Aulis Sallinen, The Palace (1995)

This one is loosely based on Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and when I say "loosely" I mean "I'm not sure I would've even made the connection if the DVD notes hadn't." There are some similar names, it takes place in a palace, and...that's it. It's also based, I'm not sure how loosely, on a nonfiction book about the last days of the reign of Haile Selassie. Seems like an unusual combination.

Well, anyway. So we're at the court of this nameless king, of whom everyone is scared and who only communicates through his queen, Constance. All the courtiers and ministers are tiptoeing around. There's a newcomer, Valmonte, in the court, trying to get ahead. Constance and this lady-in-waiting, Kitty, are tired of this life and plot to leave. The king tries to stop them. He fails and is deposed. And now Valmonte is the new military dictator, and things seem like they're only going to get worse. As they so sadly typically do.

Let me be clear about one thing: the music here is as strong as in The Red Line. Sallinen is a very good composer. And yet, I really didn't like this, I'm sorry to say. It strongly feels like an operetta, is the thing, in spite of being kind of dark in the end. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with being an operetta, but to me, the big difference between comic opera and operetta isn't that the latter includes spoken dialogue, it's not that the latter is generally less difficult to sing: no, to me it's that operetta is very much the opposite of the Manic Street Preachers song: all surface and no feeling. It always feels very surface level to me, with no real emotion. There are exceptions to this, and sometimes the music is infectious enough that you just don't care, but my goodness: I like Die Fledermaus okay, but the other popular Viennese operetta, Franz Lehar's Merry Widow, is to me incredibly annoying, and I never want to see it again.

And yes, to me, this is like that. I found it impossible to care about any of the goings on, the libretto is...I mean, I guess it's somewhat witty in places, but this is one of those times where I found it more alientating than appealing. Sorry!