John Corigliano, The Ghosts of Versailles (1991)

I'd been curious about this one for a long time. I sort of vaguely knew the premise: it's about Beaumarchais, author of the three "Figaro" plays, on two of which Mozart and Rossini based popular operas. And apparently, the Ghost of Beaumarchais is in love with the Ghost of Marie Antoinette and wants to try to change history so she's not executed, and also it features Figaro and related characters? What? This sounds absolutely nuts. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I am having a LOT of trouble envisioning this.

And...yeah, that's basically what it is. It starts with a frame narrative about the Ghost Court of Louis XVI at Versailles. Everyone seems to be pretty reconciled to being dead except Antoinette, and Beaumarchais has the idea that he can make an opera that will change history and bring her back to life. And then when things start to go not-according-to-plan there, he enters the opera himself to fix stuff. Said opera is based on La Mère coupable, the third and far the least well-known Figaro play (the opera--ie, The Ghosts of Versailles--was commissioned for the Met's hundredth anniversary, and I strongly suspect that they originally just wanted a straight story based on the play). The story is that Rosina has an illegitimate son from a one-night stand with Cherubino (who is now dead). Almaviva has an illegitimate daughter of his own, and the two kids fall in love and overcome obstacles with the help of Figaro and Suzanne. In this version, this stuff gets all mixed up with the French Revolution (why is this taking place in France now? The world may never know): Almaviva has a plan to save the Queen by selling a valuable necklace at the Turkish embassy so she can have money to flee to England. There's a villain, Bégearss, but obviously, everything works out okay for the characters, and everything works out ambiguously for Beaumarchais and Antoinette.

So, yeah. It's all kinda nuts, in a way that you would think would be right up my alley. And yet...WOW. I have had very few operatic experiences that I liked less than this one. It makes me feel like I may be going crazy, since poking around online you find nothing but rapturously positive reviews, but damn, man: okay okay, I suppose I have to admit that there are a few musically okay moments, including Antoinette singing about being executed in the beginning and a flashback duet of Cherubino seducing Rosina)--but really, very little was musically compelling to me (yes, it quotes both the expected operas, but not in any interesting way), nothing was dramatically so, and every single attempt at comedy fell embarrassingly flat. Also, Bégearss is such a ludicrous cackling cartoon villain that it's impossible to take him seriously or find him interesting or indeed threatening in any way. I suspect that La Mère coupable just isn't as good as the other two plays, but I'm also sure that this doesn't do it justice in any event: the characters therefrom are totally undeveloped and uninteresting. And TO TOP IT OFF, there's a section at the end of the first act at the Turkish embassy that--I can't believe I'm saying this--I found legitimately offensive: there's a performer (Marilyn Horne vamping it up) singing in fake-Arabic gibberish (or is it meant to be fake-Turkish gibberish? It's all the same to Corigliano!), and it's just the most witless display of pure, unfiltered Orientalism I can imagine. You could forgive it in an older work, but 1991? Fuck. That. Shit.

So yeah! Not a fan! This was Corigliano's first opera, he hasn't written another since, and I personally am thankful for that. Seeing it satisfied my curiosity, but it didn't satisfy me in any other way.