However, overall, “Antony and Cleopatra” was a wonder, not unlike the story’s dazzling, dramatic, and defiant lovers. Aspects were lost in the wealth and welter of all that the artistic team aimed to portray. At other times, just one narrative line would have been better. While taking in Adams’ new opera, sometimes only the music, with one or several voices reciting Shakespeare’s play, was desirable. Though its ambitious attempt to capture the globe itself, all time and space, full and rich and marvelous, was at times a little too much.
The production has everything-story, poetry and drama, newsreels, fascism, ancient Roman generals, ecstasy, rage, and beauty. The work was a co-commission and co-production with the Metropolitan Opera and Liceu Opera Barcelona. San Francisco Opera gave “Antony and Cleopatra” its world premiere at the War Memorial Opera House on Sept. So Adams tells us in the latest from his roster of remarkable operas. “I am fire and air my other elements I give to baser life.” So sings Cleopatra in John Adams’ “Antony and Cleopatra.” The baser life about which Cleopatra sings is everything that is not she and everything that was not Antony.
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