Title: mainly, it's for the birds
Product review: The Birds enjoyed considerable success when it was first produced in the 1920s, but I'm guessing that was essentially due to the opera's built-in need for imaginative staging, as most of the characters are depicted as birds.Thus it is with this Los Angeles Opera production - clever costumes & sets supported by good singing from soloists & chorus.But The Birds must fly or flop by the quality of the music, & the music never really takes off, fluttering erratically from one style & mood to another. Braunfels evinces no stylistic voice of his own, & the score is a hodge-podge of echoes of other composers & even other centuries.Was it intended to be a serious symbolic drama? Or a semi-serious satire? Hard to tell, but should we care, one way or another? I think not.
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