GLORIOUSLY MESSY LODGING: ZAPPA’S 200 MOTELS
Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels is a glorious mess. In some ways this makes it the perfect thing to put on to celebrate LA’s Walt Disney Hall and its already turbulent history. While there’s a 1971 film version of Zappa’s magnum opus, and excerpts have been performed live plenty of times before, last Wednesday’s performance boasted the world premiere of Zappa’s orchestral version in its entirety. Over the orchestral accompaniment Frank tells the story of a girl who falls in love with a knute farmer. In between Frank’s monologues, soprano Hila Plitmann expresses the girl’s emotions through wordless vocalise as the orchestra swells. (Piltmann, who also played the role of an obnoxious journalist, was a standout soloist in general, hitting elaborate coloratura lines with laser precision while still being engrossingly expressive.) But as it turns out, the tale is just as rambling and capricious as the music, and the love story was merely a pretense to get us to listen to a bunch of nonsense.