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Flying Over Sunset: The Real Drug Was The Friends We Made Along The Way

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 I saw Flying Over Sunset --  the new musical by James Lapine ( Sunday In The Park With George ), Michael Korie ( Grey Gardens ), and Tom Kitt ( Next To Normal ) -- once at the very beginning of previews, and a second time at the very end, two days before opening. It is interesting to watch a new work in development, to see how it changes as its creators try to clarify their intent. And while Flying Over Sunset  did not fix all of its problems in its preview period, I can say with no hesitation that they did make strong steps toward rendering the show considerably more coherent. Things which seemed random the first time around clicked into place, things which seemed redundant better justified their retreading of trodden ground, and things which seemed aimlessly didactic were still fairly didactic, but less aimlessly so. And the whole thing became tighter with the cutting of about fifteen minutes of run time. Flying Over Sunset  opened on December 13th, 2021, to mostly negative reviews.
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Musical Structures, Familiarity and Unfamiliarity, in The Phantom Of The Opera

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This is here for the thumbnail.
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Review: Opera NexGen's Virtual "Cosi Fan Tutte"

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This weekend marked the inaugural production of a new opera company, which is something I don't think a lot of us were expecting in the midst of a still-ongoing pandemic. Opera NexGen made its first foray onto the scene with a virtual presentation of Cosi Fan Tutte , ambitiously presented with live performances from the singers, to a pre-recorded piano track. Oh all the things that can go wrong. I cannot in the least bit hold many of the technical glitches which occurred against the company, cast, or creative team. As we've all learned these past twelve months, these things are difficult and there is no way to be sure of everything working perfectly. There were lag issues, sync issues, sound balance issues, crackling sounds as singers overpowered their microphones, and, during much of the first act, background noise that sounded as though it might have been conversation coming from a control room, which included a little bit of the performance in progress, about two seconds ah
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A Musical Analysis of Kander and Ebb's Steel Pier

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An Analysis of Arthur Sullivan's "Ivanhoe" on its 130th Anniversary

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Okay I'm still really hung up on that horse thing. Is Brian on good terms with Zamor or not? How does Zamor feel about all this? Illustration by Maurice Greiffenhagen.
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The Mountebanks: In Defense of a Lozenge

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1. Introduction Sooner or later, most fans of Gilbert and Sullivan become aware of the infamous “Lozenge Plot” that was the source of some of the duo’s quarreling in the later years of their collaboration. The story, as popularized in the 1999 film Topsy Turvy goes that in 1884, in the wake of the relative failure of Princess Ida , Gilbert proposed to Sullivan for their next opera a plot about a magic lozenge that transforms whoever consumes it into whatever they are pretending to be. Sullivan rejected the plot out of hand, for two primary reasons. Firstly, that the premise bore at least a superficial resemblance to that of The Sorcerer , and he did not want to be seen as repeating himself. Secondly, that at this point Sullivan was tiring of Gilbert’s zany, unrealistic plots, and wanted to set “a story of human interest and probability.” The lozenge plot was something Gilbert was clearly intent on doing at some point though, and he periodically floated it again in various forms and g
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