Gramophone has praised the new recording of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess, with critic David Patrick Stearns calling conductor Gil Rose the saint of modern American opera for his keen comprehension and technical command of the score.
The review highlights Adamo’s strong-minded, entertainingly modernized adaptation of Aristophanes, noting the composer-librettist’s instinctive sense of how rhyme schemes elevate the music and how polysyllabic words fit into a vocal line. Stearns praises the hectic Lysistrata Overture for its confetti-like score of small, colourful motifs, and singles out the cast-wide English diction as an even greater accomplishment, calling it not just consistently clear but feeling more natural than drilled.
Drawn largely from Boston’s community of singers, the ensemble is praised for constituting a tight cast that brings vivid character to Adamo’s antiquity-set satire.
Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess is out now on PENTATONE.
