Telluride Inside…and Out, Denver: Sunday

"Opus." The word is Latin for work, but it was no work at all. The experience was, top to bottom, a pleasure.

Yesterday, Telluride Inside… and Out headed to the Curious Theatre Company for a Sunday matinee of Michael Hollinger's "Opus," a play about drugs (medicinal), sex (past and future and only insinuated), and chamber music, along with our friend and regular Denver writer, Tracy Shaffer. (Tracy, also a member of the Denver Center company and regular in the Denver theatre scene, just completed a run as Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate.")

Think of "Opus" as foreplay for the upcoming Telluride Music Fest featuring a world class string quartet, the Trio Solisti, in town this season June 23 – July 3, 2010. (However, TIO is NOT implying Trio Solisti is dysfunctional.)

Hollinger,  a violist who moved on to theatre after studying music at Oberlin College, examines the subject of music-making, warts and all: the blood, sweat and tears of rehearsing, recording and performing, life on the road, and, most of all, the tenuous balance of high strung – in the case of "Opus," mostly unstrung – personalities thrust together in the cloistered environment of a high-profile string quartet, in this case named after an 18th-century luthier, Pietro Lazara.

Bravura performances by actors Josh Robinson (Elliot), David Russell (Alan), William Hahn (Dorian), Erik Sandvold (Carl) and Kari Delany (Grace).

The German philosopher Goethe once described chamber music, specifically that of a string quartet, as "four rational people conversing." In "Opus," strike the rational bit.

Later that afternoon, Clint and I took a walk along the South Platte, passing through the skate park, where similar dramas were being played out by virtuosos. Only the music was different.