Secco Recit

I made a  post  last month with some of my thoughts about the new Broadway musical  Natasha, Pierre, And The Great Comet Of 1812 , based on the cast recordings and my research into the show. Now, having seen it live, I have a few more thoughts. There's been a lot written about this musical already, so I'm going to keep the review part of this short. We already know that this is a well-written music with great music. The cast album is out. It's not up to me to tell you whether you'll like the music. Josh Groban left the show on Sunday, and the Pierre I saw was Dave Malloy, the librettist and composer, who originated the role off-Broadway. I am generally opposed to writers and composers originating roles in their own works (cameos excepted) as a matter of principle, just as it's generally considered bad form for directors to cast themselves. That said, despite being in the title of the musical, Pierre is actually a fairly minor role, hardly featuring in the plot a...

After my last post speaking rather negatively about one of this season's most highly-acclaimed musicals, I thought I'd better make up for it by extolling the virtues of another one. But rather than more or less parroting what all the other reviews say, I hope to contextualize in the frame of a classical oratorio. And this blog post will be short. Much of the praise for Natasha, Pierre, And The Great Comet Of 1812  cites its highly innovative and immersive staging. It is perhaps more often described as an "experience" rather than a "musical." The corollary to this is that I have heard it criticized as being too complicated, difficult to follow, and not having enough hummable tunes. I will not justify that hummability criticism with a response. I thought Sondheim smashed that argument into the ground. The funny thing is that I don't find Great Comet  complicated at all. I had to look it up on Wikipedia (it does tell you to do your research in the ope...