‘Intimate Apparel’ Review: Opera of Lynn Nottage’s Play Sets Free Soaring Emotions
Frank Rizzo Passions were never in short supply in Lynn Nottage’s 2003 play “Intimate Apparel,” where loneliness, longing and hope hover in every scene. In the latest, long-in-the-making collaboration between Lincoln Center Theater and the Metropolitan Opera, those passions fly free, revealing the operatic heart of “Intimate Apparel” in a new opera adaptation of this story of a 35-year-old Black seamstress aching for love in 1905 New York.The tight construction of the play, with its spare two-hander scenes and focus on the lives of ordinary and overlooked people, makes it a natural as a stripped-down chamber opera.