Adamo: Little Women [Blu-ray]

Sensitive adaptation of a literary classic in a fine performance!
Louisa May Alcott wrote her novel "Little Women" in 1868, less than fifteen years after the end of the Civil War and at a time when American women were starting to question their role in society. Alcott herself grew up watching the Civil War, was a young adult and - it is said - personally questioned women's rights and roles with respect to relationships, money and position. The protagonist, Jo, is the eldest of four sisters and views her siblings' rush to marriage, their obedience to strong relatives, including mother and father, and even the poverty of the "reconstruction" period as unacceptable situations in her mind. Critics have studied Alcott's characters and the author's own life and see direct connections to the circumstances and viewpoints of Jo. As the story progresses, Jo watches one young sister, Meg, rush into marriage to a man, Brooke, who Jo sees as domineering. She watches another, Amy, go off to pursue her dream as an artist and to eventually marry a young man who -...

Very good performance of a good opera
This is a surprisingly good performance from a young cast who were mostly unknown
to me. Didonato and Tappan I have seen on video or on stage. Novacek was new to me
and I was very impressed with her performance. The singing all around was very fine with the women just slightly better than the men on average. Didonato was excellent and Tappan was very touching in her death scene. The acting was good to excellent with the women more convincing than the men. The musical score is the highlite for me. No surprise there since Adamo is well respected as a composer. Conducting and orchestral execution struck me as excellent. The sound is very good as is the picture. This was filmed for TV. There is no audience.

I have a few issues to comment on. I would have liked the balance to favor the
orchestra a little more. I attended a performance of the Minnesota Opera and the
orchestra had much more impact. The camera work had somewhat more emphasis on
closeups...

I Was Skeptical ...
... not of Mark Adamo's music, the little of which I'd heard seemed to have substance, but of his skill as a librettist and of the aptness of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" as the basis of an opera. What would the risk factor be? Maudlin sentimentality, of course! Or else, coy allusiveness to gender ambiguities.Don't jump yet! Its' the coyness, not the ambiguity, that would annoy me. I needn't have worried; Adamo's libretto is neither sentimental nor coy. It's a serious dramatic exploration of the transfer of attention/affection from sibling or parent to "life mate", in short, of the process of individuation. The four sisters are "perfect" together; they sing of such perfection in duet and quartet, about how rare it is that sisters should also be best friends. Honestly, their sympathy for each other is quite touching; most of 'us' will be reluctant to see that closeness threatened. But "Things change" -- that's the repeated motif, in words and music -- as one sister is wooed and...

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