Gaetano Donizetti, Don Pasquale (1843)

Sheer nonsense! But such sublime nonsense. It's the third Donizetti comedy I've seen, after L'elisir d'amoreand La fille du régiment, which I think alas are the only ones that are widely performed these days.

Right, so Don Pasquale is a grumpy old rich guy who is annoyed because his nephew Ernesto refuses to marry the rich girl he's picked out for him, already having a penniless sweetheart, Norina. He decides to get his revenge by marrying himself and disinheriting Ernesto. His physician Dr. Malatesta suggests his own sister for the Don to marry, and Ernesto is sad because if he has no money, he feels he can't marry Norina. But! Dr. Malatesta is actually on his side, and he proposes a sneaky plan to Norina: she'll pretend to be this sister (who is actually off in a convent) and wreak havoc with Pasquale's life and peace of mind, and then Ernesto will be able to marry her because mumble mumble. Okay, the endgame of this plan is not even a tiny bit clear, and the fact that, obviously, things end up working out seems like it really couldn't have been predicted, but eh, whatever! Getting there is the fun, even if we don't know where we're getting.

The whole cast is fun as heck, starting with Anna Netrebko (whom I'd never seen in a comedy before) as Norina. Out of these three comic operas, it seems like this has to be the funnest soprano role, and Netrebko is hilarious, vacillating between the hyperbolically shy, puritanical girl straight from a convent to the brassy hellion to great effect (the idea that before this she didn't have a penny to her name seems hard to believe, but again, eh). Mariusz Kwiecien in designer sunglasses is similarly great as Malatesta, and John Del Carlo certainly seems to be the very soul of Don Pasquale himself. Matthew Polenzani has a surprisingly small role as Ernesto, but he's fine. I'd also like to call attention to the third-act duet between Malatesta and Pasquale, which features what I think may be the fastest singing I've ever heard in an opera. It is quite an aural spectacle.

I do think one could argue that the opera is somewhat overly mean to the title character. He does receive a certain amount of sympathy in the final act, but I don't know. The climax is a bit sudden and not what you'd call psychologically plausible; that's okay, of course, but the repeatedly stated Moral of the Story--old men shouldn't get married!--seems surprisingly specific and not really applicable: surely the point is that they shouldn't lecherously try to marry young girls, not that they should never marry period. Well, whatever. It would be very difficult to stay mad for long at anything here, though L'elisir d'amore remains my favorite Donizetti comedy.

John Adams, Nixon in China (1987)

The only opera featuring the line "we'll teach these motherfuckers how to dance." I mean, probably. If you know any others, tell me in comments.

I'd been very curious about this for a long time. I'm generally a bit leery of contemporary opera, for probably unjustifiable reasons. I mean, yeah, the fact that a work has endured for a long time is a good indication that it at least has SOMETHING to it, but new things can be good too! I swear! Probably! The only new opera I had seen was Nico Muhly's Marnie,which was...okay, I guess? The production was striking, but I can't say the music's exactly stuck with me. Still, what does a sample size of one say about anything? Nixon in Chinaseems to have endured pretty well these past thirty-plus years, so let's check it out.

Well, it's a bit light on plot, as you might expect. It's about, obviously, Nixon's landmark 1972 visit to China, and the six named characters are all historical figures: Richard and Pat Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Mao and his wife Chiang Ch'ing, and Chou En-lai. They have meetings and dinners and cultural events, and that's about it. It's not really political in any obvious sense; it's more about portraying the characters than casting judgment. Large portions of the libretto are taken from the actual historical record, and parts are influenced by classical Chinese poetry.

My reaction was a little mixed. On the positive side: the music is inventive and highly varied and frequently quite beautiful and in a few instances what I would describe as "Wagnerian" (which I can do, having watched all this Wagner lately). As for the action itself, there are a number of engaging scenes, but I think it would be difficult to argue that everything else isn't overshadowed by the absolutely awesome climax to Act II, which introduces Chiang Ch'ing while the characters are watching a ballet. You will not forget "I speak according to the book" in a hurry, I will tell you that much. It's nuts.

The production--which I think is the same as the original production, with some revision--is fine (also, conducted by the composer himself, certainly a rarity). The characters don't so much look like the people they're playing as generally suggest them, but they do a good job with what they have. The issue, though, is that they don't necessarily have a lot, and I'm not sure the whole thing is quite as dramatically ert as you would hope. Characterwise, the highlight is definitely Chou En-lai, effectively sung by Russell Braun, stoically dying of cancer while looking to the future and expressing doubts about his past actions. I have no idea how biographically accurate this is, but it's well put across. But I dunno, man. I do not feel the other characters are very well done by. Honestly, this Nixon just made me think of The Public Burning's Nixon, and how much better that was. The others aren't much better, and Kissinger just seems to be there because Kissinger was along on the trip, not because Adams wanted to really do anything with him. (Also, how has that guy not been dragged to hell by demons yet? Get with it, Lucifer). And there's no dramatic through-line that might render the individual characters less important. So...I don't know.

I think this might actually reward rewatching. It's obviously in a different idiom from the normal opera thing I'm used to, so having gotten acclimated to that, I might get more out of it the second time. It's definitely a serious opera by a serious composer, and I'll be watching more of his stuff.

Richard Wagner, Siegfried (1876)

Oh my goodness. Is it even possible to summarize this? I guess we'll find out. Let's try to do it as quickly as possible. Mime, Alberich's brother, has raised Siegfried, but not because he loves him, just because he wants access to dragon-Fafner's treasure. Siegfried also hates his foster-dad, he just sticks around because he wants to learn about his parents. Wotan shows up in disguise as "the Wanderer," and he makes Mime play a riddle game, apparently for exposition purposes. Mime can't craft the sword, Nothung, from the fragments, so Siegfried does it himself. He doesn't know fear, so Mime is going to take him to see Fafner to teach him. Wotan meets Alberich--keeping watch on Fafner's cave--in the woods. They have a conversation for seemingly no particular reason. Then Siegfried and Mime arrive at the cave. Mime retreats and after a bit of dicking around, Fafner comes out and Siegfried kills him. Having consumed some dragon blood, he gains the ability to understand birds, and a bird tells him to take the ring and helmet, which he does. Alberich and Mime argue for a bit. Mime comes back and offers Siegfried a poisoned drink, but the blood also allows Siegfried to read Mime's thoughts, so he kills him. The bird them tells him about the sleeping Brünnhilde, so he's off to find her. Wotan summons Erda and has a conversation about whether the events in motion can be stopped (spoiler: no). Siegfried meets Wotan, who tries to stop him, but he breaks Wotan's spear and Wotan is apparently fully resigned to there being nothing he can do. Siegfried wakes up Brünnhilde with a kiss, and they're in love. The last words of the opera are "hail jubilant death," which seems ominous.

MY GOODNESS that was hard. See, if the problem in Die Walküre was that there wasn't enough incident, the problem with Siegfriedis that there's a whole lot of it, but much of it doesn't really seem to mean anything. Like, seriously, almost everything with Wotan and Alberich's entire appearance feel pretty superfluous. I mean, sure, the music, but other than that (a pretty big "other than that," of course, but...).

Another thing that took me a bit off-guard here is what a doofus Siegfried is. He spends A LOT of time in the first act hollering about how much he hates Mime; of course, it's true that Mime wants him dead, but he doesn't know that at the time, and it really comes across as awfully petulant and whiney. And then let's note that when I say Siegfried "doesn't know fear," I don't just mean he doesn't experience fear himself; I mean that he's literally unfamiliar with the basic concept of fear (although, at least per the subtitles, he does refer to people as "cowards" a few times, so not sure how well-thought-out that was). When Mime is telling him stories about the ferocity of Fafner, he just stands there grinning dopily (in both versions I saw). According to the Wikipedia page, this was originally intended as a comic preface to the grimmer Götterdämmerung (originally entitled Siegfried's Death--hello, SPOILERS!), and some of that certainly remains, though it feels a bit incongruous in the context of the whole.

So...yeah, I once again saw the Schenk and Lepage performances. Honestly, it's a bit exhausting watching two of them in a row like that; yes, it helps you grapple with the work as a whole, but I may wimp out and just watch one Götterdämmerung. Anyway, the usual comments apply: as in Die Walküre, I find Lepage mostly preferable. Schenk's version has Fafner as a kind of unparsable mass of tentacles and stuff, which is better than the big ol' snake that the Lepage uses, but on the other hand, Lepage has him turned back into a human (well, giant) after being mortally wounded, which struck me as an excellent touch. Also, Lepage's infernal machine again does good forests, and the animated bird projected thereunto is cool. Anyway. Enough said about that.

According to Renée Fleming, the part of Siegfried is considered the most difficult tenor role in opera, if not the most difficult role period. I must admit my philistinism and admit that I'm not quite sure why that should be, but...it is what it is, and if there's one reason to prefer the Lepage production, this is definitely it. In the earlier version, he's played by...Siegfried Jerusalem, who was Loge in Rheingold. And I liked him a lot there, but oh my he does not fit here. He just does not remotely look the part, and he has this very seventies hairstyle that...urg. He's just kind of smarmy and ridiculous most of the time; granted, the part itself is intrinsically kind of ridiculous, but I don't think it should be so like this. In Lepage, he's played by Jay Hunter Morris, who apparently took the role just a few days before rehearsal started after two other tenors backed out. Given that, it's kind of astounding how good he is; he's a strong singer and he makes the character more appealingly goofy and less obnoxiously so (and my goodness, in his backstage interview, he has this Texas drawl along with the most endearing golly-gee small-town-boy-in-the-big-city attitude--DON'T TELL ME if he has terrible politics). I'm also boggled to learn that he was forty-eight at the time; he doesn't look seventeen, but he doesn't look remotely that old either.

Again, the usual singers do their usual jobs. Eric Owens is again fantastic as Alberich. Both Morris and Terfel are fine as Wotan, although for some reason Terfel has stringy blond hair instead of curly black this time, and I don't know WHY they can't be consistent with how they handle his missing eye (covered by his hair in Rheingold,an eyepatch in Walküre, and now...nothing; it's still supposed to be gone, but it just looks like he has a black eye). We've got to talk about Mime, though.

Boy, that sounded ominous, didn't it? And yes, you probably knew where I was going as soon as I said it. But it's worth saying, I think. So. People talk about Wagner and anti-Semitism, and let's face it, typically they really don't know what they're talking about; it's just the whole "this person who's supposed to be so great ACTUALLY SUCKS" thing that you also see with Walt Disney. But look, I don't claim to know what was going on in Wagner's mind, or how these things were perceived or presented back in the day, but BOY does the character, as written, come across as the most vile anti-Semitic caricature: avaricious, manipulative, murderous, hideous old man with designs on handsome, guileless Aryan youth? I mean, come on. Obviously, no production, post-World-War-II at any rate, is going to do anything but try to avoid making these connections, but you can easily see how this would be a nazi's favorite opera. However, I did say that this is the character as written. It definitely doesn't have to be that bad as performed. The key, I think, is to find the character's humanity. He's never not going to be a villain, and he's never going to be a great guy, but I think if you can avoid portraying him as just this blank monster, he'll be perceived as more of an actual guy and less of a thing that you can't help but hang these toxic tropes on. To cut to the chase: I think Gerhard Siegel in the Lepage production does a decent job of this; Heinz Zednik less so. To be fair, it probably has as much to do with costuming and make-up as with the specific singers, but it is what it is.

GOOD GOLLY. Yes, I liked this, but I definitely liked it less than its predecessor. Notwithstanding the rapturous final love duet, it doesn't really have the kind of emotional intensity that I got from that one (seriously, that "War es so schmählich?" sends chills down my spine just thinking about it). Anyway, I'm starting to see why people think of this whole thing as a bit daunting. Amazing music, for sure, but...phew. No, I haven't done myself any favors in that regard by doubling my viewing time, but still. Well, I'm certainly keen to see how it ends, so check back at some point in the future. Though I'll probably watch a few less...crushingoperas in the meantime, as a palate-cleanser.

Gaetano Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor (1835)

What, giving up on Wagner? Of course not. I just had a limited amount of time, so I wanted a shortish opera that I could watch in its entirety. And that turned out to be this.

So we're in Scotland, with a decaying noble family. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, it's necessary that Lucia marry some guy who's going to help the family to rekindle its fortunes. But she's in love with Edgardo who, double bummer, happens to be an enemy of the family. They pledge their troth to one another, but her brother Enrico has a letter forged indicating that Edgardo has taken up with another woman, with very conspicuously non-hilarious results. The plot's basically fine, although I will note that if certain characters had behaved like rational adults and talked things out rather than instantly leaping to conclusions, this whole tragedy could easily have been averted.  In that sense, it's like a hacky sitcom episode with a higher body count.

...however, rationality winning out would have been a shame, as Donizetti dishes out a whole bunch of bel canto goodness. It's really just one great aria or duet after another. I saw this production, and it was great. Ludovic Tézier is notable as Enrico, who is more multilayered than many an operatic villain, with comprehensible motives and no actual malevolent intent towards his sister. Joseph Calleja is fine as Edgardo, but let's face it, the highlight here was never not going to be Natalie Dessay in the title role. The New York Times review which I'm not going to link to DID NOT LIKE her, but seriously, I will challenge that guy to a fistfight in the parking lot. This was the first I'd seen her in a tragic opera, and she is sensational. Introducing the production, Renée Fleming declares that this features the most famous mad scene in opera. Thinking about it, I realize I haven't actually seen very many mad scenes in operas, but it is one hell of a thing, and Dessay kills it. Boom.

As you may know, this is based on a Walter Scott novel. Now, in the opera, Edgaro commits suicide at the end, which...turns out to be an embellishment of the novel, in which--per the wikipedia page-- "Edgar reappears at Lucy's funeral. Lucy's older brother, blaming him for her death, insists that they meet in a duel. Edgar, in despair, reluctantly agrees. But on the way to the meeting, Edgar falls into quicksand and dies." This made me laugh immoderately, but it almost seemed too good to be true: are we sure this isn't just the result of a successful wikipedia vandal? But nope, looking at the end of the book on Project Gutenberg, that certainly seems to be the way of it. WELL DONE, WALLY. You truly earned your position as Most Popular Anglophone Writer of Your Time, and Possibly Ever.

Richard Wagner, Die Walküre (1870)

So the problem with Die Walküre, if you think it's a problem, is that although it's something like an hour and a half longer than Rheingold, very little actually happens. Rheingold is full of incident, but the follow-up is not, so much. For the record, I don'tthink it's a problem; I think Walküre is spectacular; easily better than its predecessor. What it lacks in stuff happening, it makes up for with high emotional content that wasn't really present in the first installment.

So Siegmund is being pursued by...pursuers. He takes refuge in a house in the woods, where he meets Sieglinde, who takes him in and takes care of him. Her brutal husband Hunding comes home; Siegmund explains that his life has been kind of a bummer: when he was small his mother was killed and his sister disappeared; more recently, he fought with the family of a girl being forced into a loveless marriage, and that family and its supporters are who he's fleeing from now. Hunding reveals that he's one of them and says that he can stay the night, but tomorrow he is going to fuck his shit up. Sieglinde drugs Hunding's drink and reveals to Siegmund a sword that someone (Wotan, in fact, their father) had stuck in the tree, and can only be removed by the destined one, who is him. The two realize that they're brother and sister, and it's a little comical to me how utterly without any kind of hesitation or angst they are about entering into an incestuous relationship. Meanwhile, Wotan instructs his favorite daughter, Brünnhilde, to protect Siegmund against Hunding, but then his wife Fricka shows up, in her capacity as guardian of marriage, demanding justice for Hunding. Wotan is not keen on this; he needs a hero who--because he, Wotan, as patron of oaths and bonds, can't do it himself--will, of his own free will, recover the ring (because, he later explains, Alberich is after it, and if he manages to get it, we are fucked). Fricka counters this by noting that Siegmund isn't in any meaningful sense independent; he's been heavily manipulated by Wotan. Unable to counter this argument, he reluctantly agrees not to intervene in Siegmund's favor, and countermands his previous order to Brünnhilde. Siegmund and Sieglinde stagger in, and she faints from exhaustion. Brünnhilde appears to Siegmund and says, hey, time to die and go to Valhalla! He refuses if he can't go with Sieglinde, and threatens to kill her rather than be separated from her, and is that really what you call love? Hmm. Regardless, it impresses Brünnhilde, who makes the fatal decision to disobey her father and help him anyway. But when the battle with Hunding begins, Wotan appears and breaks Siegmund's sword, allowing Hunding to kill him. Brunhilde flees with Sieglinde and the sword fragments. Wotan mourns Siegmund, kills Hunding with casual contempt, and heads after Brünnhilde. She runs to where the other valkyries are busy gathering dead heroes. She asks for their help, but they are less than helpful. Sieglinde wakes up and wants to die, but Brünnhilde convinces her that she needs to stay alive for her unborn child's sake and tells her where to go to avoid Wotan. She leaves, and Wotan appears. He resolves to put her into a deep sleep until whatever man first finds her claims her as his wife, and it's extremely interesting to me that his punishment is so explicitly to make her the victim of a patriarchal social order. You'd think that might be a somewhat tendentious feminist interpretation, but nope, it's not even subtext; it's right there in the text itself. She begs him to at least surround her with fire so that only a man without fear can save her (WHO COULD THAT BE?), to which he eventually accedes. He puts her to sleep, summons flames, curtain.

Man. What a thing, what a thing. Once again, I watched both the Schenk and the Lepage productions. And this time, somewhat to my surprise, I have to give it pretty unambiguously to the Lepage. They were both good, but the man with the giant, weird machine won me over. But how?

Die Walküre has much less elaborate production requirements than Das Rheingold. You have the interior of a cottage, some indeterminate outdoor place, a mountaintop, and that's all. Further, the only really fancy visual effect called for is the flames at the very end. Both productions, actually, benefit from this. The Schenk doesn't have to employ any big, rickety-looking sets; the whole thing is generally better-looking (with no weird, distracting costumes, either). Of course, the Lepage doesn't necessarily need to get all fancy either; I was wondering in fact how it was going to make use of this big ol' machine. And the answer is: pretty well, actually. I don't know whether it justifies its existence or not, but it doesn't embarrass itself. In the first and second acts, the slats are used to create the effect of a forest, and it honestly looks really impressive. I'm not quite sure how they pulled that off. And the famous third-act opening (featuring that one tune, now what is it called?), featuring valkyries riding the slats as they move up and down to simulate horses, is just...good. The only place where I thought the Schenk production was really, unambiguously better was the ecstatic first-act climax where Siegmund announces that now it's Spring, and the whole background lifts up to reveal the green growing things. In the Lepage, there's just a green light, which doesn't quite do it for me. The Lepage also does have one persistent problem, which is that when characters are standing in front of slats with images projected onto them, they look like they're turning transparent. It's not a huge deal.

Still, the productions aren't really the point; they're both fine. It is mainly a question of casting. I have opinions about this! As Brünnhilde, Hildegard Behrens and Deborah Voigt are pretty comparable; there's not much to choose between. They even look very similar. But as for the rest of the cast...well, in general, I think that Wotan has a better, more rewarding role in this than in Rheingold. I liked James Morris before, and I like him better now. But I also like Bryn Terfel better. A lot better, in fact; I've really warmed to the singer in the role. He's especially good with the emotional aspects of the character; I may possibly actually have had tears in my eyes during his final farewell to his daughter (although honestly, if I think about it rationally, I'm not entirely sure that the opera actually provides sufficient justification for why he just hasto punish her as he does). I'd say Morris and Terfel are about equal in my estimation here.

But if it's a toss-up Wotan-wise, the Lepage production clearly wins out in every other way (okay okay, maybe Hans-Peter König is a bit too jovial even when he's meant to be menacing as Hunding, but that's a small part; whatever). I really don't want to denigrate Jessye Norman and Gary Lakes as Sieglinde and Siegmund; they do a perfectly good job, especially Norman. But man...Lepage has Eva-Maria Westbroek and Jonas Kaufmann in those roles, which hardly seems like a fair fight (also, it's a tiny thing, but I appreciated the way they'd been given similar hair, emphasizing their siblinghood). And, once again, STEPHANIE FUCKING BLYTHE as Fricka. She rocks that role hard (and she also gets a totally badass throne with statues of rams for arms). I've kind of half-convinced that she might actually genuinely be Fricka, in real life.

Rheingoldwas great and all, but this one is much more emotionally powerful--and, as we know, high emotion is kind of opera's thing. I find myself feeling very swept up in this drama, and I am very excited to see it through. Oh yeah, and one other thing: I inadvertently paused the Schenk production at the worst or best possible moment to show Jessye Norman (who, to be clear, is quite beautiful) at her absolute least flattering, and I feel compelled to share it with the world:

Yikes.

Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold (1869)

Does anybody need to hear the plot of Das Rheingold reiterated? I feel like I knew the exact plot going in, but I suppose that's just because as a child I was avidly interested in the Norse mythology on which this was based, and also--not to brag or anything--I've read the duck comic based on the Ring Cycle. So anyway: the Rheinmaidens are frolicking in the water, not guarding the rheingold as well as they probably should be; the dwarf Alberich tries to woo them, but they laugh him off; in frustration, he steals the gold because he can forge it into a ring that will make him rich, even though it requires the forger to renounce love. Elsewhere, Wotan has commissioned two giants, Fasolt and Fafnir, to build Valhalla for him, with his sister-in-law Freia as payment. He reneges on the deal and asks them to request something else. Loge shows up, having been supposed to be working on an alternative payment, but he's come up blank. He does, however, bring news of Alberich's doings, and the giants decided to accept his treasure in lieu of Freia, taking her hostage in the meantime. The gods are weakened because they need more of Freia's golden apples, but Wotan summons the wherewithal to accompany Loge down to Nibelheim, where Alberich is ruling with an iron fist, having forced his brother Mime to forge a magical helmet allowing him to change shape. Loge tricks him into allowing himself to be captured, and they take him back to the surface, demanding all his treasure including helmet and ring as ransom. Before Alberich leaves, he curses the ring, saying that no one who wears it will be safe and eventually will be killed. I'm sure he's just all talk! The giants return with Freia; the gods give them the treasure, reluctantly including the helmet and, after a good talking-to from the all-knowing earth mother Erda, the ring. The giants fight over the distribution of the treasure, and Fafnir kills Fasolt, though he does not at this time turn into a dragon; he just sort of disappears with the treasure. Loge is filled with premonitions of doom, but the other gods go off to Valhalla, and we can assume that everything is going to be PRETTY great for them from now on! The rheinmaidens are sad, but eh, whatareyagonnado?

You can easily find all that information elsewhere on the internet. Why did I write it out like that? Difficult to say. So which version of this did I see? Well, there are Bayreuth productions on youtube, but, shallowly, I wanted better video quality, mainly, and besides, if I'm paying cash-money for this Met on Demand service, I ought to USE it. There are two choices: Otto Schenk's Ring productions from 1989-90, and Robert Lepage's from 2010-12. The latter are somewhat controversial, but I dunno, I sort of can't help but be seduced by the latest and greatest technology. Still, I really couldn't decide, to the upshot is, I watched them both. If nothing else, I knew the comparison would be interesting.

I feel like you have to make some pretty big decisions when staging these operas, the biggest being: to what extent are you going to attempt to reproduce the mythological milieu as described, and to what extent are you going to just include a few signifiers of said milieu and let the audience assume a lot of it (of course, you could also do something wildly untraditional, but that is another story altogether)? Let us take it as a given that Wagner's music is magnificent, and just focus on the question of these productions and singers. Before I start, however, I should note one difference between the two that isn't really related to the productions themselves but that might well be dispositive for a lot of people: the sound recording of the later production is a lot louder. For the Schenk version, I had my volume cranked as high as it would go for the whole thing, and wished it would go higher. Not the case for Lepage. It's not that the Schenk production suffers a lot from this, but it's definitely a thing.

Schenk's production is very traditional. The sets tend to look a little amateurish, a little school-play-ish (a tendency that reaches its apotheosis with the brief view of Alberich in serpent form), but you know, it's basically okay. It gets the setting across perfectly well. Possibly a bigger issue is the way some of the characters are made up: the gods look like normal people, but the dwarfs, the giants, and Loge are saddled with overbearing and distracting make up and latex. They look like some of the dodgier creations from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This actually sorta-kinda works for Loge, serving to emphasize that he's different from the other gods. But the others...well, it's a tribute to their performances that their goofy appearances basically fade into the background, but it's certainly not the direction I would've gone in.

The Lepage production is a different beast entirely. The main thing about this production--certainly the most famous--is that the stage is dominated by a giant contraption that consists of a series of huge, independently-rotating slats onto which can be projected moving images, allowing--in theory--for some interesting visuals. This sort of works, sometimes. The rainbow bridge to Valhalla at the end is striking, as is Wotan's and Loge's passage into Nibelheim. But a lot of the time it just...doesn't. In the opening scene, for instance, The slats rotate so it looks like the Rheinmaidens go from frolicking in the water to resting on the surface and back again, which is cool in theory, but in practice, it's just so very obvious that when they're allegedly frolicking, they're really dangling from wires (the production does nothing to even try to hide the various wires) and have no control over their own movement, that it's a bit...dubious. And OH MY GOODNESS, I lost track, but there are seriously, no exaggeration, something like a half dozen times when Loge is required to move, half walking half being pulled, up the diagonal slope, which he has to do backwards, due to another wire. Certainly Richard Croft does this as well as anyone could, but it's pretty obvious that no one could do it well. When your complicated set inevitably involves forcing your actors to make themselves look pointlessly weird...you should maybe rethink the whole thing. Also--this seems like a choice that isn't really related to the set itself, but I can't not mention it--there's an unexpected, hilarious moment when Freia first appears by sliding face-first down the slope. Surely that must have been a mistake, you think. There's NO WAY that was intentional. But then, a little later, Donner and Froh make similar entrances. Double-you tee eff?

But on the bright side, there are none of the goofy costumes of the earlier production. And serpent-Alberich looks much cooler. Though Toad Alberich is just a toy toad that someone tosses on stage, which gets a laugh (intentionally? hard to say) from the audience.

Singing-wise, I think these productions are fairly comparable, for the most part. Or, at any rate, my lack of experience does not allow me to make fine comparisons. There are a few places where one of the other is preferable, however. James Morris in the older production is a better Wotan than Bryn Terfel in the new, who just comes across as kind of nondescript. Or so I thought. But the place where the Schenk REALLY comes out ahead is with the implausibly-named Siegfried Jerusalem as Loge. He radiates intelligence and experience in a way that Richard Croft--playing the character as a kind of callow youth--just doesn't. The Lepage version also has a few secret weapons in its arsenal; namely, Eric Owens as a fearsome Alberich and Stephanie Blythe as a powerful Fricka. In the end, the comparison may be a bit of a wash.

Honestly, I don't think either of these productions is bad. I mean, okay, the Lepage production actually is bad in some ways, but never in such a way as to suppress Wagner's genius. If I had to choose, the only thing to make me hesitate in recommending the older one would be the sound issue, but in either case, I think you'll do okay.

Richard Wagner, Lohengrin (1850)

I honestly had no idea that the tune commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride" originally came from this opera. A good thing to know to trick people into thinking you're smart, and/or to win money.

What surprised me about Lohengrin was that, even though it's generally seen as being of a piece with Holländer and Tannhäuser, it's really not very thematically similar. This one comes closer than those two do to just being a straightforward tragedy. No men are redeemed by the love of good women. I suppose if you're willing to reach a bit, you could say that Germany itself is redeemed, but that's just a very arbitrary thing tacked on at the end, and it certainly isn't the focus.

So the idea is that the young heir to the dukedom of Brabant was, allegedly, killed, and that the guilty party was his sister Elsa. Their guardian, Telramund, has accused her thus. So the king declares that they're going to have a single combat to determine the truth of the matter, always the best way to arbitrate these things. So it's Telramund vs A Guy Elsa Saw In A Dream, who, lucky break, does end up showing up riding a swan (or possible a swan-drawn boat; we don't actually see it in this production, which is probably a good thing--you've gotta figure it's inevitably gonna be pretty goofy-looking). He says he'll be her champion and then marry her, but just one thing: she can't ask his name or anything about his past--which, really, is a very clear indication that this is doomed from the start; imagine not even being able to know your husband's name. Maybe they should just agree that, for simplicity's sake, she'll call him Douglas). She agrees to this; he defeats Telramund but spares his life, and the two of them marry--but not before Telramund and his even eviller wife, Ortrud, have planted seeds of doubt in Elsa's mind. She asks to know who he is; he reveals this in front of the whole court (the secret is in the title!) and also that the rule is that he has to leave if his identity is revealed. So he leaves, the young duke is restored 'cause why not, and Elsa dies of grief. FINIS.

What really struck me as odd here is that the denouement of the story doesn't really have a moral component, or at least not one that I'm able to see as such. You could, I suppose, if you're inclined to be reallystrict, say that, yeah, Elsa's wanting to know anything whatsoever about her husband is a moral failing, but that just doesn't seem reasonable. The whole thing seems like one of those folk tales with arbitrary rules for what the hero is or is not supposed to do. Most odd--but the music, again, is unimpeachable, so whatever.

I saw this Met production, from 1986--a very traditional staging, though also extremely eighties, which may or may not appeal to one's aesthetics (Peter Hofmann in particular is very hair-metal-ish in the title role, which under the circumstances, I suppose is appropriate). I read an NYTimes review that DID NOT LIKE this production--that thought most of the singers were mediocre at best, but whatever, man--maybe when I'm more experienced I'll have a better idea of what productions to hate, but I thought everyone was fine. I particularly liked Leif Roar (what a name) and Leonie Rysanek as Telramund and Ortrud, the evil power couple.

Anyway, now I've seen Wagner's three main pre-Ring operas (he also wrote three reallyearly ones, which are not particularly acclaimed nor widely performed), so now I'm probably ready for...the main event.

Richard Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer (1843)

Damn, man, how 'bout that overture? Nothing could shout "Damned Pirate Ghostship" more plainly. I am extremely impressed. I mean, not that the rest of the score is any slouch, but that overture.

So there's a ship on its way home taking refuge from a storm, when they encounter a ghostly vessel piloted by the titular Holländer. He's sad because he's damned to sail the seas eternally except every seven years when he's cast on-shore; if, during this time, he can find a wife who will love him faithfully unto death, he is home free. So he asks the captain, hey, got a daughter? Yup, he replies, she's pretty great! How 'bout if I marry her? Well...sure, why not? Not exactly Great Moments in Parenting, but it turns out, in an amazingly lucky coincidence, that the daughter, Senta, is a long-time Flying Dutchman fangirl, and she's totally keen on doing this thing and then they both die and ascend to heaven. How nice for them.

There are certain goofy aspects to this plot, it is true. But looking past them, we see that the main thing is the idea of a woman's perfect, selfless love saving a damned soul (which also, come to think of it, was the ending of Tannhäuser--I believe we have successfully identified a Recurring Theme). However, "looking past that" is an awfully glib thing to say--the idea doesn't exist in a vacuum; it's in an actual context that must be reckoned with. The opera sets itself an awfully tall task: it needs to convince us that that this woman would be willing to make this sacrifice for a ghost pirate whom she's just met,hopefully also convincing us that she is not therefore insane. I am honestly not convinced this isn't actually impossible--the opera may well be fundamentally broken in that regard. But IF it is to work, it certainly depends completely on the production itself. This version, by the Latvian National Opera and Ballet...doesn't.

So first, I should acknowledge that the production is clearly pretty low-budget, and there's something to be said for doing more with less. Furthermore, there's nothing wrong with the cast, Egils Siliņš being particularly magisterial in the title role. But...hmm. Well, it's some sort of twentieth-century thing, with all the sailors dressed in navy uniforms and the women as...naval nurses? I guess? I don't love the look, but I still think it's at least theoretically okay. But the production does some truly inexplicable things that really do not help the audience to get lost in the magic, of which I will enumerate three. First: what is the deal with all the sailors at the end of the first part brandishing toothbrushes? Does this really lend any gravitas to the production? Second: at the beginning of the second part, the women are supposed to spinning, on spinning wheels. But here there are no wheels; instead, the women are rhythmically sort of fiddling with their wrists, their watches or bracelets. And SERIOUSLY, what the hell are they supposed to be doing and WHY? And third: the reason Senta's would-be beau Erik keeps coming on with huge dead birds is that he's supposed to be a hunter, but it's STILL goofy-looking, and it certainly doesn't explain why he keeps manhandling them and thrusting them at Senta.

But regardless of all that, the relationship, such as it is, between the Dutchman and Senta just doesn't work. To be fair: it's possible if not probable that it would NEVER work. I mean, they barely interact at all. But here...eh. He just stands there dopily, looking like someone from the Addams Family (when I called him "magisterial," I was basically referring to his singing), and it's just...nope! Not quite!

But yeah man, the music. Quite a thing.

Richard Wagner, Tannhäuser (1845)

So Treemonisha was my fiftieth opera. Maybe not the best choice, but I'd thought it was going to be The Haunted Manor until I realized I'd screwed up the count. So. Anyway, my only point being, it seemed odd to have watched so many and have no Wagner in there. I am going to watch the Ring Cycle in due course, but somehow, I felt like it was something I should build up to a little. You don't read Finnegans Wake before Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses. You'll notice that that analogy really doesn't work at all, since there's no reason that the Ring operas should be more "difficult" to watch than any other Wagner, but doesn't it sound superficially plausible if you don't think about it at all? Superficial plausibility is what we are going for!

Tannhäuser, then. The title character (only referred to as Heinrich) is a Minnesingerwho, as the opera opens, in a magical realm with Venus. Apparently, this magical realm--where human men seduced by faeries and the like are taken--is called the "Venusberg." I am guessing that whoever coined that term didn't mean it to be as hilarious as it is, but here we are. Anyway. He's gotten tired of it there, so back the real world. He meets some other Minnesingers and he agrees to go with them when they mention his old love interest Elisabeth.

So once they get there, there's a contest for Minnesingers. They're supposed to sing about the nature of love, and the others do bits about sort of airy, spiritual love. Tannhäuser mocks them for their bloodlessness, to everyone's dismay, and then he sings a song to Venus and everyone realizes that he's been to the Venusberg and they're going to execute him as he realizes his own depravity, but Elisabeth begs for mercy. So they exile him and urge him to go to Rome to beg for forgiveness. In the next act he's back, the Pope having rejected his plea for mercy, but then he's forgiven anyway thanks to Elisabeth's intervention, and he gets to die and go to heaven.

You know, presented straight like that with no kind of commentary, it probably actually looks more insane than it would if I'd put my own editorial spin on it.

I really truly seriously don't know what to make of this whole thing. During the scene of the song contest, I'm all nodding along with Tannhäuser's mockery of the other singers, yup, right there with you, dude, and then this...stuff happens, and I'm thinking, wait...what? Is this for real? His Great Crime here is having had sex, right? That's definitely what this is about. And am I supposed to be taking seriously this stuff that makes Dickens look like a crazed libertine? Is the other shoe going to drop? Well...no. It doesn't. This entire thing is played one hundred percent straight. It is really, really bizarre stuff. I mean, don't get me wrong, the music is gorgeous, during the second act climax I was torn between thinking "this is incredibly dumb" and "this sounds amazing." But...uh.

I ain't dumb! I wondered whether this was meant as some sort of sub rosa commentary, or...something. I mean, you'd think it hadto be, because Tannhäuser's tribute to earthly love is just SO much more compelling than his peers' obsession with a sexless, courtly kind. But boy, if that's the case, this is the most deadpan I have ever seen anything played ever. The whole third act is just this desperately serious sin-and-redemption narrative. I looked around and found this review which backs up this notion, alleging that "the tragedy of Tannhäuser is that the minstrel is alone among the inhabitants of the Wartburg in realizing that physical and spiritual love are not irreconcilable opposites," and asserting that "he is sacrificed on the tribal altar of hyprocrisy and priggishness," but I dunno. Are you sure you're not just reading your contemporary sensibilities into that? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if this whole thing were reflective of some kind of internal struggle on Wagner's part, but what comes out is what comes out. And...goddamn it's weird.

Boy, I haven't even said anything about the production I saw, have I? It's this one, from 1978 at the Beyreuth Festival, which is the main Wagner thing.  Poor picture quality, but not a big deal, especially given how minimalistic the sets are. Spas Wenkoff was quite good as the lead. But I don't know. Maybe a different production would bring out different elements of the opera, but from this vantage point it's hard to see how.

Scott Joplin, Treemonisha (1911)

I wanted to see this in February, for black history month, but somehow, that got by me. I know there ARE other operas by black composers, but this was the only one I could find. And only barely: a production was released on an old, long-out-of-print VHS tape way back in 1991, but, you know, old, long-out-of-print. Fortunately, some good samaritan uploaded the whole thing to youtube! With burnt-in Portuguese subtitles. Well, the lord giveth, the lord taketh away. It's not that big a deal, but it really would be nice to have English subs: even if you know the language, operatic singing is not always easy to understand, and there are some parts of this that were simply indecipherable to me.

So there's a community of former slaves in a late-nineteenth-century town in Texas. One of them is Treemonisha (so-named because she was found under a tree as a foundling, a detail that has absolutely no bearing on the larger plot), who teaches the other townspeople to read and whatnot. She gets on the wrong side of the local "conjurers" by advising people not to buy their little charms, so they kidnap her (there's probably something interesting in here about the conflict between Christianity and an older paganism, but the theme is never developed). She's rescued, taken back home, the conjurers are captured but she counsels mercy, and she becomes the leader of the town. Big dance number. The end.

This is Scott Joplin, you might ask, so is the opera a ragtime thing? Not really. There are recognizable elements thereof in some parts, along with various other forms of music (including a barbershop quartet bit), but basically, it's classical music. It's very interesting, although, I thought, only intermittently compelling in itself. I feel that it's difficult to judge the singing, exactly. The cast is fine, I was never overwhelmed, but it's possible that the material just didn't provide the opportunity to overwhelm.

And on that note, I hate to say it, but I can't help feeling that a lot of Jopin's lyrics are, as a Brit might say, a bit naff. Possibly he should've gotten someone else to write the libretto. Of course, I haven't heard many operas in English; maybe this is just a common feature of hearing one in a language you know. But some of his themes seem a bit questionable. We can acknowledge that it would probably have seemed pretty revolutionary for the woman to end up in charge, but the whole thing often comes across as simplistically didactic. When a character spits out dopeass rhymes like "Wrong is never right, that is very true/Wrong is never right and wrong you should not do," you have to wonder who this is for. Obviously Joplin was very concerned with helping his fellow African Americans, but I can't help feeling that his attitudes towards them may have been a bit paternalistic. Yes, I know, I'm some dopey white guy, I can fuck right off, that's fair, but, well--I had the impression that I had. There is nothing more I can say.

The interesting thing is that this is actually Joplin's second opera. The first, Guest of Honor, is currently...lost,if you can believe it. No one seems to even be sure what it was about. Unbelievable. I may not have loved Treemonisha, but I can still mourn this kind of loss of art.

Stanisław Moniuszko, The Haunted Manor (1865)

Hey, guess what I saw! Big thanks to my brother for twigging me to this production on youtube, with English subs (well, English and Polish simultaneously--slightly awkward but ultimately perfectly watchable)--I hadn't been able to find it, possibly because the video misspells the title. BUT OH WELL! Of course, this is the other well-known (relatively speaking) opera by the author of Halka. It's very tonally different, though--that was a fairly typical tragedy, whereas this is a goofy comedy with strong lashings of Polish patriotism.

The Haunted Manorconcerns two brothers, Stefan and Zbigniew, who at the beginning are just getting out of the army; they take an oath never to get married so that they'll always be available to protect the homeland when needed. Inspiring! But given that this is a comedy, it's pretty easy to guess how that works out. Back home, they decide to visit a manor where an old family friend lives with his daughters, Hanna and Jadwiga, though there's some talk of this mansion being haunted. During the night, the two sisters decide to test the brothers' bravery and some jealous hangers-on try to drive them away by playing that the mansion is indeed haunted. Everything ends happily with the two brothers and two sisters...well, what do you think?

According to the wikipedia entry, this is considered (by whom? Presumably the infamous "some") to be Moniuszko's best opera, so the immediate question is probably: how does this compare to Halka? It may or may not be a good question; I think it's open to debate to what extent you can really meaningfully compare a comedy and a tragedy. However, let's be straight: I didn't like this as much as Halka. I thought the action was somewhat muddled at times, and there were places--the second act in particular--where it seemed a bit draggy. Also, probably naturally, the "rah rah Poland" stuff sort of rolled off my back a bit.

That's not to deny, however, that there's some fantastic music here, and that the singing in this production is universally strong. Probably my single favorite performance was Anna Borucka as the brothers' scheming aunt Czesnikowa. The character is portrayed as a kind of flapper, and it's really delightful; I just wish it were a bigger part.  Stefan (tenor, Tadeusz Szlenkier) and Zbigniew (bass, Rafał Siwek) are also excellent, and I feel the need to point out that, weirdly, they look like two of the main characters from the webcomic Basic Instructions:

See if you don't agree! Stefan in particular gets a really fantastic third-act aria about their late mother, and Szlenkier just kills it. In a sane world, this would be part of the standard concert repertoire--and Moniuszko would be better-known in general. Really now, this is just ridiculous.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Manru (1901)

Hey look, it's another Polish opera, this one by a one-time Prime Minister of Poland. How about that? It's also to date the only Polish opera ever to be performed at the Met, albeit in English translation.

It takes place in a peasant village in, presumably, Poland. A local girl, Ulana (Ewa Tracz), has married and had a child with a gypsy, the title character (Peter Berger), which has led to her being disowned by her mother (Anna Lubańska) and generally scorned by the people; in the first act, she begs for acceptance without success. In the second act, Manru tries to change his itinerant ways to live a life with her in the village, but feels pulled back to his previous life; in the third and final, the gypsy caravan to which he belonged, and especially his former flame, Aza (Monika Ledzion-Porczyńska), try to get him to rejoin them. Things are resolved, as things are. Operavision makes much of how this allegedly sheds light on anti-Roma prejudice, but I think that's pushing things: the Romani characters are portrayed in typical ways, as magic thieves and beguilers; not exactly unsympathetic, but really. Come on.

[Sidenote: look, I am REALLY aware of the problems with using the word "gypsy," and I have internal arguments about whether I should. What I always come back to is that in old material like this, we almost certainly aren't thinking of the people as an actual ethnic group, and referring to them as such feels weirdly anachronistic. But, I could be barking up the wrong tree. I have no wish to slander any ethnic group, which I hope would be obvious to anyone who's read this blog for any length of time.]

This production takes place, I think, in the sixties, or at any rate, not in a nineteenth-century peasant village. I recently read this article about Regietheater, which made me understand why some people are so resistant to changing the context of an opera, but let's be reasonable: there are travesties of the sort that the article describes, and then there are benign setting changes, and confusing the two seems unhelpful. Still, this particular setting change only partially works: the first act, among fashionable society girls, really doesn't at all, because it's just so obvious that this is meant to be in a particular setting, and it's not,leading to some problems parsing what's even supposed to be happening. It's better in the latter two acts, though, and in the third, where the caravan is portrayed as a sort of hippie biker gang, it works very well indeed. Super-cool and appropriate visuals.

Paderewski's music is beautiful and dramatic, but I wasn't quite feeling this at first. It felt dramatically slack and just sort went on and on without making as much of an impact as one would hope, and I was thinking, man, is this going to be another disappointment? But then holy shit, man, the third act explodes onto the scene, and all is forgiven. Mezzo-soprano Monika Ledzion-Porczyńska as Aza steals the show, with a presence that is missed elsewhere (although there's an extent to which the material may not have provided the opportunity), and the whole thing just rocks hard. Also, did I mention the diegetic fiddle-playing? Great stuff.

Something odd about this production, however, for better or worse. Take a look at this plot summary. Note the typically operatic ending. And then know that the ending here is...not that, by a long shot. I don't know that you'd call it "happy," quite, but it's not nearly that grim. I really don't know what to think about this; I'd love to hear a directorial justification. I mean, you might ask, "is this thematically appropriate?" but so many operas, even well-regarded operas, are--and I don't mean this as a criticism--tragedies for no particular reason except that tragic operas are a thing. One might reasonably suggest that one should ere on the side of doing what the composer wanted to do, and in some cases that's clearly right (see that article about Regietheater), but here, eh. I can't bring myself to viscerally mind.