Paco’s POV:
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Week 4)
Francisco José “Paco” Cosió Marron
YAA is excited to have the return of a beloved blog column called Paco’s POV. Our wonderful Orchestra Manager, Francisco José “Paco” Cosió-Marron, will be writing these regularly to give you a bit more background on the production we are currently working on, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Check back often to get your fill of Paco’s POV!
My dear YAA Community,
By now you should have heard/listened to a rendition of our Fall production several times to get it in your ears, on your lips and fingers and in your soul. And, I am sure, you are practicing. Here is one YouTube link of the whole opus:
Here are some fun factoids that will give the scale and breadth of impact that our musical and biblical themes have had on humanity and civilization. From Genesis to Judges, there's hardly a story in the books of the Old Testament which hasn't inspired an opera or oratorio, or a verse that hasn't been set to music. It is good to remember that for a greater part of the last five millennia, a majority of people did not know how to read and write and, if they were to be reached by “influencers” of their day, it was done through the arts, paintings, buildings, theater and music. Hence ‘civilization’ is reflected in the pyramids, temples, basilica and cathedrals that were built and adorned with gorgeous art and which served as a venue for the musical compositions that related the stories and ideas to the masses.
Just in the past 500 years, composers created theater and oratorios retelling the stories of the bible in a way their audiences could relate to. Some were born from the “new found” interest in lands and discoveries of their time. Étienne Méhul: La Légende de Joseph en Egypte was written after Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798, when all of France was intrigued by this ancient land and its stories. Méhul’s opera was a critical success and in 1810 it was awarded a prize for the best piece staged by the Opéra-Comique in the previous decade. It was rarely staged however until there was a new French production in Paris to mark the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989. This invasion by the French in North Africa rendered a critical clue to our pasts with the find of the Rosetta stone which allowed folks to translate and make comprehensible ancient texts.
The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.
Our story was taken up about two centuries prior to these events by Handel who wrote an oratorio titled: Joseph and his Brethren which was based on Joseph’s complicated filial relationships, as told in the final thirteen chapters of the Book of Genesis, contains all the makings of good theater: jealousy, violence, sexual predation, trickery, imprisonment, mistaken identities, deception, and an exotic locale. Handel and his librettist, James Miller, made the story too complicated to be recounted in a single musical evening, and the glorious music of Handel’s oratorio on the subject, Joseph and His Brethren, is seldom played.
Webber and Rice knew their target audience very well and created an opus with lyrical themes to cover most popular interests and kept the story clipped and short which is why this production continues to be performed. Now PRACTICE.
See you soon.
Paco