Mormon Opera

[Allweather]

I guess that’s what you would call it. I dialed in BYU Channel last night and found myself in the middle of a stage production of something called “The Golden Book” (or maybe the The Gold Book, memory may be slightly faulty).

Anyone familiar with this?

Musically, it is a disaster. Though most of the vocal performances were fine, especially that of the lady singing Emma Smith, whose voice is very fine, the musical composition itself is like something out of a nightmare. Atonal, completely non-melodic, and even ominious sounding. The story line is basically that of Joseph and Emma, their courtship, his so-called visions at age 15, and again in 1823, and on up to the year 1830, at which point it ends. The Emma character casts several admiring glances towards the JS character. I joked to my Mormon fiance that, well, Emma, in about 8 years you won’t be looking at JS quite so admiringly! Too bad the story cuts off before JS starts building his harem. At least, if it had continued into the harem days, the atrocious musical score would have been more fitting.

 

[valient_Lucy]

Never heard of it.

HOWEVER…

In Kirtland OH, not too far from where I live, there was a performance of This is Kirtland, a musical about the beginnings of the LDS Church.
Didn’t see it, but it sounded like a nightmare! A musical based on the early life of Joseph Smith! It actually sounds worse than the musical version of Interview of the Vampire by Elton John. Or maybe not. Either one sounds terrible.

 

[Allweather]

Well, I watch a fair amount of BYU Channel off of Direct TV. I see quite a few musical productions that come out of the music dept at BYU. Most of them are typical student-level quality, and I try not to be over critical because of that. I’m a retired pro musician, so I can tend to be pretty critical of bad music. But, this thing I saw last night was just too terrible to be kind to. It wasn’t the individual performances that were bad… in fact, most of those were very good… the singing, the orchestra… all very good. It was the composition that was awful. All I can think of is that it was deliberately bad… like Springtime for Hitler. Maybe the composer was having a joke at the expense of the audience, who were smiling though unenthusiastic.