Wait, Aaron Copland wrote operas? Since when? Why was I not aware of this? Maybe because I haven't paid attention at all. Hard to say. Well, in fairness, he only wrote two of them, and they don't exactly occupy a central place in his ouevre, but still. I guess I'm a pretty casual Copland fan; I've always enjoyed Appalachian Spring and Billy the Kid, very evocative, but I can't claim to be super-familiar with his work.
Still, there's this. It's not very widely performed, but you can find a reasonable production by the Lyric Opera of Melbourne in two parts here (with a significant caveat that I will get to later). I don't know anything about them, but I'm favorably inclined because their youtube page includes this, a pro-marriage-equality jazz number from when that was an issue in Australia.
So what's the story here? Well, it takes place in the Midwest, apparently during the depression, though it's not exactly explicit. There are two sisters, Beth and Laurie Moss, who live with their mother and grandfather. Beth is generally more conventional, whereas Laurie is more the there-must-be-more-than-this-provincial-life type. Laurie's going to graduate from high school the next day, so they're having a party, even though there are stories of a couple of strange men in the area causing trouble. As it happens, two itinerant dudes, Top and Martin show up looking for work, and in spite of his initial skepticism, Grandpa Moss agrees to hire them. At the party, Laurie and Martin make eyes at each other and decide that they're in love. But Grandpa, naturally, is PISSED OFF when he see this, especially since, omg, Top and Martin are obviously the guys who've been causing trouble. Then it turns out they're not, those guys were arrested, but STILL, he orders them to leave in the morning. Laurie and Martin agree to elope, but then Top convinces him that that's a bad idea and they should just leave. So they do, and Laurie is sad, but she's going to leave to, I dunno, seek her fortune, I guess, because that's just the kind of person she is. End.
The thing I have no note is that the dumb ol' Melbourne Opera screwed up: the second part isn't complete. It shuts off in the middle of a duet, probably fifteen or twenty minutes before the end. And they have comments disabled, so I can't even yell at them about it! I found another production of the final scene here,but that still means I missed the end of the scene where they plan to elope and the whole of the one where Martin is convinced not to. Bah!
Still, I've seen almost the whole thing; I think I get the picture. It counts. So...well, it's an opera scored to unmistakably Coplandian music. As you'd expect, with some country/folk elements, especially in the dance scene, though not as much as you might expect. But hell, it's fine; I like the music, so I liked that. But I have to say, it's pretty limp in the story department. We don't really get a good idea of who Laurie is or why she wants what she wants (or even what she wants, in any concrete way), and Top and Martin just come across as buffoons. I'm not sure if the romance is supposedto be as totally unconvincing as it is (I mean, it could be), but either way, I don't feel it really adds much. Although, to be fair, I can see how these problems might be papered over with a better production; not that this is bad, but it's pretty amateur-feeling, and while I think amateurs are great, they don't necessarily do the piece any favors. Oh well!
No comments:
Post a Comment