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.
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