distressing news

[Joe Andrew]

Come on! - why don't you say what you really think?!

While being no musicologist, I think that AL-W has had an enormous, 
popularising impact, certainly in the UK.  I personally don't care for his 
musical style at all, but far more people know about, eg Eva Peron et al. 
than would have been the case without Evita.  Maybe his M&M might actually 
lead far more people to read the book than would have otherwise.

Joe


On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 09:57:34 -0400 Thomas Keenan <thomas.keenan at YALE.EDU> 
wrote:

> It?s distressing because, and this of course is merely my own opinion, 
> Andrew Lloyd Weber is a composer who wrote a few decent musicals in the 
> 70s and 80s [?Jesus Christ Superstar?, ?Evita?] and since then has 
> slouched further and further into the kind of inane, pandering, mainstream,
> not-even-Disney-material pap that draws busload after busload of tourists 
> to Times Square to blubber and dab their eyes as the deformed wretch who 
> dwells beneath the Paris Opera is abandoned by his beloved soprano amid 
> some of the most insipid, American-cheese melodies and uninteresting, 
> single-layered, nuance-free orchestrations since Lawrence Welk. My fear is 
> that he will take this fascinating, enigmatic text replete with polyvalent 
> images, intertextual resonances and creative manipulation and fusion of 
> generic models and extract a
> banal the-power-of-love story in which Kot-Begemot will be reminiscent 
> of scrappy Rumple Teaser from Weber?s 1980s show ?Cats? and the Master and
> Margarita (a former Backstreet Boy and Marie Osmond?) will be hoisted to an
> incandescent moon hanging from the rafters accompanied by a finale of 
> dripsy swelling strings, ringing brass, crashing timpani and pyrotechnics, 
> lasers and elaborate scenery meant to make up for the unidimensional book 
> and score. The synopsis of Bulgakov?s novel as formulated by Weber (I 
> don?t have the link handy, GOOGLE ?Lloyd Weber Master Margarita? and 
> you?ll get there) did little to allay my fears. I?m sure that, in terms of 
> copyright law, the novel has long been public domain and certainly ALW 
> technically has as much right as anyone else to realize his conception of 
> it but my personal view is that the work is better off enjoying the 
> considerable popularity it has already garnered
> than being travestied and served up to millions of philistine theatre-goers.
> 
> TFK
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting Tony Lin <tonyhlin at BERKELEY.EDU>:
> 
> > Hi Mr. Keenan,
> >
> > I know next to nothing about this composer, but why is this a distressing
> > news? I am interested in knowing why you think that.
> >
> > Tony Lin
> >
> >> I regretfully inform you that Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber has announced that 
> h >> e
> >> is composing a musical (or maybe an opera) based on Master i 
> Margarita. >>
> >> >> TFK
> >> >> 
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----------------------
Joe Andrew
j.m.andrew at lang.keele.ac.uk

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