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Poulenc: Les Mamelles
de Tirésias
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and
Soloists
by Philip Anson
On July 19, in the drafty Tanglewood Theatre Seiji Ozawa
conducted a memorable staged performance of Poulenc's hilarious
Surrealist farce Les Mamelles de Tirésias. The student
orchestra and singers were all top-notch with a remarkable mastery
of the French idiom. Canadian soprano Karen Wierzba played Thérèse,
the woman who undergoes a spontaneous sex-change. Raymond Granlund
as the Policeman and David Ossenfort as The Husband were both
outstanding. The opera was preceded by Milhaud's bizarre L'Homme
et Son Désire, a musical joke without a punchline, consisting of
choral vocalise and repetitive
percussion. |
