Star Wars: A New Musical Hope for Bootless

Star Wars: A New Musical Hope, Bootless Stagework's much-anticipated summer show, was timed perfectly. Opening just a week after the Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con, with its light sabre training classes and the famous 501st Legion of Imperial Storm Trooper costume players, area fans are still mentally in a galaxy far far away -- and Star Wars the Musical is a nice way to top it off.

Don't expect 501st-level costuming (although some of the costumes, most notably Chewbacca and a motorized R2D2, are amazing) -- that's not what this show is about. Adapted by Jeremy Gable, it's a campy parody of Episode IV (known simply as Star Wars to anyone over the age of 30) set to music. Sort of a cross between "Family Guy's" Blue Harvest and a Broadway musical. Funny one-liners are woven into faithful stage incarnations of movie scenes, with original songs by Timothy Edward Smith and Hunter Nolan. Whether you find the gags funny depends a lot on your relationship with the film -- fans will follow the humor easily, while I imagine anyone who isn't well familiar with the series is likely to be lost.

Some of the gags, especially involving John Rachlin's Darth Vader and Christopher Todd-Waters as C3PO, are very successful; others, like Han Solo (Ryan Mulholland) declaring that he has a "case of the Mondays" are a bit too corny, even for goofy comedy. The show actually works best when it's not trying to be funny -- an original "filler" scene featuring Princess Leia (Maria Leonetti) in her cell after her planet has been destroyed, the confrontation between Obi-Wan (Shaun Yates) and Darth Vader, and the Rebel Squadron's climactic mission, are definite highlights. The laughs are there, though -- my 12-year old son laughed throughout. The show features some stellar vocal talent, but at the end of the day, this is a show geared toward Star Wars fans before lovers of musical theater.

Star Wars: A New Musical Hope runs through June 17 at OperaDelaware's Black Box theater. Tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets.

Tartaglione and the Titan

Maestro Simeone Tartaglione

Simeone Tartaglione has worked for two years to get the Newark Symphony to reach beyond their already fairly high level of achievement and on Sunday, May 20, he showed a large audience that he has come far in achieving that goal.

Alyssa Blackstone

Concerto winner Alyssa Blackstone was extremely confident and businesslike in her approach to the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A minor, Opus 37 by Henri Vieuxtemps.  Ms. Blackstone has no problem projecting above the orchestra, even in the lower register of the violin. She has been studying with Sylvia Ahramjian and has reached a high level of technical proficiency.   Her technique and physical strength in playing are the tools she will need as she begins to work on the subtler nuances of phrasing and interpretation in college.

The second piece on the program was the titan to which I refer in the title:  Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major.  This symphonic poem, called The Titan by the composer, is such a difficult one for any orchestra that few put it on the program.  The very large orchestration is the first hurdle:  eight horns and quadruple woodwinds. It is hard to gather the musicians or even fine a venue with space for all those musicians – but Maestro Tartaglione recruited enough players to get the mammoth Mahler sound.  There were small areas which were a bit rough, but all in all the mood of the performance evoked what I had been hearing on a CD of Zubin Mehta conducting the same piece with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

The highlight of the Mahler performance was the third movement’s wild and raucous funeral dirge based on a wood engraving showing animals as pallbearers for a hunter’s funeral.  The reversal of roles was reflected in a reversal of the expected music – Mahler based the dirge on the German folk version of the tune we know as Frère Jacques and added jazzy, irreverent klezmer interludes.  The orchestra followed Maestro Tartaglione in this ironic and abruptly changing music with ease, dipping into the whirling tunes smoothly and tunefully – even playfully. 

The crashing and clashing symbols and timpani were spot on (with excellent playing by percussionists Debra Bialecki and S. Mordecai Fuhrman on timpani and Gordon Engelgau on cymbals as well as Sergei Dickey on bass drum), but I could have done with a little less thunderous affect.

Next year’s music will seem like easy street now that they played the Mahler.  Maestro Tartaglione and the Newark Symphony deserve congratulations on a great achievement.

See www.newarksymphony.org. 

Reporting from the Grand Opera House Stage

The Grand Opera

On Monday, May 14, I hurried home from work, wolfed down a cold supper and zoomed off to the Grand Opera House.  Dr. Tim Schwarz had offered the Wilmington Community Orchestra a chance to warm up in the hall so we could get the feel of it before the concert.  Unfortunately, when I arrived to warm up, the people in charge would not let me touch the piano, so I sat on the bleachers and played air piano during the warm up.

After the air warm-up, I zipped over to the Sarah Bernhardt Room – a beautifully paneled side-room on your left as you enter the Grand Opera House.  There was a short chamber concert before the orchestral performance which was a great program performed mainly by the adult members of the Wilmington Community Orchestra and some of their friends.  A flute trio by Kaspar Kummer, a modern tango for strings, the first movement of the Beethoven Wind Octet in E-Flat Major, Opus 103,  a movement of the Duo for Violin and Viola in G Major by Mozart and a wind quintet by Darius Milhaud called La Cheminée du Roi René.  Note:  Bassoonist Jennifer Hugh came in as a last minute sub and did a great job in both the chamber works and the symphonic works and she has a heavy gig this coming Sunday in the Newark Symphony.  Brava!

Then I followed the crowd back to the main hall for the concerto winner performances.  The orchestra sounded fantastic in the Grand – man, do they have wonderful acoustics.  I enjoyed hearing the young concerto winners.  Marius Sander(student of Eliezer Gutman)  played the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor, Opus 64,  Madeline Cheong (student of Jennifer Chen) played the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto in G Minor, Opus 25 and Alexis Meschter (student of Lee Snyder) played the Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Minor by Henri Vieuxtemps.

I went to the beginning of the intermission chamber concert – an excellent rendition by some young students of the MozartQuintet for Clarinet and Strings, K 581, but left early to check out the stage.  First of all, since the stage hands moved the piano, I had no idea if I would be able to see the conductor from wherever they put it.  Secondly, I feared that I would not be able to get on the stage after the chorus and all the musicians were in place.

I went and dutifully tested the piano bench, closed to half stick so the lid wouldn’t block my view of the conductor and tested a few quiet notes which sounded amazingly loud from the stage.  I couldn’t start practicing full force because the audience had already started to come back in.  So, nerves up and move on.

I enjoyed watching the Delaware Children’s Chorus come shyly on stage from my offstage vantage point.  They were trying so hard to do the right thing and were small and adorable.  Dr. Schwarz mouthed the words for them to help as they sang.  Then the Delaware Women’s Chorus joined them on stage.

Next was my gig on the piano so I went on stage from the piano side (no percussion to stumble over on that side) and survived my piece.  I rushed off and went under the grand in the cavernous passage to the steps to the front lobby.  I was delighted to have seen the backstage that all my friends use before they play with the Delaware Symphony.

See www.musicschoolofdelaware.org.