Early Music America Winter 2013 - (Page 29)

Let's put on a... Zarzuela! The Orchestra of New Spain fulfills its director's dream of staging a popular Baroque theater piece an orchestra today have an opportunity to bring a lost masterwork to life for contemporary audiences. It is even more unusual for the masterwork to come from the rich tradition of the Spanish Baroque zarzuela, a form of lyric drama similar to operetta but with a distinctly Spanish flair. Yet this is exactly what the Dallasbased Orchestra of New Spain and its musical director, Grover Wilkins III, were able to accomplish last February, when they presented their opulent, fullscale production of Sebastián Durón's Las Nuevas armas de amor in the work's first modern staged performance. This ambitious venture, reviewed by Dallas music critic Wayne Lee Gay as "a masterful and constantly delightful production," was the result of the passion, scholarship, and collaboration of a team of devoted experts. The vision of staging a Baroque zarzuela in Dallas took over two decades to accomplish. In 1992, Wilkins witnessed a production of the José de Nebra zarzuela, Viento es la dicha de amor, in Madrid. "It was a revelation," Wilkins recalls. "The adherence to Baroque gesture gave it a verisimilitude of social context I had not seen in other Baroque or Classical opera productions." For Wilkins, the complete unity of period visual elements made the production a feast for the senses. "From that moment on, my interests were focused on the idea of someday producing a zarzuela by Sebastián Durón I had seen in Madrid's National Library the previous year. > R ARELY DOES ALL PHOTOS: HENLEYCREATIVE.COM By Rachel Penn Adams In Sebastián Durón's Las nuevas armas de amor, Jupiter confiscates the bow and arrows of Cupid, setting the plot in motion. Early Music America Winter 2013 29 http://www.HENLEYCREATIVE.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Winter 2013

Editor's Note
Reader Forum
Sound Bytes
Musings: Time Traveling with Instruments
Profile: Pure Gold: Beiliang Zhu
Recording Reviews
Let's put on a... Zarzuela!
A Banquet of Music 40 Years in the Serving
Honoring Krebs
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Dido and Aeneas Reconsidered

Early Music America Winter 2013