**** review NRC: ‘Een lied voor de maan’ oozes infectious fun in everything
- Mathilde Wantenaar
- Mar 22, 2021
- 1 min read
‘A year later than planned, Wantenaar's family opera ‘A Song for the Moon’ still premiered at the Opera Forward Festival - online. It is a delightful performance for young and old alike.
[...]
The story is vintage Toon Tellegen, funny, slightly wry and unobtrusively wise, with sharply struck characters. Wantenaar also hits the characters sharply: the braller frog with his endless outbursts, the pedantic grasshopper, the nuffy field mouse who squeaks the ‘Queen of the Night’. Wantenaar's music is bright and accessible but never predictable, spiced with a touch of Latin and a pinch of Gershwin. In the rehearsal scene, she indulged in witty quotations: Beethoven's Fifth with a wavering dissonant, the riff from Roy Orbison's ‘Pretty woman’. No wonder the moon shows a smile: A song exudes an infectious joy in everything.’
