"Roscoe" Opera at Skidmore this Sunday

From today's Times Union:
Opera troupe workshops adaptation of William Kennedy's 'Roscoe'

Amy Biancoll, Times Union

By Amy BiancolliUpdated 11:29 am, Thursday, June 5, 2014

The souls peopling William Kennedy novels have always had an operatic streak about them: tragically flawed, larger than life, haunted by death (or dead already). And they have issues If, as W.H. Auden observed, opera is "an imitation of human willfulness," then the classic Kennedy protagonist is prime meat for operatic adaptation.

Consider Roscoe Conway, the complex and fleshy political insider at the heart of "Roscoe," a new opera scheduled for an Opera Saratoga workshop performance at 2 p.m. Sunday at Skidmore College. Adapted from the Kennedy novel by Albany composer Evan Mack and Tennessee-based librettist Joshua McGuire, the opera is about half-written: Only the 80-minute Act I will be performed in Sunday's unstaged concert rendering, sung by members of the company's Young Artist Program. "It's quite wonderful. It's thrilling to listen to it, and to hear these voices when they start taking off," Kennedy said. Opera struck him as a "very good form for Roscoe himself. As an individual, he has kind of an operatic life, and he is a creature of extreme habits and proclivities. And he reaches great heights as a politician and as a human being, and he has a great rise and fall of his emotions."

More in the Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/Singing-his-praises-5528362.php

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Kennedy Novel to Become an Opera

"William Kennedy finds it fitting that his novel Roscoe, a fictional reconstitution of Albany's legendary Democratic political machine, is going to be turned into an opera by local composer Evan Mack."

"'I think Roscoe would approve because he led a grand, operatic life,' Kennedy said of the title character, Roscoe Conway, the machine's fixer and bagman who wants to quit politics after 26 years of carrying out its chicanery."

"The novel is set in Albany on V-J Day, 1945. The New Yorker praised it for being 'thick with crime, passion and backroom banter.'  The novel was published in 2002 and reached the New York Times bestseller list."

Read Paul Grondahl's article in th Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Kennedy-novel-to-become-an-opera-4580309.php#ixzz2VSxVbCpw

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