Fatto, Matto, Quid Pro Quo

Read my review today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Mozart, by and for kids
Washington Post, November 9, 2009

Among the many offerings of the Kids Euro Festival was a free performance of Mozart's singspiel "Bastien und Bastienne," presented Saturday morning by the Austrian Embassy. As the capacity crowd of children and their adults arrived, magician David Morey was ingeniously on hand to keep young minds engaged until the performance began.

The opera, written when Mozart was 12, offers glimpses of the greater achievements to come. The most memorable number, "Diggi, daggi, schurry, murry," is given to Colas, a self-proclaimed magician who helps reunite the eponymous twin-named young lovers. Baritone Steven Scheschareg, the only adult in the cast, scored a big hit with this silly aria of fake magic words, peering over his tome of imagined arcana at the wide-eyed children gathered at the front of the room. As Bastien and Bastienne, treble Noah Winston Donahue, 13 (Mozart actually wrote the role for a tenor), and soprano Katherine Mariko Murray, 17, sang with composure and confidence, with the assistance of capricious amplification. [Continue reading]

Mozart, Bastien und Bastienne
Presented by the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Embassy Series
Kids Euro Festival
Embassy of Austria