“Her crime spawned tabloid coverage, quickie books and three made-for-TV movies. Now Amy Fisher, who became known as the Long Island Lolita nearly a quarter of a century ago when she shot her lover’s wife, has inspired something rarer: a made-for-TV aria,” writes Michael Cooper in Wednesday’s (12/7) New York Times. “The idea was hatched as a joke in the writers’ room of ‘Mozart in the Jungle,’ the Golden Globe-winning Amazon comedy whose third season starts Friday. But to bring it off the show took it very seriously, persuading the composer Nico Muhly to … write the music and engaging the soprano Ana María Martínez to record it … In its offbeat way, the show revived the long-dormant practice of commissioning new opera for TV…. While the series appeals to viewers who care little about classical music … it does take the music seriously. A haircut gag in the new season will likely be funnier to those who recognize the music from Saint-Saëns’s ‘Samson et Dalila’ … Will the rest of the Long Island Lolita opera ever be written? Mr. Muhly allowed that it ‘could be a sort of monodrama.’ ” Click here for Symphony magazine’s current coverage of Mozart in the Jungle.
Posted December 9, 2016
