Best Star Wars Tribute

While the rest of the free world consumed itself in the anticipatory hype over Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace late last spring, the precocious members of the New World Symphony staged a more twisted salute to the glories of Chewbacca: an opera. Transposing sections of John Williams's original Star Wars score on to their own chosen instrumentation, the ever-so-proper stage of the Lincoln Theatre suddenly became host to a wide range of oboe-playing aliens and a very imposing Darth Vader (no Michael Tilson Thomas jokes, please). Frankly by the time the NWS got to the "death star" scene, it was hard to tell who was having more fun, the audience or the musicians themselves. One thing's for sure, after watching a brace of finely choreographed bassoon-blowing Stormtroopers bring down the house (while gliding on rollerskates no less), anything further from George Lucas is bound to be anticlimactic.