Photo“More life” is the aspiration of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” the blessing its characters fervently hope to gain. But while Mr. Kushner’s play, sprawling over two parts and seven hours, wants more, more, more, its operatic adaptation, composed in 2004 by the Hungarian modernist Peter Eotvos, settles for less. Real life, in Mr. Kushner’s vision of those terrifying days, keeps sliding into dreams. To cut the stream-of-consciousness verbosity, as an opera libretto must, is to leave exposed the fragility of the play’s central, rather standard-issue melodramas. Instead of “more life,” the opera seems to take its motto from Harper, its pill-popping Mormon housewife.

Source: New York Times June 11, 2017 20:26 UTC