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.
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