Steven Vlad

We caught the final “opera” of the Boston Music Festival last night.

“Pimpinone” is a comic ‘opera’ by Telemann. In fact it was written to be performed in the ‘intermezzi’, that is between acts, of a more serious opera. It was quite a bit of fun. The plot is a little outdated – it’s about a poor chamber maid plotting to marry a rich man and then becoming a shrew once she succeeds – but BEMF does a really good job with this and it was funny and fun. The music was – to me – surprisingly enjoyable.

The other part of the evening was the Telemann cantata “Ino” which is not funny at all. I won’t go into the plot of the Ovid tale that it’s based on (feel free to look it up if you want) but suffice it to say that the music was really excellent, and the soprano, Amanda Forsythe, was spectacular as usual.

A really nice evening. I wish we could have stuck around for the next concert which followed this one (beginning at 10:30 pm!) and featured many of the same artists, but I’ll have to catch that one on video.