Summary
YEARS ago when I heard that English National Opera was planning a new commission about Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, I made a note to follow the story. Surely here was fertile territory for new opera, in the dangerous and exotic character of a North African despot surrounded by female bodyguards, whose agents bombed planes and shot policewomen and whose land was targeted by American bombs.
It was not to be. The reviews in the London press this month paint the whole exercise as a horrible disappointment. The ENO commission went to the Asian Dub Foundation, a British band claiming to mix "hard ragga-jungle rhythms, indo-dub bass lines, searing sitar-inspired guitars and traditional sounds".See the full content of this document
Extract
Gaddafi's Glorious Failure Points Way to the Future
The result, said one critic, was possibly the worst production to reach the stage of a major opera house - though he questioned if it had anything to do with opera at all.
Michael Tanner of the Spectator, matched it extremely unfavoura...See the full content of this document
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