| Back in the day, this sort of casting was applied to Man of La Mancha, no doubt because the female roles in particular can be handled by operatic voices, and all of the roles are traditional legit. We needn't itemize the recordings; I have at least one. But even there, the lovely sounds didn't quite capture the drama in the conceit, whatever one thinks of the material's musical adaptation. The show was about the magic of theatrical metamorphosis, political prisoner Cervantes, awaiting his fate from the Spanish Inquisition, transforming himself into his character, the spontaneously created Quixote using other inmates on hand to tell the story. Rendered as pure opera, or even operetta, it felt shallower, more pretentious. Dressing it up in bigger voices created bombast, not intimate access. |
