WASHINGTON — Washington can be a way too serious place. Then occasionally someone comes along and figures out how to turn all the manure into entertainment.
Over the past two weekends people have flocked to the Baltimore Theater Project to see “The Gonzales Cantata”, an opera by composer Melissa Dunphy who set music to the transcripts from the 2007 congressional hearings on the dismissal of seven U.S. attorneys that involved then-Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, according to the Washington Post. The opera first debuted in 2009.
“Clever, certainly, was her idea of turning to a Handelian style, using 18th-century musical conventions to send up the 18th-century conventions and forms of American political protocol (though her tick of pausing the music on pregnant dissonances, like an audible nudge to the ribs, got a bit old),” wrote Anne Midgette in the Washington Post.
The show proved to be such a hit, the theater website posted this: “Due to popular demand, we’ve added another performance on Saturday, February 12 at 8 pm.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7BuLIt5K9w
