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| David Adam Moore as Melisso in Alcina (Photo: Philippe Tremblay-Berberi) |
David Adam Moore, who is featured in October in our 2014 Barihunks Charity Calendar, is currently appearing in Handel's Alcina in director R. B. Schlather's innovative production at the Whitebox Art Center in New York City. There will be performances on September 20 and 21 at the Whitebox main exhibition space.
Handel’s 1735 opera Alcina is a story of love and illusion that includes some of the composer's most inventive and melodic music. Schlather is staging this work in an untraditional opera venue and is opening up all the musical and staging rehearsals up to September 17, as well as the General Rehearsal on September 19th at 7pm. These rehearsals are free, except on Thursdays, thanks to an IndieGoGo campaign, which you can still donate to. For the final performances, the opera will be enacted live with an orchestra, in Italian, utilizing new technologies with projected English subtitles.
The opera is set on the island of the enchantress Alcina, and explores themes of identity, illusion, and transformation. This island exists as a beautiful landscape in the middle of the ocean, where Alcina culls her powers to create a paradise, only to lure and seduce the knights that wash up on her shore, one of whom is the heroic Ruggiero. Alcina’s magic causes Ruggiero to fall under her spell and, in doing so, he forsakes his duty as a knight and forgets his fiancée, Bradamante. The opera develops as Bradamante disguises herself as a male warrior her brother “Ricciardo” and sets out on a mission to recover her love.
Accompanied by Alcina’s guardian, Melisso (played by David Adam Moore), the two are shipwrecked on Alcina’s island by fate. Imminent danger awaits Ruggiero, as Alcina possesses the power to transform her foes and lovers of whom she tires into rocks, trees, and wild beasts. The already heavily dramatized plot is further complicated by the integration of different characters who all, in their own right, act on emotions of love and jealousy. In portraying Alcina’s thickened plot, Schlather’s production brings to life a story of enchantment, folding into it classic operatic moments of romance, betrayal, violence, unrequited love, and magic.
Click HERE for tickets.
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