makes the tale more compact and much more compelling than the prize-winning 1997 novel by Charles Frazier or the 2003 Nicole Kidman/Renée Zellweger movie adaptation. Higdon joked in that she’d to compress the sprawling novel to turn it right in to a two-act opera. …
Read more on this matter…Santa Fe Opera breathes new life in to epic Civil War tale ‘Cold Mountain’
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