Secco Recit

There hasn't been much new theater to criticize in a while, so here’s a quick low-level musical analysis of “Far Too Late,” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, released this morning . A little surprise for you all. Here is Far Too Late from my new @ALWCinderella , performed by @CarrieHFletcher in an empty Her Majesty's Theatre. - ALW pic.twitter.com/e3ZP4ftahF — Andrew Lloyd Webber (@OfficialALW) September 13, 2020 First off, this is a sad ballad in a major key. Bb Major. The verse starts with one two-bar phrase, repeated, slightly varied, three times. First, it’s a slightly elaborated outlining of the tonic chord, with the odd passing tone. Chord tones highlighted in blue. The second time through the phrase takes us down to the minor vi chord, pretty standard move, establishes us as sad. The repeated phrase is almost the same in its outlining of the chord, but now it overshoots the top note, and has to come back down. So we've got a non-chord tone on a stressed bea...

This title is misleading, because it implies that there is a problem with the classic Cinderella story. But that would require there to be one definitive Cinderella , which there is not. There are countless variants on the story across many many centuries, independently evolved in many cultures, brought together by convergent evolution, split apart by divergent evolution, and so on and so forth. For this, and other reasons, I would like to take a moment to call out those who snarkily berate Disney and other adaptors for "sanitizing" the "original Brothers Grimm version" to make it more "kid-friendly," usually citing the part in the Disney movie where Cinderella's stepsisters conspicuously do not chop off bits of their feet to fit in the glass slipper. To that I say: The idea that Disney or any other adapter is somehow at fault for changing elements of a story in their adaptation is blatantly untrue. Every adaptation of every story ever by definitio...

People like to complain about the terrible lessons of the old Disney films. Cinderella is too passive. Belle has Stockholm Syndrome. Ariel is just an idiot. And they've tried to appeal more to modern audiences by deviating from the standard stories and creating more proactive princesses in films such as The Princess And The Frog  and Frozen , often to the point of feeling really self-conscious and heavy-handed. Not to detract from these movies, of course (and certainly not to detract from the scores, most of which are very good and by Alan Menken). I didn't generate these complaints. I'm relaying them secondhand, and relaying them because I think I can offer a suitable alternative. Several of these classic fairy tales have ready-made operatic alternatives with smart protagonists, good morals, good music, and are out of copyright and already Disney-ready. So to the Disney execs reading this (I know you're out there among my half-dozen or so readers I'm sure I dearly ...