The memory was delicious: Women withholding sex to end a war. Surely, thought composer Mark Adamo, an opera lurked in that idea. Fresh from the success of Little Women, which Houston Grand Opera premiered in 1998, he was looking for new material. But when he returned to Lysistrata, the Aristophanes play that premiered in 414 B.C., he found his memory richer than reality.
Mark Adamo
Make love, not war, in ancient Greece
In the opera Lysistrata, the women are holding out for peace to prove sex is mightier than the sword
By CHARLES WARD [Houston Chronicle, 25 Feb 05]
The memory was delicious: Women withholding sex to end a war. Surely, thought composer Mark Adamo, an opera lurked in that idea.
Fresh from the success of Little Women, which Houston Grand Opera premiered in 1998, he was looking for new material. But when he returned to Lysistrata, the Aristophanes play that premiered in 414 B.C., he found his memory richer than reality.
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With Chastity as a Sword, Women Take Up Arms
By BERNARD HOLLAND [NY Times, 7 Mar 05]
HOUSTON, March 5 - The career of Mark Adamo is a small work of art in itself. Mr. Adamo is relatively young, presentable, a writer of imagination and intelligence with enough charm and personal wherewithal to convince substantial companies not only to produce his operas but to televise them nationally. His new piece, "Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess," had its first performance at the Houston Grand Opera at the Cullen Theater in the Wortham Center on Friday. It will later be taken up by its co-producers, the New York City Opera and Opera Columbus in Ohio.
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Lost in Greek translation
Despite fine music, Mark Adamo's new opera can't reconcile farce and philosophy.
By Lawrence A. Johnson [Sun-Sentinel, 7 Mar 05]
HOUSTON . There is probably no opera composer currently before the public who can match Mark Adamo for cleverness or flexibility. Adamo, 42, scored a huge success with his first stage work, Little Women, in which he also displayed a deft hand as librettist, reducing the episodic Alcott novel to a taut, dramatically effective two hours.