Jaakko Kuusisto, Ice (2019)

And now for something completely different.  This is based on a best-selling Finnish novel (an opera based on Anna Kavan's Ice would be extremelydifferent). It's possibly the best-selling Finnish novel, if I understand aright. It's the first Finnish-language opera I've seen (whoo!), and also the most recently-composed--the Finnish National Opera and Ballet premier is on Operavision--until September 4 only! See it while you can!

It's a simple story: it's 1947, and everyone's still kind of shellshocked from The Recent Unpleasantness. A priest, Petter, and his wife Mona and daughter Sanna arrive at a remote archipeligo off Finland where he's going to minister. Not a lot happens: they integrate into the community, and there's some quiet family drama, as well as some semi-supernatural stuff about the spirits of the drowned. But, as this page puts it, "the priest knows nothing about ice, nor the way it gives in when you least expect."

Yes, it's uneventful for the most part, which has not, in my experience, been a great recipe for an opera. But I actually really like this one, certainly more so than any other contemporary opera I've seen. The music is very lush and shimmery, very effectively giving it that icy feel. There aren't really any traditional arias here (although there is some great choral work); it proceeds more or less like a Wagner opera, with a lot of dialogue and little monologuing. I was a little iffy at first, but I quickly got drawn into it, and without spoiling anything, the climax is extremely effective. I will say that there's one part that didn't exactly work for me: there's a Russian refugee who's consumed with trying to find word of the son she was forced to leave behind, and while it's supposed to serve as a sort of counterpoint to the priest's story, it feels very poorly integrated into the whole. In general, I would say that I strongly suspect that the novel does a lot more to develop the details of the secondary characters and daily life in the islands; here things are basically just hinted at. Like, there's apparently a thing where the people from the west and east islands don't like each other, but it's never detailed and never goes anywhere. An opera naturally does a lot of simplification, and for the most part this does a decent job at that, but it's like an iceberg: you only see the top, but you know there's a hell of a lot more to it than that. And then climate change destroys it, so there's not. Hurray!

Well, as I said, I liked this a lot. Maybe they'll put it out on DVD, but I kind of doubt that there will ever be another recorded performance to watch, so don't miss out.

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Zoroastre (1749, rev. 1756)

Boy, this one is...different. I don't quite understand all the different categorizations that are apparently made regarding these baroque operas; wikipedia calls this and Castor et Pollux "tragédies en musiques," whereas Les Paladins is apparently a "comédie lyrique" and Les indes galantesis an "opéra-ballet." And yet, those latter two basically seem of a kind to me, whereas this and C&P do not seem very similar. So it's very confusing all 'round.

Anyway, this features a lot more singing than Paladins, though possibly not really a lot more plot. Zoroastre is a cool all-around guy who I guess is going to start a religion; he's in love with and is loved by Amélite, but her evil sister Erinice (though honestly, it wasn't clear to me watching that they were meant to be sisters) is also in love with him and wants revenge. He's banished by the evil sorcerer Abramane, and he and Erinice plan their revenge, but it doesn't work because Zoroastre gets the gods to fuck them up. And that is that.

It's not deliriously goofy in the way that Indes and Paladins are, which was kind of disappointing, but hey, there's no reason you have to do what I want. The problem is...it's really a little bit dull. I did actually sorta-kinda get into it at first, but the latter half is a bit of a slog, especially, my goodness, act four, which is just the bad guys talking about how bad they are, and seriously, ALL THEY DO is go on and on and ON about how fucking awesome rage and hatred and vengeance are. There's some decent music, including one particularly badass chorus, but a little of this goes a long way. And this...is not a little of this. Evil is hard to depict effectively, but it's gotta be more than just talking about how evil you are. That's just Skeletor-style evil. And then the ending is hella anti-climactic, not that I was necessarily expecting much at the time. This is basically comparable in length to Paladins,but it feels significantly longer, and the music in general was less interesting to me.

The production--again, a Les Arts Florissants thing--is strikingly minimalistic compared to their other stuff I've seen, with a constrained stage area and just a few sparse backgrounds. It's probably appopriate, given the opera's mood, but I dunno. On the whole, a bit of a disappointment. Well, even Homer nods, is a phrase I've only recently learned and am now trying to use often. Let's hope we can get back on track next time!

gimmecash.com

gitmanemekclash.com is a website that exists on the internet. It has a stock photo for you to enjoy on the front page. This post is SERIOUSLY supposed to be 300-500 words? I feel like a kid who's been assigned an essay for which they have zero inspiration and have to just furiously tread water to make the word count. I was in that situation a few times in college, or maybe more than a few, I'm kind of embarrassed about a lot of my output at that time. Jesus Christ, we're not even halfway there. Should I just list random facts from the website? That sounds kind of boring. I mean, I KNOW they're just trying to do some search optimization thing, which won't work very well because I did not include a link to their site and I intentionally mangled their name when I mentioned it and also I obscured it in the screenshot, but you REALLY have to wonder: what would ANYONE say about this? Also, where do they get the nerve to demand that random strangers say things about their website? If you're not paying me for this, what possible incentive is there? Two hundred words. I mean, I would assume it was a real website, it looks legit, but the fact that they send spam to strangers makes me doubt myself, so that may be a somewhat counterproductive thing to do. Well, the fact that the alleged human who sent me this "offer" doesn't have an email with the actual site's domain name might be another red flag, as might the fact that her alleged name is different than the one in her email. I do appreciate being called "dear," however. It makes me feel like ol' Ellen and I have a real relationship. That's 300.

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Les Paladins (1760)

Welcome to Rameau Ramblings. We're proud to be ranked among the top-ten English-language Rameau podcasts for the sixth straight year. Today we're look at JP's penultimate opera, Les Paladins. I guess that was fairly obvious from the title.

So Argie's in love with Atis. Unfortunately, Anselme is holding her captive along with her soubrette-y friend (servant?) Nérine; naturally, he wants to marry her. Fortunately, Argie frees them, easily overcoming the cowardly guard, Orcan. They flee, but Anselme is in pursuit. Fortunately, there's a faerie named Manto who's able to distract and seduce him and show that he's not really in love with Argie. Everyone's happy, except presumably Anselme and Orcan. Hooray!

That is all you get. It's definitely a bit scanty for two-hours-something, but who can complain. The music may be even more unbelievably gorgeous than anything I've heard prior from Rameau, and as expected, there's lots and lots of dancing. One thing I will say, though: I have no problem with any of this, but I feel that even taking it for what it is, Nérine and Orcan as characters really just kind of disappear in the mix. I would have liked to see more of them in the latter half of the piece.

One thing I found very interesting is the character of Manto. The role is sang by a tenor, but it's not clear to me whether the character is supposed to be male or female. In this production the character is pretty clearly coded as gay; whatever the case, I find this gender fluidity stuff we're seeing in Rameau interesting and surprising.

So speaking of this production...well, this, like all the Rameau operas I've seen thusfar, is a product of William Christie and his ensemble Les Arts Florissants. But while Les Indes galantes was a pretty straightforward production--heightened but probably more or less the sort of thing you'd expect from a traditional production--this is anything but. It's an unfathomably elaborate thing involving three separate tiers and extensive video footage mixed with live singers and dancers (not in period dress). For not-entirely-clear reasons, there's loads of humans turning into animals and vice versa, and just meeting giant transforming animals. Also, way more full-frontal nudity (male and female) than I would have expected. I mean, not a lotin absolute terms, and not lingering, but still--any was more than I was anticipating. It's all a lot of fun; at a certain point you've just gotta stop trying to think about it rationally and just let it wash over you. The cast of course is fine, with the highlight for me being Sandrine Piau as Nérine (which is part of the reason I wanted more of her).

Anyway, nothing about this production does anything to dissuade me from thinking that Rameau is opera's best-kept secret, at least outside the Francophone world. Expect more soon!

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Les Indes galantes (1735)

All I want in this world is to watch baroque operas.  And to have a non-evil government.  Well, I can achieve one of these goals.

There's a prologue, as there often is. Hébé is the goddess of youth, and she just wants to chillax with her followers. Unfortunately, then the goddess of war, Bellona, shows up (a baritone en travesti--I'm surprised to find that such things existed in earnest) and tries to recruit them for The Wars. She's naturally upset about this, and calls on Cupid to stop him. Cupid tries to do this, but ultimately concludes that Europe is excessively war-like and that he'd be better off in foreign climes, and cach of the four acts that follow is a love story set in a different exotic (by European standards, obviously) locale. "Le Turc généreux" concerns a pasha (or something) who's in love with his slave but ultimately lets her marry her own lover (was this an influence on Die Entführung aus dem Serail?). "Les incas du Pérou" is about an Incan princess in love with a Spanish conquistador; a jeaous Inca priest tries to stop them by making everyone think the gods made a volcano erupt out of anger, but the conquistador tells everyone that the priest caused the earthquake and he gets crushed by rocks. "Les fleurs" takes place in Persia; there are two sultans (or something) in love with each other's slaves, who ultimately turn out to love them back. It feels very proto-opera-buffa, what with the romantic difficulties and gender confusion, though as with all of these stories, there isn't much to it. Finally, we hae "Les sauvages," about a Native American warrior who's in love with a princess but who's worried that she may go for one of two bumbling European rivals. But it turns out that the one is too inconstant and the other is too jealous and she prefers the happy medium of her native lover. THE END.

It's all super-Orientalist, obviously, but mostly in pretty harmless ways (yes, blah blah, even if it's not harmful in itself it's all part of a cumulative narrative JESUS CHRIST just let me enjoy my opera). As is probably obvious from the description, the Incan segment is by far the most dubious in that regard. But if you're going to see that as a colonialist narrative, it surely has to be counterbalanced by the Native American one, which, yes, is very "noble savage," but it's not positing Europeans as being clearly superior and necessary to civilize the natives.

It's a lot of fun; Rameau's music remains great. There is A LOT of dance here, certainly more so than in Castor et Pollux; it's really extremely clear that this is not Italian. I mean, even beyond the fact that it's in French. There are times when you think, oh, the act's over now, got it, whoops, nope, more dancing. Doesn't quite accord with modern sensibilities, but you get into it and it's fine. This production is very elaborate and glittery; a real spectacle, which after all is what the opera is. Everyone's good, both singers and dancers, though the only one I recognized is Danielle de Niese as Hébé, beguiling as ever. You can sort of see why this stuff isn't really produced overseas (has the Met ever done Rameau? If this database is complete, The Enchanted Island is the closest they've gotten). The sensibility seems more foreign probably than any other opera I've seen, certainly more so than the Italian baroque. All the dancing...it's not that the Met couldn't summon the wherewithal if they wanted to, obviously, but, I mean, they don't even put on that many Handel operas, so it might take be a while before they get to Rameau or Lully. Meanwhile, a smaller opera house would have logistical problems pulling it off at all; this really does call for a pretty large-scale production. Anyway, it's great. And I now have a bunch of Rameau on DVD, so more soon.

George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Jean-Philippe Rameau, André Campra, Henry Purcell, Jean-Féry Rebel, Jean-Marie Leclair, & Giovanni Battista Ferrandini, The Enchanted Island (2011)

Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, had a vision, and that vision was to support baroque music by commissioning an opera consisting of a pastiche of different composers with an English-language libretto telling a new story...well, I don't know whose idea the story was, and calling it "new" would only be partially correct. I think we can most accurately describe it as a Shakespearean remix. It was devised by the man known as Jeremy Sams. Known and loved by all!

The story is more or less Shakespeare's Tempest, although in this version Caliban's mother Sycorax is an actual character--here presented as Prospero's former lover, filled with resentment and desire for revenge for him having abandoned her and taken her island and whatnot. Anyway, this starts a little before the play does. Prospero knows that a ship with his usurper brother is coming and orders Ariel to make a storm to crash it; he also knows that Sebastian is there, who will be a match for his daughter. But, whoops, Ariel's storm-making procedure goes awry due to sabotage from Caliban and Sycorax, and she accidentally crashes a different ship, carrying the lovers from A Midsummer Night's Dream, here married couples, having sorted out their romantic confusion. But don't expect things to stay sorted out; starting with Ariel seeing Demetrius, assuming he's Sebastian, and magicking him and Miranda into love, and things spiral from there. Although, obviously, all works out in the end.

The whole thing is incredibly well-done. The musical patchwork feels seamless (to this non-expert, at least): Handel predominates with a fair bit of Vivaldi, a handful of Rameau, two pieces by Campra, and one each by the others. The libretto is fun and funny and never feels awkward. The cast is also, unsurprisingly, top-notch; Danielle de Niese as Ariel clearly takes top honors, discovering previously only theoretical levels of delightfulness, but of course David Daniels as Prospero (you gotta have some countertenor in there) is also solid, and the top-billed Joyce DiDonato as Sycorax...*chef's kiss.* Plácido Domingo has a small but important role as Neptune, and it's kind of funny because now I understand what it sounds like to native French or Italians speakers when foreign singers tackle their repertoires with imperfect pronunciation: he slurs and drops words all over the place.

Let's talk a little more about Sycorax, shall? It quickly becomes clear that she is, at any rate, a sympathetic villain. She has a moving aria where she tries to comfort her son after Hermia--having temporarily been in love with him for magic-related reasons--has fallen out thereof. But no, in the end, she turns out not to be a villain at all. One thing about The Tempest is that Prospero is, let's face it, kind of a dick, and this opera is written with enough of a modern-day sensibility to acknowledge that. One of the last scenes is him acknowledging his fault and begging forgiveness from her, which was both unexpected and very welcome. The last thing you want to see is another Zauberflöte situation where the light male principle defeats the dark female principle.

And you know, you might rightly see that as sort of fanfic-y, but the brilliant thing is, that is totally in the tradition of baroque opera. Handel changed history and mythology willy nilly as it--presumably--fit in with the sensibilities of the time, so why can't we? It's all part of our nefarious plan! Anyway, the whole thing works brilliantly. The Met definitely came up with a winner here.

George Frideric Handel, Deidamia (1741)

You can never have too much Handel. That's what I say. For whatever reason, baroque music has really been growing on me lately. My thirst is unquenchable!

Deidamia is a minor character from Greek mythology; she was the princess of Scryos with whom Achilles was romantically involved during the period while he was disguised by his father's friend as a girl to avoid being killed in the Trojan War, as predicted. The opera opens as the Greeks, led by Ulysses, come by to ferret him out and get him to fight for them. The other characters are Deidamia's friend Nerea, her father Licomede, and another Greek hero, Fenice.

So I feel like operatic tragedy, in the sense that we think of it, wasn't really a thing until the nineteenth century. And you couldn't consider this a tragedy, really. But what's interesting is that it does have more serious intent, and a certain amount of pathos, underlying it than any other Handel opera I've seen (for what it's worth, this may technically be his last opera; afterwards he devoted himself to English-language oratorios--some of which, however, are supposed to be signficantly opera-like). We know that Achilles is going to leave, and that he's going to be killed; the conclusion is all about recognizing the fleeting nature of pleasure and the necessity for embracing it while we have it. Handel (or his librettist) could easily have just completely changed the story, as he was certainly perfectly willing to do in other operas, but no, here we're made to confront the incipient tragedy.

Anyway, this was fun to watch as always, with great music. For the record, I am firmly anti-Trojan-War, which puts me at odds with the text, but that is OKAY. This production is basically a hoot, though it would definitely irritate tedious purists--and I have to admit, some of the incidental background characters are a bit much even for me. But basically, it's fun stuff: I shouldn't say "modernized;" it's really more out-of-time...as, I come to realize, most Handel I've seen has been. The Greeks arrive in a submarine at the beginning, and there are outrageous costumes galore and elaborate sets featuring tropical islands and docks on the ocean--the whole thing has a very oceanic feel, come to that. Seems appropriate; all these Greeks running around in the Mediterranean trying to get their shit together. The cast is all strong, notably Sally Matthews in the title role and Silvia Tro Santafé as Ulysses. The only thing I had a little trouble with was Olga Pasichnyk as Achilles. Very much to my surprise, this apparently wasn't originally a castrato role; it was always sung by a soprano. Which is fine, but there's certainly some potential confusion with a woman playing a man dressed as a woman (well, the same issue comes up in Rosenkavalierand no doubt others), but Pasichnyk really butches it up, leaving no doubt who she's meant to be. Still, whether it's the way she plays it or just something fundamental in the role, I found her alleged love for Deidamia kind of impossible to believe, which seems like a bit of a problem. Of course, Achilles has always been kind of a prick, so it may be true to life (...mythological life), but still. I'm not too sure.

Still, fuckin eh, man, Handel. I'm glad he wrote a shit-ton of operas, because I want to SEE a shit-ton of Handel operas.

"Guns don't kill people, people do."

So the hoary bumper sticker slogan says. Shouldn't that be "guns don't kill people; people do?" Don't neglect the semi-colon!  Thing is, the sentiment isn't exactly wrong. But ask someone, okay, so in that case, what can we do about the problem? don't expect a response more cogent than MOAR GUNZ, or possibly a malignant cyst like mike huckabee burbling about the need for more Christian theocracy. It's not meant to start a debate; it's meant to shut it down.

So we have this individualist American cowboy mythos that will not die. And the NRA has capitalized on that by shrieking about how you need guns to protect yourself from the hordes of slavering invaders just outside your gate and getting the idea of ever-more-powerful firearms all mixed up in our ideas of masculinity in incredibly toxic ways (okay, it's hard to imagine a way that wouldn't be toxic), and mainstreaming violent rhetoric about cold dead hands and watering the tree of liberty. And then you have increasing atomization and isolation brought on by late capitalism making people feel like helpless failures. And on top of this you have a political party that makes up at least forty percent of the country constantly pounding on this vile, dehumanizing rhetoric about foreigners or immigrants or non-whites or anyone perceived as Other. But where does all the gun violence come from?!? This seems like a reeeeal case for Slylock Fox.

So, yeah. Starting with gun control is in a sense getting it backwards; we really just need to fix all the above stuff--after which, sensibly stringent regulation of firearms will just come naturally. I do think it's naive to imagine that we can effectively solve the problem by only addressing the symptoms and ignoring the underlying causes. But GOOD FUCKING LUCK with those causes. You can think in terms of long-term cultural trends, but in the here and now, I can't even begin to imagine how I would fix them. Even though meaningful gun control isn't politically tenable, it sure as hell seems more so than all that other stuff, so it only makes sense that that's what people would push for.

Point being, if gun enthusiasts would pitch in to help us destroy capitalism and fundamentally rework our cultural infrastructure, we wouldn't need to talk about taking their weapons. But since basically all of them unreflectively support these things, well, it is what it is.

Joseph Haydn, Il mondo della luna (1777)

So there's this astronomer, Ecclitico. He's friends of sorts with a clueless rich guy, Buonafede, who doesn't understand what the deal is with the moon; Ecclitico and his servants are easily able to trick him into thinking he's seeing little vignettes of people through his telescope. So that's cool, but there's a problem: he's in love with Buonafede's daughter Clarice, his friend Ernesto is in love with his other daughter Flaminia, and his other other friend is in love with his maidservant Lisetta, and Buonafede won't hear of it; he's smitten with Lisetta himself, and he wants his daughters to marry richer guys. So what to do? Well, the only solution is to trick Buounafede into thinking he's travelled to the moon and have him meet the Emperor of the Moon and teach him that lunar customs dictate that he should let these woman get married as they wish. Once he learns he's been tricked, he's mad, but then he forgives everyone, as you do in opera buffa, this being the absolute buffiest exemplar of the genre.

Really, this is probably the single goofiest plot in the operaverse. I've certainly never seen nor heard of goofier. But who's complaining? NOT ME! The music is fantastic; I don't know whether I like it more than Orlando Paladino, but I'd say it's at least comparable. And as silly as the plot is, it's interesting to see how people were thinking about these sorts of scientific advancements in the eighteenth century.

There are actually--perhaps surprisingly--two different productions of this available on disc. The more readily available is this one. It's supposed to be a modernized, twenty-first-century production, but as multiple reviewers have pointed out, this isn't really an opera that lends itself to that kind of updating. It's very much rooted in earlier scientific ideas; Buonafede being as gullible as he is in the eighteenth century pushes the boundaries of credibility; having him so in the here and how shatters them into thousands of tiny, glittering shards. So instead, I went with this one (which seems not to have an imdb page), and I think I made a good decision. It's not exactly a period production, but it works extremely well. Especially when the characters are allegedly on the moon, they have these outlandish, steampunk-ish costumes that really contribute to an effectively dreamlike atmosphere. Very Voyage dans la Lune. This is from Conservatorio Bruno Maderna, which may not be the first place you think of when you think of opera houses, but they do a very effective job. Even though no one in the cast is a household name, they're all excellent. Of especial note are Carlo Torriani as Buonafede, buffing it up like a real buffer; and Gaia Petrone as Lisetta, playing a standard soubrette role to the hilt. Also, Catia Pizzi as Ernesto (en travesti in a former castrato role), man--I mean, the singing's fine, but she REALLY impresses by how convincing she is as a man, which I thought she was until she started.

Point is, Haydn fucking owns. This was good enough that I actually kind of want to see the other available production, conceptually shaky though it may be. More Haydn operas, please!