Listeners' reactions to the opera The Okavango Macbeth by Tom Cunningham with a libretto by novelist Alexander McCall Smith, are likely to depend on the expectations they bring to it. The piece is in fact an opera because it is sung through, but its musical idiom is solidly Broadway. It sticks close to the conventions of late 20th century middle-of-the-road musicals, with predictable harmonic progressions and standard song and chorus forms. The songs are fluently melodic and lyrically mellow and the accompaniments are ...
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Listeners' reactions to the opera The Okavango Macbeth by Tom Cunningham with a libretto by novelist Alexander McCall Smith, are likely to depend on the expectations they bring to it. The piece is in fact an opera because it is sung through, but its musical idiom is solidly Broadway. It sticks close to the conventions of late 20th century middle-of-the-road musicals, with predictable harmonic progressions and standard song and chorus forms. The songs are fluently melodic and lyrically mellow and the accompaniments are supportive and unobtrusive. Taken on its own terms, within those parameters, the piece succeeds more fully than many attempts at new popular music theatre. The premise is intriguing; in a band of baboons (one of the few species besides humans in which power is inherited) a story derived from Macbeth unfolds: the duplicitous Lady Macbeth, intended wife for Duncan, goads the weak Macbeth into murdering him so they can marry and assume positions of power. Not surprisingly, the affair ends...
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Add this copy of The Okavango Macbeth: an Opera By Tom Cunningham & to cart. $29.85, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2012 by Delphian Records: DCD34096.
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