Secco Recit

Currently playing at The Cell Theater in Chelsea is Bastard Jones ( official site ), a new musical by Marc Acito ( Allegience)  and Amy Engelhardt. It is based on Henry Fielding's picaresque novel, The History Of Tom Jones , which might be described as Don Giovanni  meets Candide . One of the comic highlights of the show came before the first (technically non-existent) curtain, when Rene Ruiz, who would later assume the character of Partridge, gave his variation on the standard "turn off your cell phones" announcement. Throughout the performance, Ruiz acted as an emcee and stand-up comic, delivering comic asides and puns to the audience, commenting on the action throughout. One-liners like "I'd swear off drinking, but it's not polite to swear" abound. (When he later entered the story at the end of Act I, he added made-up Latin phrases to his list of comic devices.) As the action begins, Tom Jones, the illegitimate ward of a squire, is a notorious wom...

Quick. How many Mozart operas can you name? Magic Flute, Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte, Abduction. Five. Pretty good. How about Puccini? Boheme, Tosca, Butterfly, Turandot, Gianni Schicchi. Also a solid five. Donizetti? L'Elisir, Don Pasquale, Lucia. Three, not bad. Strauss? Salome, Rosenkavalier, Die Fledermaus, Ariadne Auf Naxos? Well, that's an average of two operas per Strauss so I'll let that slide. Beethoven? Just Fidelio? Well he only wrote the one, so that's a hundred percent. And I'm not just listing off the operas I can name off the top of my head, these are the operas that each of these composers have listed on Operabase's top fifty most frequently performed operas. There are certain one-hit wonders in the opera world. Bizet with Carmen , Leoncavallo with Pagliacci , Mascagni with Cavalleria Rusticana , and even Strauss with Die Fledermaus . Generally these composers, popular though their individual hits may be, don't get listed as among ...