Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Das Wunder der Heliane (1927)

As my dad noted, it would be a great trivia question: name a second composer named "Wolfgang." He really went all-out for this one; it was supposed to be his magnum opus, and...I suspect it is that. Don't get me wrong; Die tote Stadt remains very good. But THIS...is something else entirely.

It's based on a play by Hans Kaltneker, a little-known Austrian expressionist writer who died young of tuberculosis. It takes place in an unnamed dictatorship. There's a Stranger who's come to bring the people happiness and freedom, but he's condemned to death. The night before he's to be executed, the King's wife, Heliane (the only named character), comes to see him, and he falls in love with her. The King is tormented because he can't make her love him, but then he gets angry and orders his wife put in trial for sleeping with the Stranger (which she hasn't actually done). I could say more, but this is one of those rare instances with an opera where I genuinely had no idea where the story was going, so it's worth experiencing blind.

This is extremelyWagnerian, in terms of the ecstatic, mystical subject matter; the intensity of the music; and the eschewal of traditional arias in favor of an endless stream of melody. This production, from Komische Oper Berlin, is really terrific. It's fairly minimalistic, with just two sets--a prison and a courtroom--but somehow, that feels appropriate for the mythical nature of the story. And the performers are all just great. Brian Jagde as the stranger is actually the weak link, I feel; not that he's bad by any means, but I feel like he lacks the necessary presence for this charismatic, prophet-ish figure. But Josef Wagner is totally great as the King, bringing some pathos to this tormented, brutal figure and making him seem semi-sympathetic. And Sara Jakubiak is radiant as Heliane. She has a nude scene, but it's not gratuitous; it's right there in the libretto. I would imagine that most productions find some way to elide this--hard to picture your leading Met sopranos agreeing to it--but it DOES play a key role in the story, so I'm not sure how you square that circle. Anyway, I admire Jakubiak's bravery in just fucking going for it. It boggles my mind that people I have never heard of before who aren't superstars can still be so great.

Hmm. Other than this and Die tote Stadt, Korngold wrote two one-act operas and one more full-length one, Die Kathrin, which seems to suggest a reverse version of the Simpsons joke ("that's German for 'the Bart the'"). Alas, none of these are readily available on video. The man was such an arresting talent, you'd think he's be more performed. Well, hopefully he'll be further rediscovered in the future.

Daníel Bjarnason, Brothers (2017)

Gotta be thankful to Operavision; without them, I'd really have NO idea what's going on in contemporary opera. One such thing is this war drama. It takes place during, I think, our war in Afghanistan, but there's nothing specific here; it could be anywhen, really.

Whatever the war is, Michael goes off with a friend, Peter, to fight in it, leaving his wife Sarah and his young daughter Nadia. Also left behind is Peter's pregnant wife Anna. Everyone thinks Michael and Peter have died in a helicopter crash, and this obviously causes emotional conflict, especially as Michael's parents compare Michael, their "good" son, to their fuck-up son Jamie, a ne'r-do-well who's been in and out of jail. But then, surprise! It turns out Michael wasn't dead after all, and he comes home, which is great...but in addition to suffering from PTSD, he is harboring a Dark Secret regarding Peter.

This is based on a Danish film (though it's in English and takes place in the US as far as it's possible to tell), and the first thing to say about is that, probably due to the conversion, there are plotlines here that don't feel fully developed and go nowhere. Especially regarding Jamie: in spite of the opera's title, his relationship with Peter is very secondary and definitely NOT the heart of the piece, which seems odd. I suppose him having an affair with Sarah after Michael reveals himself to have changed and not for the better doesn't necessarily need any more attention than it gets, but what DOES stick out like a sore thumb is this one brief scene where we learn--per Michael--that he had been in jail for beating a woman half to death. This cuts against his otherwise sympathetic character, but it's never brought up again and doesn't seem to inform his character in any way, so...like, what? Why?

Well, anyway, these are ultimately nitpicks, because it's a powerful opera very dramatic and well-produced. Well-acted, too: the Icelandic baritone Oddur Arnþór Jónsson, with whom I was wholly unfamiliar gives a performance that can only be described as "bravura" as Michael: he does a great job of portraying a man under unbearable tension and ready to explode at any moment. One must also, no doubt, give all due credit to Selma Buch Ørum Villumsen as Nadia--a child able to sing that well is hella impressive, although it must be noted that unlike the adult singers, she's very visibly miked up--gotta learn to project, kid!

Anyway, really good. The more contemporary operas I see, the more I realize how this is still highly viable form as distinct from musicals. I shall watch more.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey the Deathless (1902)

Oh look, more Rimsky-Korsakov! Based on a fairy tale, so we're in extremely familiar territory. The story here is that the title character is an evil sorcerer who can never die because he's hidden his death in the tears of his daughter, Kashcheyevna, and she's very hard-hearted and never cries. He's holding a princess known only as "Tsarevna" captive in his realm, as she longs for Ivan, her prince; he's worried that Ivan might discover his secret, so he sends a captive storm spirit to see what's happening. Elsewhere, Ivan is searching for Tsarevna. Kashcheyevna (a sorceress in her own right) tries to kill him, but then she falls in love with him. The wind spirit reveals that Tsarevna is Kashchey's prisoner, so everyone traipses off there. Ultimately--this was pretty predictable--Kashcheyevna sheds tears for her unrequited love, causing her dad to croak and her to disappear (well, per the wikipedia entry, she turns into a willow tree, but here she just disappears--fairy tale logic). Tsarevna and Ivan are happy, and presumably so is the wind spirit, off doing wind-spirit-related activities.

It's an hour-long, one-act opera, but man, the music is so great. The wind spirit's perfectly evocative storm music, the "sword" song that Kashcheyevna sings as she works herself up to murder, the venemous "lullaby" that Tsarevna sings to her captor, and so much more. You can see it in a 1987 Soviet film version, which I find charming in its extreme low-budgetness. It's filmed in some random countryside, and the special effects are hilariously chintzy, but the singers are all very good--though confusingly, some but not all of the roles are lip-synced, meaning I'm not quite sure who to credit for them.

I also wanted to just note here, apropos of very little, that I also saw RK's opera The Tsar's Bride some time ago. I don't know why I never wrote about it. Atypically, it's a tragedy, but with the usual folk inflections, and extremely good music in general. Here, listen to the overture;it rules.

The grim fact is, though, that there are a full six Rimsky-Korsakov operas that have apparently never been filmed, like, anywhere. Come on, you friggin' Russians! Get on it!

George Frederic Handel, Teseo (1713)

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Antonín Dvořák, The Jacobin (1889)

Outside the Czech Republic, It sure isn't common to see any Dvořák operas other than Rusalka. For the opportunity to see this one, we must thank some awesome hero on youtube who uploaded a 1974 Czechoslovakian teleplay with--glory be!--English subs (I assume they were added after the fact by a fan, but it's not wholly clear to me).

Very different from Rusalka,this: as you know, that one's basically The Little Mermaid only a tragedy, but here we have a kind of romantic comedy/family drama, on subject matter that could be serious, but ultimately turns out lighthearted.

So it's round about the time of the French Revolution. Bohuš and his wife Julie return to their (Czech) hometown in disguise. Bohuš is the local count's son, but they've long been estranged, initially because the father didn't like the son's choice of wife (for reasons never explained), but then later because he's supposed to have become one of those awful Jacobins, or at least a Jacobin sympathizer (not, I should emphasize, a Jacobite; that would make for a very different and much weirder story). The count declares that his villainous nephew Adolf is his new heir (well, he doesn't declare him "villainous"--I cannot imagine that anyone named Adolf would ever do anything bad!). Oh no! Meanwhile, there's Benda, the music teacher and choirmaster. His daughter Terinka is in love with Jiří, a commoner, but he wants her to marry the officious Burgrave (some sort of administrator, only ever referred to by this title). But they're both important members on the choir, and they threaten to fuck up their roles if he doesn't let them marry and generally prevail on his good nature, so that's all right. Bohuš and Julie come to him for protection, which he grants when they tell him a woeful tale of their exile and how they're musicians who've only been able to remember their native land through song and their kids have never seen it &c (although we never actually see these alleged kids--are we sure this isn't a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf situation?). Bohuš ends up being imprisoned by Alfred. The count is heartbroken because his son is gone and, he thinks, has joined a simply dreadful group, but Benda and Julie convince him otherwise and he's freed and gets reinstated as heir and everyone's happy except for Adolf and the Burgrave, which would be a good name for an artsy sort of musical duo.

I actually liked this a whole lot, notwithstanding the somewhat dated production. I got caught up in the drama, and hey, Dvořák. A lot of folk influences here, very fun. The Czech singers that no one has ever heard of are all fine. As far as Slavic composers go, I guess the difference between him and Rimsky-Korsakov is that Russia has enough cultural clout that even if the latter's operas aren't much performed abroad, they're still pretty readily available in video form, whereas most people don't think much about the Czech Republic. But this is good. I would LOVE to see more Dvořák operas.

Philip Glass, The Perfect American (2013)

It's an opera about Walt Disney, which is certainly an intersection of several of my interests. But...[sotto vote]I think that title might be...ironic.[/sotto voce]  We shall see what we shall see.

It takes place on and around Disney's sixty-fifth birthday, while he was in the process of dying of lung cancer. As expected, it's a non-linear presentation without any plot to speak of, alternating between flashback and present-day in surreal fashion. Other characters include Walt's brother Roy; his wife Lillian; and Wilhelm Dantine, an artist who was fired from the company, apparently for trying to unionize the animators. Also, Andy Warhol, because why not, if you're talking about the ways cultural icons like Disney are mythologized.

It's very musically interesting. Having watched my second Glass opera, I'm totally baffled by criticisms that his music is somehow boring. I mean, no, he's not Puccini, if that's your only frame of reference, but crikey, he's obviously not trying to be, and he's very interesting in his own right. Although, granted, his style probably doesn't serve this particular story quite as well as it does Akhnaten. Whatever; it's all good.

But the first question you would probably have is: what about the character of Disney itself? How is that treated? And I have to say...it's a little bit complicated. Right, so obviously he had his faults, and obviously the opera will dwell on them. I don't know quite how to evaluate the exact truth value of everything here, but it's certainly the case that he was anti-union, and I imagine he was culturally conservative, and generally right-wing. That's all easy to believe. It's NOT true, as far as I can discern, that he was personally racist (and yes, I am well aware of plenty of instances of racism in Disney product, probably more than you are, so don't start); the scene in which this is revealed consists of him having a dialogue with a malfunctioning animatronic Abraham Lincoln from the Hall of Presidents, which is kind of a brilliant idea, but the substance as far as I can tell is pure slander. So, you know, some of it seems reasonable, some kind of iffy, but I know that it's as much about myths we tell about ourselves as it is the man himself, so I'm not, like, super-outraged about it or anything. What it's hard not to take exception with on occasion is the tone, which is as subtle as a woodpecker dropping a giant camera on your head, and frequently rather on the hectoring side. The libretto is not all it could be.

However, what's maybe surprising is that the opera isn't actually completely unsympathetic to Disney. His nostalgic desire for a never-was past is clearly myopic, but also sort of poignant, and it's clear that he really does care about his work and his creations. Furthermore, his relationship with his family is presented in positive terms, as is the bonding he does with a boy in the next hospital room over. It's actually kind of moving, more so than it might be because of truly excellent work by Christopher Purves (whom I recently saw as the lead in Saul); he doesn't look anything like Disney, but he really does a bravura acting job, laying bare not only the character's prejudices, but his vulnerabilities and his ideals. The production as a whole is very good, too, mostly centering around the hospital bed and bringing in props and background images as needed. You might wonder how an opera like this would work from a legal standpoint, but the director threads that needle quite well: it's okay to name Disney characters (and beyond the obvious ones, here we have an opera where Scrooge, Gyro, and the Beagle Boys are mentioned by name, which can't help but tickle me pink), but as far as images...well, I'm pretty sure that using them would, or should, qualify as fair use, but when you're a massive megalithic corporation, it doesn't really matter what the law may technically be; you can still destroy any weaker entity who defies you. So there are some non-specific animations of animals, and pictures of a large ball with two smaller balls on top which is obviously suggestive but in a non-actionable way. It works fine.

Honestly, I wasn't necessarily expecting to be enamored of this ("the opera received mixed to negative reviews," wikipedia ominously tells us), but in spite of the somewhat clumsy libretto (based on a book which may or may not be similarly clumsy), I ended up liking it more than not. This production (the only production?) is freely available on youtube, which feels like it ought to be pretty blatantly illegal, but I dunno--EuroArts seems like an aboveboard outfit, so maybe there are licensing agreements. Well worth a look in any case. They should screen this at Disney theme parks.