Stanisław Moniuszko, Paria (1869)

Big ups to Operavision for giving us access to operas that we'd never ever see otherwise! Thisis Moniuszko's last, and much less-performed than Halkaand The Haunted Manor. This production is in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of Moniuszko's birth, as is the new production of Halka going up...just next week. And maybe more later in the year? I hope so.

This one takes place in India. Idamor is a military hero for having defeated the country's vaguely-defined enemies; his beloved is a priestess, Neala. Her father the high priest is going to release her from the priesthood so the two of them can wed. That's good! But Idamor has a Dark Secret: he's actually secretly a member of the undercaste (ie, a pariah), and if anyone learned this, it would be Big Trouble. That's bad! Things come to a head when his father Dżares shows up. And that...is about that.

Considering that Moniuszko is considered Poland's national composer and all, it's sort of weird that they seem to pretty much just fixate on the two operas. I mean, it would make sense if those were really the only two good ones, but this fuckin' rules. The Verdi-esque music is absolutely terrific, getting just unbearably dramatic and exciting in places, and if the story doesn't quite have the emotional resonance of Halka,it's still very good, especially in the latter half. According to the Operavision page,

after only seven performances, and despite relatively positive reviews in the Warsaw press, it was removed from the repertoire. This caused much distress for the composer, who, until his death three years later, could not understand why his compatriots were uninterested in his final opera.

I can easily enough explain why it wasn't a relative success compared to his more popular operas: it's because unlike them, there's really no way to connect Pariato ideas of Polish national identity. It obviously resonated less. But that doesn't explain why it didn't still see at least somesuccess; great opera is great opera. Hmph, I say!

I'm not, unfortunately, entirely sure about this production: the performances are all first-rate--a lot of Polish singers with no international presence who nonetheless rock up the joint, my favorite being Mikołaj Zalasiński as Dżares. But it's a kind of relentlessly avant-garde thing: it was performed in an actual factual sports arena, set up in such a way that the audience members are able to wander around and mingle with the singers, checking out the action from different angles. It's not awful for what it is, and I'm sure it would've been super-cool to actually be in that audience, but I don't know that it helps with the drama, and given that this is the first and very possibly last opportunity most of us will have to see the opera, I would've greatly preferred a more traditional take. Although, I hasten to add, it's good enough that you get past the weirdness quickly enough.

Anyway, that's that. Moniuszko rules. GIVE ME MORE, DAMMIT. The most promising of his other works are Hrabina and Verbum Nobile. According to wikipedia, the former has never even been recorded in its entirety, which is pretty mind-blowing. In this age of increased nationalism, can't we at least demand that it lead to more opera performances? C'mon.