Francisco Cavalli, Egisto (1643)

If you want to see this opera, you must be willing to watch a 1982 performance videorecorded from British television and transferred to a digital format, with all that implies about the video and audio quality. Also, it's in fifteen ten-minute segments, because it was uploaded nine years ago, when youtube still had these length limitations. HOW STRONG IS YOUR COMMITTMENT TO BAROQUE OPERA? This will test that.

Right. So Egisto and Climene have escaped from pirates. He's in love with Clori and she's in love with Lidio, and these loves were mutual, but since the kidnapping, Clori and Lidio have gotten together (Climene's brother Ipparco also loves Clori). I think under these circumstances, our contemporary sensibilities would dicate that Egisto and Climene should get together--the love you've been looking for has been right there all the time!--but this is not that, so instead, the gods get involved: Egisto is Apollo's son, and Venus resents him, so she sends her son Cupid to make him go mad. But Apollo wants Cupid to make Clori fall back in love with him. How to square this circle? Well, first he shoots Lidio with a love-arrow so he falls back in love with Climene, and then he makes Egisto mad so that Clori falls back in love with him out of pity (that's how falling in love works, right?). Then, Apollo makes him sane again, and job's a good'un, as my English friend always used to say.

This is the earliest opera I've seen that's just blatantly, straightforwardly a plain ol' comedy. All these gods and mortals bumblin' around. Ipparco's old nurse Dama has several arias about how one lover isn't enough; women should take a bunch of them, just for kicks. To me, it's really interesting to see the form expanding itself like this. Also, I'd note that it's more sexually explicit than you might expect: I mean, not explicit explicit, but, before Lidio falls back in love with Climene, he accuses her of taking her maidenhead (the subtitles use that word, anyway--in addition to being outdated, it always makes me just think of a head of lettuce, which seems not to quite be on point), and he's like, don't put this on me, you had your fun too, and now I'm moving on. You just don't usually expect to see such blatant "sex occurred" language in stuff of this vintage (though the opera does make clear that Clori and Lidio have been in fact Done It, as the middle-schoolers say. (Do they still say that? I'm ancient.) I guess that would've been a bridge too far). Well, maybe you do; maybe I'm just the naive one.

This is all surprisingly engaging stuff, and it definitely feels closer to opera as it would evolve than Monteverdi or Lully do, with regular opera-type singing with arias and everything. The music...well, was more unobtrusive than anything else; it's probably partly just the poor sound quality, but I didn't get as good a read on Cavalli's sound as I'd like to have done. However, I am definitely going to be watching more of his stuff, so there should be plenty time enough.

Jean-Baptiste Lully, Atys (1676)

This was the favorite opera of the Sun King hisself, so you know it's good. It's based on mythology, as these things are. So: Atys is a guy. Sangaride is a princess, and her dad wants her to marry the queen of Phyrgia instead. But! She's secretly in love with Atys and he's secretly in love with her. Which is bad enough, but that's not all: the goddess Cybèle, who's just kind of hanging around, is also in love with Atys. So it's a bit tangled up, but, as happens in baroque operas, everything ends happily.

Actually, that's a lie; Cybèle uses magic to make Atys go insane so he murders Sangaride and then he regains his sanity and commits suicide and NOBODY IS HAPPY. Seriously. This is the first baroque opera I've seen that's unambiguously a tragedy. It's kind of shocking.

Ah, but is it GOOD? That is the question. The only other Lully opera I've seen is Cadmus et Hermione, and I was kind of lukewarm at best about that one, but I thought, eh, maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind, and Lully seems like a pivotal enough figure that he's worth revisiting.

But it turns out that I had a very similar reaction to this one. In the above-linked review, I claim that this basically sounds the same as Rameau to me; having heard a lot more Rameau since them, I can definitively say: no. That's not true. Rameau is a much more versatile and exciting composer. I'm sure if this were the eighteenth century, I could find someone willing to get in a fistfight with me over that opinion, but it is what it is. Not that Lully's music is anything but perfectly pleasant, but I feel it only occasionally rises above that.

That's not the only concern, though. Obviously, French baroque opera is less often performed than Italian, and that's pretty clearly because the approach to plotting that you see in the former is so alien to our own sensibilities. But there are definitely levels here: obviously, Rameau operas are not conventionally plotted by our standards, but they somehow manage to be dynamic in spite of that and feel basically accessible. That is...not really the case with Lully. The story and the way it's married to the music is so totally mannered and predictable that it feels positively embalmed, and it's pretty obvious to me why it's not super-popular today. It's difficult to avoid the feeling of, well. I guess this isn't bad per se, but it isa little...boring.

Then too, there's the fact that this Les Arts Florissants production is super-traditional. Everyone wearing those huge curly wigs that it's impossible to imagine how anyone ever found attractive. Extra stuffiness is not what this needs. I feel like--I know this would make a traditionalist's head explode--your best bet with Lully would be to make your production as wild and Eurotrashy as possible, to offset the dullness.

I say it's boring, but actually, the last act--where the tragedy happens--is kind of a shot in the arm. Things get briefly dramatic and exciting. Atys' last words, to Cybèle: "I am avenged enough: you love me, and I die." DAMN that's cold. Not undeservedly, however. Really, the opera should end there, but it doesn't. There's this REALLY strange bit that literally made me el oh el with its incongruity--as Cybèle is kneeling before Atys' body, abruptly a face-paced dance number starts up and random dudes dash on stage to dance to it. Way to break the mood.

Will I watch more Lully? *non-commital grunt* I don't know; maybe at some point, but I can't say the prospect makes my heart beat fast. Is it conceivable that an influential composer may not actually be that...good? Heaven forfend.

As a side note, I'd like to note that the wikipedia entry for Atys has either been vandalized or there are multiple versions of the opera, because there are parts of it that are flat-out WRONG, especially at the end: "Atys plans to commit suicide as a result of the tragic loss of his vision. . . To prevent his suicide, Cybèle intervenes in Scene 5 and transforms him into a tree." No. No, that doesn't happen. It just doesn't. After he's dead she talks about making him into a tree, but it doesn't remotely go like this. Also, "the tragic loss of his vision" (which doesn't actually happen) sounds like it's just someone goofing around. I DON'T KNOW.

Giacomo Meyerbeer, L'Africaine (1865)

This is Meyerbeer's last opera. It's about Vasco da Gama, of all people. A wholly fictionalized version of da Gama, of course, but that's as anticipated. Meyerbeer spent some twenty years working on it, and remained unsatisfied with what he had on his death, although it was in some sense complete. Others later worked on putting together a final version for performance. It's called "L'Africaine" in spite of the fact that none of it takes place in Africa and none of the characters are African because originally the tragic heroine here was African rather than Indian (and the lead guy wasn't da Gama). The fact that no one saw fit to, I don't know, change the title to something that makes some kind of sense just seems bizarre to me.  Maybe it's just casual nineteenth-century Orientalism: Africa, India, whatever, they're both exotic places, basically the same thing, right?

Well anyway. Ines sings about wanting her boyfriend (I know that word's anachronistic, but I'm using it anyway) Vasco to return from a long voyage. And, he does, the lone survivor of a shipwreck. He's all up for doing more exploring, especially because he found two slaves of unclear descent, Sélika and Nélusko, and therefore they must be from a new place, and he wants to try to find it (the weird "Indian slaves" thing is presumably another relic of an earlier draft of the opera). Anyway. Vasco gets in an argument with the higher-ups and is locked up, along with the slaves. Sélika is in love with him while Nélusko is in love with Sélika (who is actually the queen of India). Ines sees this situation and feels jealous, but Vasco resolves the situation by offering to give Sélika to her (although she doesn't take her). It might not have been necessary to include that detail just to summarize, but it seemed, uh, relevant. Anyway, some OTHER Europeans head Indiaward with Nélusko providing navigation. Vasco shows up, having followed in another ship after somehow getting out of prison. All the sailors except Vasco are killed by the Indians. Sélika saves his life by presenting him as her fiancé and marrying him, but then Ines shows up, apparently having found a teleporter, and Sélika sees that the two of them are in love, so she lets them go and kills herself. And so does Nélusko.

Um. So there are rather obviously a lot of issues to be untangled here, mostly involving race and colonialism. It's not...great (Vasco has an aria about how he's claiming this new land for Portugal--never mind all these, mmm, people there), but it definitely could be worse, and the indication is that the people who finished the opera didn't necessarily do the best job and may have messed up some of Meyerbeer's themes. But really, maybe the above makes it clear that the plotting is a bit questionable here. There are just SO many ridiculous contrivances, one after the other, to make it work: Oh Vasco's on this ship that sank but there was one survivor it was Vasco oh look these other Europeans are going to India instead oh look, Vasco chased them now he's there oh well anyway we don't need all these other Europeans so Nélusko and the other Indians will kill them all. But hey, one guy survived in the hold! Oh look, it's Vasco! Also, there are all these European women there because reasons, including Ines oh no they're being taken off to be executed oh look Ines survived. It ain't great.

And the music, well...it is what it is. It has a handful of memorable moments, and this production (from 1988, featuring Domingo as da Gama) included a few arias that got ovations, but I can't say I was overly impressed.

I'll go further: I think this is a bad opera, one of the worst I've seen. The music is lackluster, the story is bad, and the drama and tragedy are totally uncompelling. By the last act, I was just so fucking bored. Not a good introduction to Meyerbeer, but in fairness, I'm definitely going to check out some of his other work. An opera that he was actually able to complete, and that doesn't have that uncomfortably colonialist feel about it, seems like it may be a more reasonable way to judge him.

Modest Mussorgsky, Khovanshchina (1881)

Mussorgsky's otheropera, unfinished on his death. It was completed by--big surprise--Rimsky-Korsakov, but he made a bunch of cuts and rewrote various music, so later Shostakovich re-completed it in a way more faithful to Mussorgsky's putative vision. Various other composers have also taken a whack at it, but the Shostakovich version is the one generally performed, and the one I saw, though even within that, I think there are little variations. Hmm.

Well, it's another historical thing. The Khovanskys are Ivan and his son Andrei, who are planning some sort of rebellion against the rulers with this military group they have, the Streltsy, and there's also the Old Believers, a religious sect, who...may in some way be allied with them? Or maybe not? Anyway, the rebellion is put down but the Streltsy are forgiven; the Old Believer people, on the other hand, are martyred.

It's a bit of an odd thing. There's loads of beautiful and exciting music, but the actual story and libretto...well, it has some pretty prominent issues. The first is that it's very centerless. Who is the main character here? Dosifey, the head of the New Believers, probably has the most to do, but he certainly doesn't feel like the protagonist. If you just looked at the opera and speculated, you would probably hit on the couple of Andrei and Marfa, one of the Old Believers. But that's really not the case here; they're very peripheral. It's probably most accurate to say "Oh, the protagonist is Russia itself." This has a very similar central message to Boris Godunov:boy, the country sure is tearing itself apart, and life sure does suck for the people. But, even though that opera isn't quite as closely focused on the title character as you might expect, he does serve as a center, and makes the whole feel more grounded and coherent. There's no one like that here. I was sort of reminded--speaking of Russian stuff--of Dostoevsky's novel Demons, which similarly lacks a hero and as a result is very hard to summarize.

Still, I suppose that's not necessarily a crititicism. It goes against what we expect from an opera, but that doesn't have to be bad. And here's another thing that falls into that category: beyond the very general outline, this story is fairly impenetrable to those of us who know nothing about the history or context. It's not at all clear what the stakes are or, for the most part, who the "good guys" are supposed to be, if any. Just a buncha soldiers and nobles milling around. And maybe that's the point! But it's not the most dramatically compelling thing. And anyway, I'm not so sure it even is the point, at least not entirely. I think the fact that it's sometimes hard to tell who we're meant to find sympathetic is at least in part due to simple bad writing. Are the Old Believers allied with the Khovanskys? Who knows? And especially, what is the deal with Marfa and Andrei? It seems like we're supposed to find it noble, or something, when he dies with her and the rest of the Believers at the end, in spite of him having deserted her before (strong echoes of Norma). But is it? Is he supposed to be at all sympathetic? The first time we see him he's about to rape a prisoner and is only stopped when Marfa appears, and he certainly doesn't do anything else that would make him seem noble. Blah. It doesn't really work for me.

This production is mostly traditional, but it does a few interesting things that I like. So Ivan, Khovansky père,is killed by Shaklovity, a loyalist officer. But in this version, Khovansky has this dwarf in his retinue, a mute character who, it seems, he treats as a pet, and it's actually the dwarf who murders him (clearly being in cahoots with Shaklovity). Not sure what if anything the message is here--trust no one?--but it worked for me. And then there's the very end, with the martrydom, which is visualized in a very striking way: all the Old Believers are standing on stage holding lit candles, and one by one they blow their candles out and collapse to the stage. Won't forget that in a hurry. Oh, and the other thing I like is Vladimir Vaneev as Dosifey. I've only seen him a few times, but he's always arresting. He hasn't exclusively appeared in Russian opera, even if that's the only place I've seen him, and he's worked internationally, so more, please.

Well. Anyway. I've probably underemphasized how good the music is here, just because it's hard to talk about music. But it is! Still, as a drama, there are obvious reasons why it's a distant second in popularity to Boris, and in that category, "it was unfinished" is very secondary.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin (1879)

I've never read the Pushkin novel-in-verse, but here's the plot of this: Onegin is some guy. He meets a young woman, Tatiana, and they have a very brief interaction, after which she sends him a love letter, which he rejects. That's act one. Act two, he and his friend Lensky argue and he ultimate kills him in a duel. Act three, several years later, Onegin meets Tatiana again and decides he loves her after all, and she loves him too, but alas she's married and she's not going to leave her husband. So...sucks to be them, I guess.

There are, uh, several issues here, and I do realize that I'm approaching this from a twenty-first-century perspective and that the sensibilities of Pushkin are very distant from mine--and you know, that whole "dying in a duel" thing just accentuates that. BUT STILL. Okay first Onegin is meant to be a tragic romantic figure, apparently, but he's actually a huge douchebag: he rejects Tatiana in a super-condescending way, and then you know why he fights with Lensky? Because, in a fit of pique at Lensky having invited him to a party he doesn't like, he decides to make him jealous by dancing with his girlfriend. Admittedly, Lensky's reaction to this could fairly be described as over-, but that doesn't make Onegin seem any less douchey. Point being, I wanted him to fail and be unhappy, which I don't think anyone involved in the opera's creation was going for. And then you have the so-called relationship between Onegin and Tatiana: even by operatic standards, it would be difficult to overstate just how little interaction they actually have before she decides she's in love with him. I know it's opera logic, but opera logic failshere. The brief introduction to this production is by Mikhail Baryshnikov, who has nothing to do with the opera per se, but who is definitelyRussian. "This opera touches anyone who has ever been in love, especially unrequited love," he declares, and guilty on both counts, but--nope! "I hope that after seeing this performance, you too will fall in love with this extraordinary opera," he continues. Questionable. Very questionable. I mean...do you really automatically like this if you're Russian? Don't Russians have twenty-first-century sensibilities too? Well, then again, it's not just Russians who like this, obviously, so I dunno.

Mind you, it doesn't help that I feel like this performance is perhaps a bit miscast: both Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Renée Fleming are operatic legends, but she feels a bit too, I don't know, knowing to be the naive country girl, and he plays the role really smugly, making the character even more unlikeable than it needs to be. The only one I really liked here was Ramón Vargas as Lensky, who generates the only sympathy and pathos in the opera, of which his pre-duel aria is probably the highlight.

I mean, the music's still good, but you kind of realize how much the libretto and music go together in an opera, and if there's no compelling drama, well, the music is going to seem less interesting too. I don't really understand why some people consider this so great, but they are wrong! Thus do I decree! The Queen of Spades is eleventy-seven times better. The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it. What?

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, The Queen of Spades (1890)

Tchaikovsky's second-most-popular opera, they say, but is that really true? Let me note that Medicihas no less than four productions of it, and only one of Eugene Onegin.

In either case, though it's based on...a Pushkin story?!? *record scratch* Boy, who could've seen that coming? Seriously, who has more operas based on their work than Pushkin? The only other viable candidate seems to be Shakespeare. I mean yeah, okay, Shakespeare pretty clearly wins because of his great international presence, but it's worth noting that this very story has a total of three operas based on it, even if this is the only one performed nowadays.

The story--modified pretty significantly from Pushkin--is pretty odd: this military officer, Herman, is in love from afar with a woman, Liza, but she's engaged to another derned officer, Yeletsky. That's bad! But then she breaks it off to be with him. That's good! So far, this all sounds pretty normal, I know. But then: Yeletsky turns out to be surprisingly mature about the whole thing. Okay, THAT'S pretty weird for an opera. If Pushkin himself had been more mature about romance, he could've avoided dying in a duel, and JUST IMAGINE how much more he could've written and thus how many more Pushkin operas we could have! Boggles the mind!

But ANYWAY: so Liza's grandmother is a countess, known as the Queen of Spades (or "Pique Dame" in French, by which title the opera often goes). And when she was young, this countess was obsessed with gambling. One time, she ran out of money, but in exchange for her favors, one of her would-be lovers told her about three special cards that would allow her to win. Herman hears about this and becomes obsessed with learning the secret of the special cards. He descends into madness, and that is not the only bad thing that happens! Obviously, this is not meant to be a strictly realistic story, but it still nonplusses one a little with its weirdness. I do suspect, however, that subsequent viewings, already knowing what's going on, would be less bumpy.

Anyway, the characterization are honestly a bit shaky, but it doesn't really matter, because good gawd that music. Tchaikovsky was one of the all-time greats, no question. Pure passion! I can't even point very well to favorite moments, because the WHOLE THING is so terrific that it's hard for me to think, okay, this place. This place is particularly good. Well, I will site one: the countess sings an aria about her past, in French, "Je crains de lui parler la nuit." It's not even by Tchaikovsky; it's by the Belgian composer Andé Grety, for his more-or-less forgotten opera Richard Coeur-de-lion. Tchaikovsky just commandeered it (did money change hands here? I have no idea how early copyright law worked, if at all). But it's gorgeous; I'm aware that it looks a little weird that I talked up Tchaikovsky's music and then pointed to a piece he didn't write, but...well, I did it. And that's that. It probably stands out because it has a somewhat different sound than everything else.

Somewhat arbitrarily, I watched this one--hey, it got good reviews; why not? And I had no problems with it. All the singers were good, though I have to admit, it's a source of some frustration to me that I almost always end up saying something like that. I just can't make these vocal judgments that some people can of singers. I mean, occasionally I can detect problems when we're dealing with amateur-level performances, but if you're good enough to be cast in a high-caliber, professional production, these things are just lost on me, beyond particularly liking some performances, which however may just be me confusing acting and stage presence with singing per se. I suppose on the whole, it's a good thing for my appreciation, but it also means I'll never be a professional critic. Anyway! That said, I especially liked Ewa Podleś as the Countess. Smallish part, but very memorable.

Édouard Lalo, Le Roi d'Ys (1888)

Look, can we just pretendI made some sort of joke about the Ys series of action RPGs? Something something Adol Christin? I just can't summon the energy.

Who the heck is Édouard Lalo? Well, he was a composer. Obviously. And he wrote this opera, which was a big hit in its time, though it never made it into the standard repertoire. He wasn't really an opera person generally; he didn't die particularly young, and yet he only completed one other opera which--if the somewhat vague wikipedia article is anything to go on--wasn't even performed in his life time.

But there's this! It's about the legendary lost Breton city of Ys, although it doesn't get lost in this opera. No, the idea is that the Ys people are all happy, because they have a peace treaty with a former enemy, and one of the princess, Margared, is going to marry Prince Karnac to seal the deal. She kind of doesn't want to because she's still carrying a torch for some dude who sailed away years ago, Mylio, but then, hey whaddaya know, Mylio's back! Where he was or why he's suddenly returned are unclear. Anyway, the problem--or the one aside from her being engaged to Karnac--is that her sister Rozenn and Mylio are in love. This makes her jealous (ya think?). So she breaks off the engagement with Karnac, who swears revenge, but his army is destroyed by Mylio's forces. He and Rozenn are married, but Margared is still pissed off and agrees to help Karnac flood the city and destroy it, though she then feels remorse. Mylio kills Karnac, but the city's going to be flooded, but Margared sacrifices herself and it ends up saved. And that is that!

I mean, it's easy to see why it's popular. It's a short opera, less than two hours, but it packs in pretty much everything you want--rousing choruses and arias, high drama, self-sacrifice--in a very accessible kind of way. The libretto's a bit patchy in places, but no biggie. It's oft described as Wagnerian, which, fair enough: it certainly has some of the overheated musical qualities associated with Wagner, and the setting, in this vaguely Christian mystical past, definitely checks out, although it lacks the sort of ambiguous morality of Wagner's work.

I'd never heard of this before; I only saw it because, well, there it was on Medici. And I'm glad I did. Good production, too (how often has this even been produced in modern times? I know it was done at the Met way back in the day, but this might be the first time in a while). Giuseppina Piunti is particularly fine as Margared, both as singer and actor.

Antonio Vivaldi, Orlando Furioso (1727)

Wikipedia says that Vivaldi "claimed to have composed 94 operas, but fewer than 50 titles have been identified, of which the scores of only 20 or so survive, wholly or in part." Of course, even if his claim is true, that doesn't likely mean that he composed ninety-four operas' worth of original music, given the tendency of baroque composers to self-cannibalize. Still, boy. Given how we see Vivaldi as such an important composer, it's kind of shocking when you first realize how much of his stuff is simply non-extant.

The question that I can't seem to find an anwer to is, okay, of these "twenty or so" operas that surive "wholly or in part," how many are either "wholly" or close enough to perform? It's very unclear to me. But I do know that Orlando Furioso is the only one that's still performed with any regularity. Whether that is justified of not...remains to be seen.

Yup! So we have all those Handel operas that tackle one part or another of Ariosto's poem, but here's one that claims to be based on the whole thing. Ambitous! Well, it's no surprise that it doesn't cover the whole dern poem--this isn't a twelve-hour operas--but it's interesting to see what it does. So we're on Alcina's island. You know, the Alcina section is not actually a huge part of the poem, but for some reason that we may never be able to fathom, people seem to have had a certain fascination with the section about the sexxxy, free-loving (but evil!) sorceress. Human nature doesn't change, no matter how far back we go.

Anyway, it's the usual thing with Ruggiero, Bradamante, and Astolfo, only this time Angelica and Medoro are on the island, being pursued by Orlando. Naturally, this creates a bit of a jumble, and I can easily imagine that if you were unfamiliar with the characters and the basic situation, it might be hard to follow. Obviously, there are huge divergences from the original text, even beyond what I just described. For one thing, Orlando--who would be furioso by this time, if this followed the original--isn't, and in fact for a little while Angelica pretends to be in love with him to avoid his wrath, which is here only provoked when she marries Medoro. Also, whereas in the poem his rage is seriously unmanageable--he basically charges around the countryside indiscriminately slaughtering all humans and animals he encounters--here it mainly just involves him babbling about mythological figures.

Still, whatever the case, all this is perfectly fun, and I only have one problem with the libretto: see, Alcina is still the villain in that she uses magic to steal Ruggiero from Bradamante, BUT, she also helps Angelica and Medoro: she saves Medoro's life with magic, she gets them out of a sticky situation with Orlando, and she even presides over their wedding. So YOU MIGHT THINK that at the end when she's lost her power and Astolfo's going to kill her, they might, I don't know, say something? A little quality of mercy around here? But NOPE! See ya in hell, Alcina! Leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, it does.

STILL! The main thing is, the music is glorious beyond reckoning. I wondered before I watched this: okay, I've seen a shit-ton of Handel operas, so will I be able to distinguish between the two composers' work? And, I'm sorry to say, the answer is, nope! Not hardly. If I didn't know and you told me this was another Handel opera, I'd accept it without a second thought. Checks out, is what I would say. But, you know, one of the best Handel operas, so who's complaining? I did probably think that the first act was the highlight, musically, and that it was slightly downhill from there, but that's still a very high level of quality.

Two countertenors here (Ruggiero and Medoro), so I've gotten my USDA. Orlando is a trouser role, but not, surprisingly, because it was originally for a castrato: in fact it was a contralto role, and GLORY BE, this production does indeed feature an actual factual contralto. I think the reason roles are rarely written for them and they're usually replaced by mezzos even when they are is that there just aren't that many of them out there. Too bad. It's a nice sound. As per custom, there's just the one token baritone here (Astolfo), but in spite of the palpable baroque lack of interest in low voices, even he has a few good-to-great arias. And MY GOD is this opera filled with great arias. THE HITS KEEP COMING. Everyone's good-to-great, but the obvious highlight is Lucia Cirillo, vamping it up like nobody's business and absolutely laying waste to the countryside with her devasting coloratura. Combine this with a spectacular-looking production, and you've got yerself a real treat. I will be happy to see more Vivaldi operas if at all possible, though after seeing this one, it's easy to imagine that it's the only one performed because it's obviously the best.

You don't have to subscribe to Medici to see this performance; it's also availableon blu-ray and DVD. But I'd like to give a shout-out to Medici: I was initially disappointed because although the description on the site clearly said that there were subtitles, there were no subtitles available. So I sent them a message, without a whole lot of hope, and within two days, bam, there were subtitles. On my request, they also added them almost instantaneously to their production of Britten's Death in Venice, which will be useful in the future. Of course, you might well ask: should you reallyhave to ask for them? Shouldn't they just have them if they say they have them? Still, I appreciate the responsiveness.

Benjamin Britten, Billy Budd (1951)

Britten's most famous opera is also--unless there's something really obvious I'm forgetting, as is so often the case--the most famous opera with an all-male cast. I am trying and failing to find anything interesting to say about that fact, but I thought it was at least worth noting.

This is of course based on Melville's final, unfinished novel, which I am forced to admit I have not read. Well, actually, I could easily claim to have read it! It's my blog! I can do what I like! But, I haven't. And I think that really influenced my viewing of the opera. All I really knew about it was the very general premise--implacably evil officer plots to destroy preternaturally good sailor. I knew none of the details, and as such I found myself caught up in the plot in a way that I might not have been otherwise. Seriously, this shook me. I kept wanting to go, no! This can't be happening! Argh! And at the end, when the sympathetic yet ineffectual captain ponders to himself, I could have saved him, I thought, yeah! Ya coulda done! Or at the very least, make a hell of a lot more of an effort than you actually did! I mean, obviously, I know that all this is the point, and the whole mixture of human fallibility and ambiguous morality is a SUPER-Melvillean thing, but at any rate. Regardless. I got caught up in it. I had, as the kids say, All the Feels.

It's a powerful drama; what can I say. Claggart, the evil master-of-arms, is a great character. Nominally, he's motivated by envy of Billy, but it really comes across as just this implacable, motiveless, Iago-like malevolence. Certainly his villain aria, "O beauty, O handsomeness, goodness" is a highlight. And yet, Billy himself is also a more appealing character than you'd expect from someone whose main characteristic is "saintliness." His one defect is a stutter that manifests itself under stress, and you might wonder: how does that work in an opera? And the answer is: fine. It's not an issue. I mean, a few times he's not able to articulate lines, and that's about it. Nothing distracting or anything. And I DO like Britten's music, as I may have said and/or implied before.

There are actually like four or five different productions I could have watched, but I chose this Met made-for-TV movie, just because I wanted to see the great James Morris as Claggart--one of his signature roles, as I understand it. And, yup, he's terrifically sinister. As he dies (um, spoiler) this little half-smile flits across his face that's just chilling as anything. Dwayne Croft is very well-cast as Billy, guileless and likeable, and OH MY GOODNESS does he nail his wrenching pre-death aria ("look! through the port comes the moonshine astray").

What can I say? I'm a Britten fanboy; that's all I can say. I feel linguistic patriotism to have discovered such an indisputably great English-language composer (okay, so I already had the second half of Handel's career; you know what I mean).

Michel Tabachnik, Benjamin, dernière nuit (2016)

Who exactly is Michel Tabachnik? Well, he's a Swiss composer and conductor. From poking around on the internet I think that, although he's fairly prolific as a composer, this is his first opera, but I could not swear to that with absolute certainty. His wikipedia page says nothing about this or any other such that he might have written. That seems to indicate a...let's say lack of particularly intense general interest in him and his work, but who knows?

"Benjamin" is Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish intellectual best-known--at least to non-experts like me--for his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," who in 1940 tried to flee from Vichy France to Spain thence to cross over to Portugal and go to the US; when he was turned back, in despair he committed suicide by morphine overdose. You know, apropos of absolutely nothing, but I've noticed that people who turn away refugees are always judged extremely well by history; they're seen as great heroes who definitely did the right thing and are worthy of emulation. What's especially good is when they say things like "my ancestors came here The Right Way; why can't they?" These are just profoundly moral people whose worldviews are built on a deep reservoir of compassion.

Too much? Once you start with the bitter sarcasm, it can be kinda hard to know where to stop. In any event, it's not exactly a cheery subject for an opera, is it? Which puts it in good company, of course, but somehow the fact that it's a real event in living history makes it seem all the grimmer. Still, the artistry in good opera redeems the tragedy, doesn't it? We'll see to what extent that's the case here. As you can imagine, this isn't very plot-heavy: there's a long-ish scene at the beginning with no music and only spoken dialogue, as Benjamin takes the drug in his hotel room and waits to die; his fractured memories are what make up the story; as Benjamin-the-actor remains on stage, Benjamin-the-singer appears for the musical part of the piece, which consists of a number of scenes each centered around someone who played a role in Benjamin's life, most of whom will be familiar names: Arthur Koestler, Bertolt Brecht, André Gide, Hannah Arendt, and others (and I must say, they generally do quite a good job of making the singers look eerily like the historical figures).

Anyway, it's interesting stuff. The music changes notably depending on whom Benjamin is interacting with, becoming, for instance, more strident for Brecht, romantic for his on-again-off-again lover Asja Lacis, and taking up strong Jewish-sounding motifs for Gershom Scholem, a German-born Israeli intellectual. The whole thing takes place in Benjamin's hotel room, with video projected onto the walls (that's in the debut, from Opera de Lyon--probably the only place it's ever been performed?)--including, towards the end, of someone doing a google image search for Paul Klee's portrait of Benjamin (which also features elsewhere in the piece):

I have to say, not a great likeness. Yeah, everyone's a critic.

The opera was interesting and sincere. I don't know if I loved it, but then, I don't know if I entirely wrapped my head around it either. It definitely seems to be a serious work worth engaging with, and possibly revisiting.

Benjamin Britten, Albert Herring (1947)

So apparently after The Rape of Lucretia, Britten understandably wanted to do something lighter, and thus we have his first comedy, based, of all things, on Maupassant story transplanted to England.

The plot is that all the bluenosed bigwigs in town want to choose a May Queen for their annual festival, but they rule out all the local girls as too slutty. What to do? Well, someone suggests, how about a May King? There's this Albert kid who's sufficently virtuous! He's a bit dim, but hey. Well, Albert is neither dim nor "virtuous" in their sense; he's just repressed by his puritanical mother. Nonetheless, he's not too keen on this idea in spite of the cash prize. However, he's dragooned into doing it anyway. But when his pal Sid and Sid's girlfriend Nancy decide to loosen him up by spiking his lemonade at the party--well, things get interesting! Wait, seriously? Sid and Nancy? Yup. One of those things that you feel should mean something, but pretty clearly doesn't. Alas. The ultimate message is: if you repress people to much, they'll eventually act out in explosive ways. It's easy to see how this could have tragic results, but this is pure comedy.

I'll come straight to the point: this opera is incredibly charming and delightful, and pretty risque for the time, I should think. I do think that the third act--where Albert has disappeared and everyone's worried OH NO HE MUST BE DEAD--probably goes on a bit longer than it needs to (seriously, given the tone of the first two acts, it would be indescribably strange if this suddenly turned into a tragedy), but that's a minor criticism. I watched this Operavision production (no longer online, alas) from the Royal College of Music. A few of the parts are sung by older singers, but most of them are by young people just starting out in their careers, and considering, it's stunning how good they all are. No amateur hour this. Society may be falling apart, but we sure are still capable of producing quality singers! If that's any comfort. It originally takes place in 1900, but here it's been updated to--as far as I can tell--more or less the time of the opera's composition. I suppose some of the attitudes on display here are perhaps rendered a little archaic, but honestly, I didn't know the milieu had been changed while I was watching, and it felt entirely natural.

Hmm.  Think I'll space out the Britten operas a little, but I do at some point intend to go through everything or more or less everything that he did in that vein.

Benjamin Britten, The Rape of Lucretia (1946)

So it's Roman Times, and Tarquinus is in charge. The situation is explained by male and female "choruses" (just one person each, in fact), who are observers outside time who throughout the opera comment on the action in a Christian fashion, and also get emotionally caught up in the goings-on. But anyway. Tarquinus. Tyrant. He's drinking with his subordinates at an army camp, but everyone's jealous of Collatinus, the only one whose wife (Lucretia) has been faithful while they're away. But how faithful IS she, really? Tarquinus decides to go back to Rome to see. I mean, the title kinda gives away what happens next, doesn't it? Lucretia is traumatized, and even though Collatinus accurately asserts that it wasn't her fault and there's no need for shame, well, what do YOU think she does? Keeping in mind that this is an opera?

HOLY HELL, man. I don't necessarily know what I was expecting here; this isn't one of Britten's better-known works. But I was really, seriously blown away here. If anyone expresses doubts that English-language opera can have the heightened emotion of the best Italian opera, just put this on and say "watch and learn, you clod." It's what Britten called a "chamber opera," with just a small ensemble of musicians; the music is accessible--more so, I'd subjectively say, than Peter Grimes--and the whole thing is just dramatic as anything.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that this Glyndebourne production is so good. Well, I guess the production itself is actually a little weird, with the stage covered with loose gravel that characters are always scrabbling around in, but really, it's all about the singers. Duncan Rock is good as Tarquinus, playing the character as this kind of entitled fratboy douchebag, a characterization that certainly fits. BUT. Christine Rice as Lucretia? In my top five operatic performances, without a doubt. Please keep in mind that I don't actually have a list of top performances, and granted it's hard to really make comparisons like this, but she is just stunning. Things like this remind you of why you like the artform in the first place.

Let's talk briefly and only semi-relevantly about the word "rape." Now, we probably all know that our current meaning has not always been the meaning; that it used to just generally mean taking something away by force. The rape of the sabine women and Pope's "Rape of the Lock" do not involve rape rape (I mean, okay, the former could,but you're being anachronistic if you're saying that that's what the name means). The play that this opera was based on is twentieth-century, so the word definitely meant what it means, but it's possible that the title is along the lines of the earlier use--I mean, that's what it usually means in pieces of this sort where it's in the title--and although in this production it's pretty darned unambiguous, it probably could be played differently if one were so inclined. That would get icky pretty quickly, so I don't recommend it, but it's worth thinking about, I suppose.

Am I correct in thinking that the phrase "rape and pillage" is in the same category as redundant legal phrases like "null and void," "cease and desist," and "assault and battery," where they wanted to include words from both French and Anglo-Saxon roots so there would be no possibility of misunderstanding? We don't think of "rape and pillage" like that because these days the words have two different means and because "pillage" is old-fashioned and not, as far as I know, a current legal term.

Well, that had nothing to do with anything. Sometimes I just have a thought in my head and want to say it even if it doesn't seem substantial enough to warrant its own blog post. But the point is: THIS OPERA RULEZ DUDE. Miss it at your peril.

George Gershwin, Porgy and Bess (1935)

Well, if Britten is the most famous English-language opera composer, here's possibly the most famous single English-language opera. American opera, certainly. Nicely timed for Black History Month, we have the Met's new production Live in HD. Why not? It seems a little weird that I hadn't seen it before this, but I think that's at least partially due to not being quite sure what it really was: the only thing I knew from it was "Summertime"--the most-covered piece of music ever, with tens of thousands of recordings--and, like, it's a pop song. How is this from an opera? Not that I have anything against musical theatre or anything, but in that case it wouldn't necessarily be something I'd've focused on. It was actually a revelation to hear that song--it opens the opera--sung as an operatic aria, and suddenly understand. It's recognizably the same thing, but also very different. Anyway, definitely an opera, this, though it could easily be--and has been done--as a musical.

But the problem is, I'm very concerned that I don't have anything useful to say about it. "You don't have anything useful to say about anyopera." Well, that's as may be, but at least when I'm writing about something slightly less massive and massively known, I don't feel as self-conscious about that. But here, I am. Should I point out the irony of the fact that the African American opera was written by a white guy with a libretto by a white guy based on a book by another white guy? It's been done! Should I note that it's in some ways a little bit racially problematic? Ditto. Actually, I would strongly recommend that any interested parties listen to the episode on the subject of the Met Opera Guild podcast, which is a very good overview. I often find the podcasts in this series less than compelling because they consist primarily of detailed plot summaries, and I'm not sure what the point is--if I'm interested enough to want to know the plot, I'm definitely interested enough to actually seeit!--but this one really delves into the issues surrounding Porgy and Bess, and even the short-ish plot summary includes useful analysis.

Anyway, wanna know what? I liked it. Quite a lot. See, again, I feel self-conscious about even trying to summarize it, because is this news to anyone? Well, Bess is a woman struggling with drug addiction and, it's implied, a former prostitute, who escapes her violent boyfriend, Crown, and gets together with the crippled Porgy. This goes well for a while, until Porgy kills Crown; he isn't actually a suspect in the murder, but he's taken in to identify the body, leaving Bess sufficiently freaked out that when the suave drug dealer/pimp known as Sportin' Life asks her to go off to New York with him, she does it. Porgy gets out, and resolves to find her, even though he doesn't have a clear idea of where or indeed what New York is. That's all, although it might not give you a full picture of the work: there's a lot of slice-of-life stuff here that doesn't really relate to the main story. And that's fine.

I mean, you can see why it's popular. Gershwin was definitely a tunesmith, and the fact that I only knew "Summertime" definitely says more about my sheltered existence than anything else. Certainly, the appeal of things like "Ain't necessarily so," "I got plenty of nothing," and especially the love duet "Bess you is my woman now." I should probably also give a shout-out to Ira Gershwin for the lyrics; this opera is often credited to "the Gershwins," and I think ARGH NO that's not the convention; librettists aren't mentioned in the same breath as composers (I also think that about Gilbert and Sullivan), but, well, you can kind of understand why we do. Anyway, now I feel more cultured. It's pretty darned tragic that George died so young, depriving the world of god knows how much more iconic music.

This Live in HD performance featured something I'd never seen before: a pre-opera announcement by Peter Gelb. As I understand it, these things are generally bad news because they mean that one of the singers you wanted to see has been replaced by an understudy, but not so here: all he had to say was that Eric Owens (as Porgy) had a cold but would be performing anyway. The only point of which seems to be "if he sucks, that's why," which doesn't instill a great deal of confidence. But he was fine; I suppose someone more sensitive to these things than me could have sensed that something was off, but I did not. Angel Blue, as everyone says, kills it as Bess; I'd only seen her before in a small role as Helen of Troy in Boito's Mefistofele, but she definitely deserves to be a lot more well-known. However--curveball!--to me, the highlight here was actually tenor Frederick Ballentine, making his Met debut as Sportin' Life. He brings real insinuating, serpentine charisma to the role, making an extremely bad guy (he's a worse person than Crown, I'd say, if less overtly violent) seem perversely appealing.

The production is fine, if, I can't help feeling, slightly too crowded for its own good. Also--and I don't know whether this is more a matter of the production or if it's just inherent in the piece itself--Bess' struggles with drug addiction and her efforts to leave her past behind feel sort of clumsy, like she really just ping-pongs back and forth as the plot requires, rather than having realistic internal struggles. Or maybe I'm just asking for something that opera as a form isn't super-well-equipped to provide.

Gershwin insisted that the opera should have an all-black cast (except for a few white cops limited to speaking roles), and the family's estate mandates that that be the case to this day. That does raise potentially prickly problems about who counts as "black" (there are one or two chorus members here who, if you saw them on the street, you probably wouldn't think of as such); still, in spite of whatever problems you might have with aspects of the story, that's very progressive, and if it weren't so, it probably wouldn't maintain its popularity today: if it had historically been performed in blackface, it would probably today be considered too toxic to perform. You do have to wonder, though: if it's possible to get high-quality all-black cast--as it very clearly is--then WHY are other Met productions so overwhelmingly white? I know that color-blind casting is generally the rule, which is good ("you're okay with an all-black cast for Porgy and Bess but not an all-white cast for others operas, I see how it is you vile sjw hypocrite." Yes. Quite.), but the way that shakes out, well...I mean, I know there are reasons for that that aren't motivated by racism, but STILL, it's at least something to think about.

Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes (1945)

And now...this! Britten's first big success. The more I think about it, the more I realize that he really is THE biggest name in English-language opera, unless you count Gilbert & Sullivan, which I've decided not to. Purcell, sure, but I just don't think he's as prominent, at least these days. Most of Britten's operas have become part of the repertoire, which is impressive for ANY mid-twentieth-century composer, let alone an English one. So that's cool.

Anyway. It's a seaside fishing town, and Peter Grimes is a fisherman whose apprentice has died at sea under somewhat murky circumstances. It's determined that the death was accidental and not Grimes' fault, but suspicion lingers among the townspeople. There's a sympathetic teacher, Ellen Orford, who tries to help him, but suspicion grows and ultimately bad stuff happens. Thus we have what the host, Natalie Dessay, characterizes as "the sad, horrible story of Peter Grimes." I dunno; it's definitely not a comedy, but I don't know that I'd say it's more "horrible" than your average operatic tragedy. Then again, maybe they're all horrible! Maybe we just like a horrible artform! Who can say?!?

What's interesting to me is that Grimes is a really ambiguous character in ways you don't normally see in opera. You generally know where you stand with operatic characters, or at least find out fairly quickly, but not so here. You never really see inside his head or know exactly what he's thinking, and it's far from obvious that he's innocent of the crime he's accused of; he's obviously not mentally well and subject to fits of rage. He may not deserve what he gets, exactly, but he's certainly not a complete innocent. What with this uncertainty, I would call this one of the most modernist operas I've seen, at least storywise.

After seeing it, I'm definitely a fan of Britten. It didn't take much. To my untrained ear, the music sounds somewhere between the atonality of a Berg and a more traditionally melodic romantic sound. He's very good at choral music, and he's able to evoke the wildness of the ocean in a way I haven't seen since Der fliegende Holländer. This Met production is great in all ways, but especially in the way of Anthony Dean Griffey, who acts the hell out of Grimes. He has a climactic mad scene--something you don't normally see with male characters, and it's great.

Dang. As noted, most of Britten's operas are widely performed and readily available, so I look forward to exploring his career.

Jaromír Weinberger, Spring Storms (1933)

Hey everybody, let's watch a Weimar-era operetta! The last Weimar-era operetta, in fact: it debuted just as the nazis were taking power and was quickly shut down. This is apparently partially a reconstruction, per operavision:

The original full score as well as most orchestral parts are lost. Only the piano reduction, the bass drum part and a detailed prompt book with the libretto remained unscathed. The pianist and arranger Norbert Biermann used these as well as the gramophone recordings to reconstruct the missing orchestration and compose new extracts for the Komische Oper Berlin’s production.

All right. I'll take it.

Operetta sort of confuses me. What is it? Is it more like an opera, or more like a musical? I think the latter when I hear Gilbert and Sullivan but the former when I hear French or German operetta, but is that really just a language thing? Hard to say. I probably haven't seen enough of it to have a clear picture. But I'd like to fix that problem! I would, but it's easier said than done; Weinberger, for instance, was famous in his time, but you sure can't find videos of much or any of his stuff.

Well, we have this, anyway. It's an unusual setting: it takes place in Manchura during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The Russian general, Katschalow, has his problems: Japanese spies have infiltrated his headquarters; his strong-willed teenage daughter Tatiana is carrying on with a fast-talking German journalist, Zirbitz; and to top it off, he's in unrequited love with an archduke's widowed daughter, Lydia--who herself is in love with and loved by Ito, one of the aforementioned Japanese spies. What will happen?

I sort of wasn't loving this at first. Part of that's just endemic to the genre: operettas generally have a way higher dialogue-to-singing ratio than I care for (the most famous German-language operetta, Die Fledermaus, has the same problem). But I was also comparing it in my head to another obscure operetta of the time that was on Operavision, Paul Abraham's Roxy und ihr Wunderteam. That one is much more immediate that this, and the music, really, is considerably more memorable.

Still! I did ultimately get into this. It's an unexpected (at least by me) mixture of comedy and pathos, both of which ramp up in the final act, in a way that's a little tonally weird but still basically works. I'm not really familiar enough with the sensibilities of the time to know whether a romance between a Japanese man and a European woman would've ruffled anyone's feathers, but it's interesting in either case. Tatiana and Zirbitz also make a charming couple (the Operavision description characterizes him as "nauseating," which seems bizarrely judgmental to me--he's a comic character, and I suppose a little obnoxious, but that makes it sound like he's a villain, when he isn't in any sense). Possibly because I'm not more familiar with operetta, all I can think to compare it to is Puccini's La rondine, which was originally meant to be an operetta itself and has a similarly bittersweet tone. And you know, the music isn't bad: in particular, Ito's aria of regret at the end is legit devastating.

What's not so great here are the subtitles: they don't even try to translate all the dialogue; it's really just enough to understand what's going on, leaving out a lot of the comedy. There's one moment that stood out where Zirbitz distinctly says "Sherlock Holmes," but what the context for this is shall remain forever mysterious to non-German-speakers. I hate to sound ungrateful, given all the enjoyment I get out of Operavision, but boy. Not their finest moment. I hope they bring us more operettas, but I also hope they do a better job of subtitling them.