Political Controversy The making of an American opera - reviewed by ROBERT ANDERSON '... a searching work that spares no punches ...'

Scour the dictionary for a controversial word, and 'Democracy' immediately leaps from the page. Not that this opera commissioned by Plácido Domingo for the Washington National Opera is mainly concerned with any madcap Middle-Eastern schemes. The primary source is a novel of 1880 by Henry Adams who was a first-rate historian but also had enough presidents in his ancestry to know American politics inside-out. The result is a searching work that spares no punches about the goings-on of Capitol Hill. Not that we have here more than a forty-two minute DVD of the opera in rehearsal, with a host of participants expounding much of the venture's excitement.

Continue >>