This is based on an Ingmar Bergman film which I must admit, I haven't seen (it's also my first opera sung in Swedish). I'm definitely woefully inadequate in my knowledge of cinema, but as you get older, you start to realize that you're just never going to experience all the art you might want to. There are potentially transcendent, life-changing experiences that you will never have, and even if you knew in advance exactly what they were, you wouldn't be able to get to them all--there simply isn't enough time in a life. You must simply accept it and pick and choose what you're most interested in.
That said, I have seen Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, an exceedingly delightful comedy that would be a great subject for an exceedingly delightful comic opera, if anyone wants to get on that. This is definitely not a comedy: a woman, Eva, lives with her husband, Viktor, and Eva's disabled sister Helena. Some time ago, their four-year-old son died, which has made things difficult. Having heard about the death of her stepfather, she invites her mother Charlotte, a famous concert pianist, to visit. Long-buried tensions come simmering to the surface (this being the purpose of long-buried tensions), the visit ends, and nobody is happy. Whee!
You might think: during a pandemic, shouldn't you be watching...cheerier things than this? It doesn't seem calculated to put you in a good frame of mind. And I see what you're saying, but you know, whether or not it's "happy," watching a transcendent work of art has its compensations.
First the music: I have rarely heard contemporary opera music I liked as much as this. Lush, tense, brooding, and very perfectly aligned with the characters' moods. Also, some of the best choral work you'll see in a contemporary opera, representing Charlotte's mindset. Fagerlund is definitely one to watch, I'd say. And then the story and the characters themselves: these may just be good because the film is good, I don't know, but this drama is...very compelling. It's the sort of thing that, when you describe it, kind of sounds like a cliche, but I feel like it's stories like this that created the cliche in the first place, and in the moment, as you're watching, it really works.
And to top it off, the singers themselves. The two men here are fine, whatever, but this is really a story about women, and OH MY GOD, the three female singers here--Anne Sofie von Otter (not often that you see a star this big in an Operavision production) as Charlotte, Erika Sunnegårdh as Eva, and (in a smaller but still crucial role) Helena Juntunen as Helena--they just act the shit out of their parts. I have rarely been so impressed with operatic acting in anything, old or new. It's all incredibly real.
I have to admit, I wasn't that excited about the prospect of seeing this. It's clearly just internalized prejudice: that this sort of Very Serious character drama is something that you feel obligated to see, but you don't really want to. But I should learn to overcove such prejudices. This is magnificent stuff. The Met should put it on.
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