Music and theater stories for your reading pleasure
For the benefit of those who do not automatically find every breathless bit of my prose, I just wanted you to mention two stories that appear elsewhere on the Sun site. Both happen to have string quartets in common. Adventurous music lovers can read about the cool group called Rhymes with Opera, which performs an intriguing program titled "Criminal Intent" at 6 p.m. Saturday at Windup Space.
In addition to the regular members of the ensemble (two composers, three singers), the West Wend String Quartet will participate, backing some of the operas on the program and also playing a set of works by Kyle Gann, Alfred Schnittke and Rhymes with Opera founding member Ruby Fulton.
Theater and music fans would find it well worth a trip to ...
Classical music and musicians don't get a great deal of attention from playwrights. Hollinger succeeds quite well, I think, at capturing the milieu and the motivations of this world. (Even the little details ring true, as when a young violist auditioning for a vacancy in the quartet worries about dental insurance.)
Like Terrence McNally's "The Lisbon Traviata," "Opus" takes a questionable turn at the end, but, hey, I've known some classical compositions that do the same.
PHOTO OF 'OPUS' (by Stan Barouh) COURTESY OF OLNEY THEATRE CENTER
