Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Mozart and Salieri (1897)

This sticks out pretty jarringly among Rimsky-Korsakov's operas: you have all these pieces based on Russian fairie and folk tales, and then, BOOM, this one that has absolutely nothing to do with any Slavic themes. Of course, the reason is that it's based on a play by Pushkin, so I suppose in that sense it's indirectly Russian, but still...

Anyway, actually, when you think about it, it is based on a fairie tale: the wholly fake idea that Salieri had this bitter rivalry with Mozart. BOOM. In fact, this--and the source material--are mostly where this stuff comes from, I think. So I don't love that, but if we can ignore the fakeness on display here, this still works pretty well as a drama and an opera.

The idea is that Salieri is really obsessed with art and being an artist and he's worked his whole life to gain respect for himself and his work and he's done it even if it's kind of clinical and not exactly transcendent. And he was cool with that until this pipsqeak Mozart came along, who has the divine spark in spite of being, in Salieri's opinion, frivolous and unappreciative of his gift. So they're friends in theory only it's eating Salieri up inside until finally he determines that the only thing he can do is poison the kid (well, only six years younger than him, but whatevs). And that is that. It's a short piece; only one act in two scenes; over in forty-ish minutes.

It's really good, though the music takes a fairly inconspicuous backseat. Salieri and Mozart are the only two characters, the former having a much bigger role than the latter. You can really feel his angst, although I do have to say, as depicted, it's a little hard to really feel that it would be quite so murderous. This production (released as a double feature with The Stone Guest) from 1981 is quite good, notwithstanding the shaky video quality, although I somehow feel like Mozart should be depicted as younger than he is. Yes, their ages were close in real life, but the drama seems predicated on there being a bigger difference, and they're both late-middle-agish here. Small complaint, though. Good singing. Predictably, Salieri's a baritone and Mozart a tenor, and Artur Eizen and Alexei Maslennikov are both effective in the roles, though the former feels more like a real character. Mozart's mostly viewed from Salieri's perspective, at a remove.

Ironically (is this ironic? Probably not? Whatever), it makes me want to listen to more Mozart and more Salieri. 'Cause the former is great and the latter is pretty darned good (to be fair, the opera does nothing to indicate that the latter isn't as true as the former--Mozart even positively references Salieri's Tarare). But then...so is Rimsky-Korsakov. There was a time when I naively thought that I could at some point see all the operas that are available to see. Now...well, it's more plausible than seeing every available movie, but it's still a hell of daunting task.

Alexander Dargomyzhsky, The Stone Guest (1872)

You gotta have a lotta nerve to write an opera based on the Don Juan legend, given that it makes comparisons with one of the most famous and best operas ever written unavoidable. But I can tell you why it happened: it's because the libretto here is a play by Pushkin. If there's one thing I know about Russians, it's that they like composing operas based on Pushkin material. It couldn't have been avoided.

Like Borodin's Prince Igorand Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina, this was completed after the composer's death by Rimsky-Korsakov. Don't you think there's something a little suspicious about all this posthumous opera-completion? Am I saying that he was in the habit of bumping off composers so he could have his way with their unfinished works? Well...I'm not not saying that. It's just something to keep in mind.

Yes well so. It's not exactly fair to compare this to Don Giovanni,but at least for the non-Russians among us, it's pretty inevitable that the whole thing will come across as a distorted, fun-house-mirror version thereof. There are plenty of similarities: there's a Leporello, a Donna Anna, and a Commendatore who wreaks his vengeance (though here, he's Donna Anna's husband instead of her father--no Don Ottavio is in evidence). It's kind of interesting to see, really, but...I dunno. I think the differences between the story here and in Mozart are kind of universally for the worse. Take--just as one example--the climax, which, in Don Giovanni, is probably the single most dramatic moment in opera. And part of what gives it so much power is that, even after everything, he's still given multiple opportunities to repent before it's too late. But there's nothing like that here; the statue just takes him by the hand and HUUUUGH! DEAD! And it's not even clear here whether he "deserves" this death, or whether he's supposed, in fact, to have been shown to be redeemed by love for Donna Anna, which is kind of glurgh compared to the other version. OH WELL.

The music: there are a fewpretty good dramatic crescendos, but...I mean, in general it's nothing to get that excited about. Almost the entirety of the singing is recitative, which gets a bit monotonous and, I think, precludes dramatic possibilities. Apparently this was considered to have had a strong influence on Russian opera, but as an amateur, I don't really see it. If you want to see it outside of Russia, you're pretty much limited to this,a 1979 recording from the Bolshoi Theatre that I think was produced for Soviet television. As such, the video quality isn't brilliant, but I think it's fine. Plenty good enough to give you the idea. I'd say the same thing about the cast, honestly (that probably sounds meaner than I intended it). But really, Vladimir Atlantov is, you know, fine in the title role, but he certainly doesn't project much in the way of power or menace. Well, that might be down to the opera itself as much as the singer. As I say, IT'S FINE. It's just...probably more of academic than popular interest.

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Les Boréades (1764)

Rameau's last opera, only performed posthumously for reasons people don't seem to be quite sure of. At any rate, we can be grateful that it survived to be performed.

The plot is that Alphise, the queen, wants to marry Abaris, but unfortunately he's a commoner and she's only supposed to marry one of les Boréades, decendents of the god. Her determination angers them and Boreas too, so they abduct her, but then it turns out that by a lucky break, Abaris was secretly a Boréade all along. Phew! Of course, saying that the opera has an overall "plot" might be pushing it a bit; it's a jumble, perhaps even more than these things usually are. Lots of things that aren't much more than excuses for some dubiously on-topic singing and dancing about. Still and all, though, the central romance is probably the most dramatically compelling thing in any Rameau I've seen. Naturally, our contemporary sensibilities would prefer that Boreas & Co just get over Abaris being a commoner, rather than oh wait he's secretly not, but that's just not the way these things worked, and it's fine.

The music is gorgeous and inventive; it's gratifying to know that the old man still had it in him. This is a fine production. It's fairly bare-bones set-wise; most of it centers on seasonal weather effects: flowers, leaves, snow, rain. It's frequently visually striking, although I sort of wish it had committed more deeply to the concept. A lot more could be done with it, I feel, and the bit where there's a big ol' table in the middle of the stage doesn't seem really on-point. The dancing...mmm, it's not necessarily my favorite thing, and it doesn't necessarily go with the music as well as one would like, but it's good enough. I like Paul Agnew a lot as Abaris. Very humane, and he has good chemistry with Barbara Bonney as Alphise, which is important for the drama to work. You probably would not guess that he also played the title role in Platée! Also, there's a very nice grace note at the end that I won't spoil even though you're unlikely to see this. You'll never know! It'll haunt you to your grave!

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Mlada (1890)

This is not to be confused with the 1872 opera Mlada, which was an abortive collaborative project with Rimsky-Korsakov along with some other Russian composers, including Mussorgsky and Borodin (certainly an impressive array of talent). This apparently uses the same libretto but is completely different musically.

I have no idea whether this is based on actual mythology or if it's an original story; the internet does not make that clear. But the story, such as it is: Princess Mlada and Prince Yaromir were in love, but before the opera opens, Mlada has been murdered by Princess Voyslava (with the help of her father), who wants to marry Yaromir herself. To this end, she enlists the help of the goddess of death, Morena, but ultimately it's no dice: Yaromir remains faithful to Mlada, and the two are united in Heaven.

I say "such as it is" because this is an extremely non-plot-heavy opera--actually more accurately classified as an opera-ballet. That plot is mostly sort of bunched together at the beginning and end, with a lot of excuses for song and dance in between. There is a lot of invoking of various gods, both good and evil, as well as a somewhat undercooked thing involving different ethnicities, and in particular the Czechs who are trying to avoid persecution by the Germans. This goes nowhere and I'm not sure why it's there.

That is unimportant, however, because this thing cooks. Rimsky-Korsakov is fast becoming one of my favorite composers, and here we see the versatility of his talent, with music ranging from boistrous folk dances to eerie evocations of the supernatural. There's an especially striking part where, because the forces of darkness need Yaromir to forget about Mlada for their magic to work, they summon the shade of Cleopatra (yes, in a medieval Slavic setting--just go with it), leading to some appropriately spellbinding song and dance.

Unsurprisingly, there is only one video recording of this, from the Bolshoi Ballet in 1992. Fortunately, it's a pretty good one! It does suffer a little from the aesthetics of the time (in particular, Maria Gavrilowa as Voyslava has this "too much hairspray" eighties hangover thing), but it's generally sumptuously produced and lovely to watch. As usual with Rimsky-Korsakov, a lot of the singing seems like sort of an afterthought, but it's all fine. Oddly, the highlight may be a silent one, with Nina Ananiashvili (currently the artistic director of the State Ballet of Georgia) in a dual role as Mlada and Cleopatra. She may not sing, but she sure can dance, and she has the appropriate unearthly beauty for these roles.

Rimsky-Korsakov rules. Only about half his operas have been filmed, but I intend to see every one that I can.

George Frideric Handel, Rinaldo (1711)

Blah blah, another opera based on Orlan--HA! THIS ONE IS BASED ON TASSO'S GERUSALEMME LIBERATA! JOKE'S ON YOU! Hmm. That was probably too much capitalization. But anyway. It's still the same character, more or less. So if Rinaldo got short-changed by Ariodante, never fear; he still gets his own Handel opera.

So Gottfredo is laying siege to Jerusalem with his brother Eustazio and of course Rinaldo, who is also in love with Almirena (a new character, I believe). The leader of the Saracen forces is Agrante, who conspires with his consort Armida to seduce Rinaldo away from the good-guy team, though things get complicated when she falls in love with Rinaldo and he with Almirena. Anyway, the Christians win and the Saracens convert and are forgiven, which is defintely a far cry from Tasso's puritanical source material.

So here's the thing: in the eighteen hundreds, many of the roles were castrati, and further, Handel was constantly reworking his operas and changing around parts to suit particular singers or fashions of the time. What this means is it's kind of impossible to come up with a "definitive" version of the opera. You've gotta just give it your best shot. This production goes in very heavily on the countertenors, and I could not be more pleased about that. According to this article from 2001, it wasn't really until the 1960s that countertenor was taken seriously as a voice type, and I'm glad it was. When I first saw Giulio Cesare, I found the visual of these big burly dudes with these super-high voices a bit incongruous, but at this point, I can honestly say: I'm completely used to it. I don't bat an eye anymore, and indeed it may well be my favorite vocal type. I can understand why those old Italians were so crazy for high voices, and even though I know it's a sin, I'm desperately curious as to what the superstar castrati of the time sounded like.

Anyway, here we get four of them, which I think is more than I've ever seen in one production: Rinaldo himself (David Daniels), Gottfredo (David Walker), Eustazio (Axel Köhler), and a small dual-role as "a herald" and "a Christian magician" (Charles Maxwell). In fact, Agrante is the only non-countertenor male in the opera, and while Egils Sinins is fine, as far as it goes, he's also to be the least interesting singer here. All of the countertenors are great, with my favorite being--somewhat arbitrarily, probably-- Köhler, who really brings it. Then again, there's also everyone's favorite (ALLEGED!) sex offender, David Daniels, who, tragically, is also one hell of a singer. Obviously, Plácido Domingo is getting more press, but let's face it, he was near the end of his career anyway; Daniels is definitely more of a blow to me (if you google him these days, the first thing you'll see is a really seedy-looking mugshot). Still, for what it's worth, I found I was entirely able to dissociate his performance from his sins, and it remains really great. I realize I've given the women short shrift here, so let me briefly note that Noëmi Nadelmann tears it up as Armida, and Deborah York--in an admittedly less interesting role--is fine as Almirena. And the music is the usual Handel magic.

So that's all good. As for the production itself...well, I kind of sneer at people who are all "OH THIS PRODUCTION OF MACBETH HAS GUNS IN IT IT'S TERRIBLE." That level of purism just seems tedious and dumb to me. However, I wouldn't exactly blame anyone who wasn't feeling this, which veers hard into out-and-out surrealism, featuring truly bizarre sets and a giant doll on wheels for no reason and so much other nonsense I hardly know how to describe it. Still, that's other people. I got used to it quickly enough and found it perfectly fun, even if I couldn't tell you what if anything the director was trying to get at. There are other versions available (including thistotally fascinating-looking version of a weird, eighteenth-century bootleg version of the opera), but this one--which I believe I got just because it was an ex-library version going dirt-cheap--is perfectly acceptable to my eye.

"Let's not bicker and argue about who killed hundreds of thousands of who!"

When people call trump our worst president ever, other people are always quick to remind us that for all his loathesomeness, he has yet to lie us into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents and immiserated countless more (I mean, in addition to everything else, but for the sake of argument, let's stay focused here). Which is true, though obviously not because trump would have any scruples about that if he saw the opportunity and thought it would lead to his greater glory, but I think the point is that when people look at george w bush, they see, like, a person, who is capable of liking other people. Who, it's easy to believe, authentically loved Barney the dog and was sad when he died. Whereas it's impossible to imagine trump even feeling sad if one of his children died (regret at having lost any possible opportunity to fuck his daughter doesn't count). Trump just seems fundamentally less-than-human in a way that gwb didn't.  I mean, gwb is someone who would be capable of having friends.

Still. The fact remains, he lied us into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents and immiserated countless more (side note: for some bizarre reason, blogger's spellcheck recognizes "immiserate" as a word, but flags both "immiserated" and "immiserates" with its red underline). The magnitude of this is so great it's difficult to conceptualize. There is--I have heard said--a good argument to be made that, if you want to be technicalabout it, every President in living memory has been a war criminal, and I can easily believe this, but gwb is pretty damned unambiguous in this regard.

Still, if Ellen Degeneres or any other nominally liberal member of our cultural elite wants to be friends with him, whatever. When you're rich enough, in most ways that matter you live in a completely different world than us common rabble, and questions like this fade into insignificance.

Still. If you're going to do it, just do it. Don't address it; don't try to justify it. Because the airy platitudes about us getting along in spite of our differences are the really nauseating thing here. If you're going to talk about it at all, it's dishonest on a hideous level to not just come out and say "yes, he's responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, but that's irrelevant to the fact that I find him personally charming." But you won't say that, because it would make you look like a monster, and you know it would.  So knowing that, how can you still be friends?  That's a big ol' "this program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down," so instead, let's not willfully not think about it; let's just be vague and act like none of it happened.

I suppose this is just the sort of thing that happens when you let war crimes go unpunished because it would be bad for national unity (this is the place for a rare unironic "thanks Obama"). But it's still fucking gross. As I say, do what you want, and if your audience accepts it, then I guess The Market Has Spoken. But don't expect people with functioning moral compasses to accept it or forgive you for it.

Ariosto vs Handel

So I've been prompted to reread Orlando Furioso, for perhaps obvious reasons. Notwithstanding the somewhat tedious (okay, very tedious) bits where Ariosto feels the need to flatter his partrons by going on about how illustrious their ancestors were, it remains highly entertaining, and Barbara Reynolds' verse translation a marvel. The episode from whence Handel's Ariodante comes is early on in the text, so I thought it might be interesting to look at the differences between poem and opera.

The biggest difference is that in the poem, Rinaldo is involved in the story. It's easy to see why you'd want to remove what seems like a somewhat extraneous character to streamline things, but for better or worse, it definitely leads to other big differences. The idea is that he's been sent to England to find military aid, and while he's there he wants to do some knight-type chivalry, so he asks around and some monks tell him about the situation with Ginevra and her impending execution. The opera is sort of vague on this point, but the poem makes it explicit: the law says that if a woman is found with a lover, she'll be burned at the stake unless a knight comes along to defend her in combat. The opera makes you infer this, presumably because such an insane-sounding thing would derail the narrative (or maybe that's just my twenty-first-century perspective). But Ariosto faces it straight on: Rinaldo's first reaction to hearing about it is "fuck this garbage law" (not an exact quote), and then we get this famous, shockingly forward-thinking bit:

'If the same ardour, if an equal fire

Draws and compels two people ever more

To the sweet consummation of desire

(Which many ignoramuses deplore),

Why should a woman by a fate so dire

Be punished who has done what men a score

Of times will do and never will be blamed,

Nay, rather, will be praised for it and famed?

Right on.  Possibly being raised with his sister as a peer makes him especially sensitive to these things.  So he decides he's gonna defend her whether or not she's "innocent," and the story has a slightly different conclusion: in the opera, Polinesso (the villain who got Ginevra in trouble in the first place) is defending her against Ariondante's brother Lurcanio (who is angry at Ginevra because he thinks her unfaithfulness caused his brother's suicide); he kills him, and then Ariodante just sort of shows up. But the poem kind of makes more sense in this regard. It's not clear why Polinesso would be defending Ginevra; that suggests a depth of character that isn't otherwise there. Also, it makes Ariodante himself less of a bystander to his own story. So here, Rinaldo comes by and sees Lurcanio fighting against the disguised Ariodante, who, having decided that maybe Ginevra isn't guilty after all and besides he still loves her, is there to defend her. He knows the real story from Ginevra's maid Dalinda, so he gets them to call off their battle and challenges Polinesso to fight and when he wins everyone's happy, except the dead Polinesso.

Another significant difference is that the opera makes it very clear that Dalinda and Polinesso are not actually lovers: it specifically states this, and Polinesso declares that he'll respect her honor when they pretend to be as part of his scheme to trick Ariodante. Whereas in the poem they've been sleeping together for some time. It's not totally clear in the opera why Dalinda would accede to Polinesso's weird request with no question (okay, because her brain is scrambled by love, but still...), but in the poem it's both more realistic and sigificantly more twisted: he convinces her that he's in love with both her and Ginevra, but he's sad because he can't have the latter, so he instructs her to...well:

"Notice her ornaments and style of hair,

And, taking every detail in your scope,

All her appearances imitate with care.

Then from the balcony let down the rope,

Which I, pretending to be unaware

Of your disguise, will climb, for thus I hope

By self-deception to assuage my pain

And from my longing some relief to gain.

Cool. Cool, cool. It's maybe no surprise that the secondary romance between Dalinda and Lurcanio was made up out of whole cloth for the opera; in the poem, she goes off to join a nunnery after the skulduggery is revealed.

Okay, one more thing which is small but nonetheless I think illuminating about the differences in sensibility between sixteenth-century Italians and eighteenth-century Brits (Handel was writing for an English audience, remember): in the opera, after Ariodante fails to drown himself, he sort of bemoans the fates that have made him live on. But in the poem, he realizes, after having thrown himself in the ocean, that maybe there's something to be said for not drowning and swims to shore. I think this is probably more psychologically realistic, and also makes him a more appealing, assertive character. However, the opera seems to be illustrative of a somewhat different aesthetic, where being willing and eager to die for love would seem the height of romance. Or so I, a non-expert in the field, perceive.

Anyway, I'm not trying to judge these, to decide which is "better." They're both great. I will concede, however, that the story alterations do raise more plot questions than they answer.

George Frideric Handel, Alcina (1735)

HEY GUESS WHAT POEM THIS IS BASED ON. I bet you would not get it right if you had one million guesses.

What's odd is that even though the overall story here is very familiar--it's basically the same stuff as La liberazione di Ruggiero, albeit at greater length: he's enchanted by Alcina and it's up to the other knights to convince him to leave her and return to murder-related feats, as well as his fiancée Bradamante--the opera remains sort of confusing: so for instance, in addition to Alcina, there's another enchantress, Morgana (Le Fey?). Who is this? What's her purpose? Is she Alcina's subordinate enchantress or are they just pals or what (okay, wikipedia says they're sisters, but that, as far as I could see, is never disclosed in the opera itself). And these other dudes wandering around: it's hard to keep them straight or remember what they're meant to be doing here.

But none of that really matters. You can follow it well enough, and it does a good job making Alcina a somewhat sympathetic character in spite of everything--sure, she turns former lovers into wild animals and inanimate objects, but hey, he who is without sin and so on. This actually features Bradamante as a character, and she kind of makes Alcina look better, because she kind of just represents dull rectitude, which isn't that fascinating--which is too bad, because as you recall, in the poem she's a cool-ass lady knight, Rinaldo's sister, "held in no less honor than her brother/For they are known to equal each the other."

Anyway, that was a tangent. But the REAL points to be made are: the music is terrific, and Opera McGill really outdid themselves with this production. Alas, I do not have the critical context or vocabulary to compare Handel operas in any cogent way, so I'm left saying unhelpful things like "this music fuckin' rules," and "this must be one of the best scores he ever composed." Why? Quick, look over there! *smoke bomb*

Still, it is what it is. The production is a Chinese-themed thing, which seems a little weird at first but which one quickly gets used to. The set is fairly minimalistic, featuring just a giant coin with one of those square holes in the middle, and Chinese characters on each side. It's all fine. One of the first things you note is that the singer playing Ruggiero (Simone McIntosh) is physically smaller than the one playing Alcina (Anna-Sophie Neher), which looks a little weird, and you think, hmm, was this the best casting? But then she opens her mouth and one's doubts are allayed. Don't get me wrong, everyone's great here, but she McIntosh really take the cake. And she has a website! So you KNOW she's good.

According to wikipedia, this quickly fell out of fashion, being performed in 1738 and then no more until almost two hundred years later in 1928. That's NUTS; this rules. Handel, man. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I thinkthis kid is going places.