Customer Reviews

Coyote Tales - American Opera Based On Native American Themes

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This is a production by John Ostendorf (a pretty good, opera man) of the premiere performance of a new opera from the Kansas City Lyric Opera. It claims to use a "Native American Theme" but the creators are certainly not "native Americans" nor is the music at all restricted. Henry Mollicone fortunately has created an original score without attempting to "copy" anything and librettist Sheldon Harnick is probably too old and ornery now to be anything other then original. Conductor Russell Patterson and his young singers manage to get it together remarkably well, verging sometimes almost into musical comedy.

I admit I may be a bit prejudiced, as Micheal Ballam is my Music Instructor here at USU, but I really really like this music. It is unlike ANYTHING I have ever heard. The Indian, or Native American as we say, sounds mixed in with the European instruments create a most unique experience.

It just feels different and different is good.

*Coyote Tales* is a multicultural opera. Coyote, creator of the world as archetypal Till Eulenspiegel, "Trickster and Hero, Lower and Clown".

The dramma is fragmented in vignettes (the various folk tales) whit musical correspondence on stylistic pluralism.