Gaetano Donizetti, Lucrezia Borgia (1833)

So...Gennaro and his pals are having a party. Gennaro wanders off to take a snooze, and a mysterious woman comes over to him. They are instantly in love, somehow, but Gennaro confides that there's another woman he's in love with, his mother who he's never met, and if you suspect there might be an extremely far-fetched yet somehow also extremely obvious plot twist coming...well, you ain't wrong. Anyway, his friends see that the woman is Lucrezia Borgia and they tell about all their friends and relations she's had murdered. So she's sad, as you are in these circumstances. The duke thinks Gennaro is having an affair with his wife and plots to have him killed. Later, at the duke's palace, there's a sign that says "Borgia." To show his contempt for the family, Gennaro rips off the B so it says "orgia" (ie, orgy--sick burn). Lucrezia is extremely angry that someone would mess up her sign like this and demands that the perpetrator be found and executed in front of her, only to backtrack when she sees it's Gennaro. But the duke insists that he be killed and makes him take poison. Lucrezia however gives him an antidote and begs him to flee the city. He's going to go, but his friend Orsini insists that he come to their bangin' party first and says that the two of them can leave together the next day. They sing a song about what great friends they are. At the party, everyone is drinking, but something's wrong: it turns out the wine is poisoned. Lucrezia appears and explains that because they hurt her feelings back in the first act by telling about all the people she'd murdered, she has no choice but to murder all of them. But she's horrified to find Gennaro there; he was supposed to have left. But nope. There's some antidote left which she begs him to take, but he refuses, even after she reveals that he's her son (of course). So the friends all die and Lucrezia stabs herself. I...am fairly sure that's not how the historical figure met her end.

Phew. So this is based on a Victor Hugo play, but I can't say how closely, so I'm not sure quite whom I'm criticizing here when I note that this libretto is terminally broken. The main problem is Lucrezia herself, and the weird tonal mismatch between what's presented about her and the <i>way</i> it's presented. Like, in the first act, when everyone is accusing her of murdering their loved ones, and she's all "alas! No! O God!" The way this is done makes it look for all the world like she's being falsely accused, but...no. The text makes no effort to rebut anything anyone says about her. Fercrissake, the woman is a serial killer, and when the opera acts like that's...like, no big deal? Or a tragic but understandable flaw?...it's just really strange. No effort is ever made to present any kind of mitigating factor for her behavior. The entire weight of the drama is based on the putative pathos of her losing her son, but when you realize that if she weren't such a murderous psychopath she wouldn't be having these problems...it's hard to feel too badly for her. What the hell.

Hey, the music is perfectly sturdy Donizetti stuff, as why wouldn't it be, and there are some enjoyable vocal moments. Still, you can find plenty of Donizetti operas that don't require you to tolerate a bad libretto. Also, sorry to say so, but in this San Francisco Opera production, I think Renee Fleming was kind of the wrong choice for the lead. You realize that just because you have a particular vocal type doesn't mean you'll be able to effectively take on every role for that vocal type? Her problems are especially evident in Lucrezia's final aria, which calls for a lot of coloratura that she's just not good at. Natalie Dessay would've been good in the role. Or Diana Damrau (she may be my archnemesis, but credit where due; this also might be a role that would work well with her acting style). Not really Fleming, though. As Gennaro, Michael Fabiano is okay, I guess, but for some reason his hair has been bleached and spiked for the role, and combined with the leather get-ups he has to wear, he looks like Billy Idol, which is a little...weird (which might make you assume this is some weird Eurotrash production, but it's not; it's very traditional--except for occasional bits of weirdness like that). My favorite performances here were Elizabeth DeShong as Orsini and Vitalij Kowaljow as the Duke. They bring real conviction to their roles.

Worth noting that, as far as I know, there's no actual evidence beyond rumor run wild that the actual Lucrezia Borgia was a murderer, let alone the enthusiastic sort of murderer depicted here--although in fairness, just check out this picture, according to wikipedia the only one verified to have been painted of her from life:

She certainly LOOKS like she'd poison you as soon as look at you. I mean, given what a popular hobby murder was in Renaissance Italy, who knows? Still, her present reputation is probably largely powered by misogyny.

Daniel Bernard Roumain, We Shall Not Be Moved (2017)

You know this story, right? There was this left-wing black revolutionary movement called MOVE. They set up headquarters in Philadelphia, and apparently they were annoying their neighbors by making too much noise and leaving garbage all around. The police tried to evict them, but they refused to leave, so they reacted in the only reasonable fashion: by firebombing the building from a fucking helicopter, burning down sixty-five houses in the area and killing eleven people, including five children. It's one of those stories where if you don't know it, you think, wait, that can't be real--that can't be something that happened in America. Well, maybe you wouldn't think that these days. Regardless...there it is.

Anyway, this is definitely the most topical opera I could possibly have chosen to watch. It takes place in present-day Philadelphia. After semi-accidentally killing a kid who's causing trouble, five teenagers decide to take shelter in one of the condemned, bombed-out houses from the 1985 bombing. A Latina cop tries to get them to leave, and accidentally shoots and wounds one of them. They wrestle away her gun and take her captive. But this house is haunted by the ghosts of the past. What will happen?

Well, actually, "what will happen?" probably is not the most relevant question here. This opera does have a plot, but it's mainly about interrogating the forces shaping these people's lives, the injustices of our society, and the ways that the past isn't even the past. It's definitely willing to be intersectional and complicate narratives: one of the kids is white, and of course, there's the fact that the cop--the putative antagonist, though you couldn't really call her a villain--is a woman of color; police culture may be fundamentally a white-supremacist construct, but that doesn't mean, obviously, that all cops are white, nor indeed that all of them are propping up the system, at least not intentionally. Perhaps most strikingly, one of the kids is trans, and how all these factors go together is interesting and powerful. The libretto is, admittedly, occasionally a bit clumsy and perhaps overly didactic, but it's telling an important story.

The music definitely has a core of operatic romanticism, but it's also strongly inflected with gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. It's very good; I'd never heard its like before. The cast is good too, the highlight for me being John Holliday as John Blue, the transgender kid. I may be biased in favor of countertenors (okay, I definitely am), but he has an interesting voice and I'd love to see him in baroque repertoire. His wikipedia page says he's sung both Handel and Vivaldi.

Porgy & Bess is all very well, but as far as operas about the African-American experience (recognizing of course that that is not a singular, homogenous thing), this somehow seems more relevant--and of course, the fact that it has a black composer and a black librettist (Marc Bamuthi Joseph) makes things feel less implicitly uncomfortable. Opera Philadelphia actually commissioned it back in the day, and they couldn't have picked a more appropriate time to put it up for streaming. These days, I'm a bit jaundiced about art's ability to actually effect social change, but that doesn't mean that that art shouldn't be celebrated when it's well-done.

Leoš Janáček, From the House of the Dead (1930)

I've never quite come to terms with Janáček: I liked Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen pretty well, but mostly, I feel in spite of the music, which somehow never really grabbed me. The Makropulos Affair, based on a play by Karel Čapek (the guy who coined the word "robot") is arguably a science fiction opera, which is kind of interesting, but somehow I didn't even find it interesting enough to write about here. My fault, I expect.

So I probably wouldn't have watched this anytime soon--I would've had to buy a DVD--but then it turned up on Medici, so I decided, why not? See it here and save some potential cash.

It's based on Dostoevsky's novel, which I ought to read.  It was Janáček's last opera; apparently he didn't quite finish it before he died, but close enough.  It certainly doesn't feel incomplete.  It concerns a noble, Gorjančikov, who's been sent to a Siberian work camp for unclear reasons (in the novel he murdered his wife, but that is not explained here). There are a bunch of other inmates, and a lot of them tell their stories about why they're in the camp. In the end, Gorjančikov is released. Hurray!

I'm afraid I wasn't watching this with quite the right mindset: I kept waiting for there to be an actual plot, with an actual main character or characters, and when there never was, I was left a little disoriented. I really should have just been concentrating on the individual characters and their lives. It is an interesting set-up for an opera, however, and for whatever reason--it's always hard to know whether it's you or the thing itself--I liked the music a lot; more than previous Janáčeks I've seen.

The production is...quite something. I would describe it as an expressionistic vision of a post-apocalyptic Mardi Gras in an Eastern Bloc slum. It is visually striking and fun to watch, but I sort of had my reservations: the characters are meant to be sympathetic or, at the very least, human; the whole point of the thing is Gorjančikov learning to embrace their humanity. Which is laudable! But the tendency here to portray a lot of them as refugees from Beyond Thunderdome seems to cut against that in ways that I don't think always work. I dunno. This might be a good example of an opera that I should see in a different production.

In spite of everything, I still enjoyed it, however. I really need to see Káťa Kabanová, the only frequently-performed Janáček opera of which I am still ignorant.

André Previn, A Streetcar Named Desire (1998)

You know what I've had enough of? People getting all smug and superior when other people accidentally call it "A Streetcar Called Desire." Firstly, there are a whole lot of titles that take the form of An X Called Y, so it's only natural (as for me, I always think of the Ultravox song "A Friend I Call Desire"). And secondly, "called" just sounds more natural. "Named" was the wrong choice. Fight me.

Not to brag, but I have seen the Streetcar movie with Vivian Leigh and Marlon Brando. I also saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, and GOOD LORD is that an unreasonably beautiful pair of leads. That has nothing to do with anything, except to note that my knowledge of Tennessee Williams doesn't end with Streetcar. It does end with Cat, however. So not that impressive. WHATEVER.

You probably know the story, right? 'Cause It's a famous story? Blanche DuBois comes to New Orleans to visit her sister Stella Kowalski and his husband Stanley. She's kind of a wreck. She starts seeing this friend of Stanley's, Mitch, but then Stanley digs up dirt on her, that she used to work as a prostitute and that she was fired from her high-school teaching job for being involved with a student, and Mitch rejects her, so that's bad for her mental state, but what's worse for it is when Stanley rapes her, and she loses her mind. And that's about that.

I'm not a big expert on American theater, or any theater; that much is obvious. But I can't help but find this story...not super-compelling? And I think that's because of Blanche: what's her deal and why should I care? I feel like we get to the end of the movie and I still have no idea what she wants or who she is, and to the extent that I do, it's very banal and uninteresting. Stella seems like a much more human character, but...it's not her story. So, hmm.

The music here: Previn was better-known, maybe, as a conductor, but he actually had a lot of history as a composer, so it's not a Maazel-type thing where you wonder, is this really a good idea? I found some of the music here a little bland, but especially in the back half, I got into it. Very accessible; some dramatic moments. It does occasionally feint at including some jazzy elements to create that New Orleans atmosphere, but it doesn't really commit to them, which seems like a loss; like you could have had something really unique here, but you don't. Still, it's fine.

The version on DVD is the world premier from the San Fransisco Opera, and they got a killer cast, for sure: it stars Renée Fleming as Blanche, and while I don't think she can quite save the character from being a bit of a black hole, she does the best she's able, and I do think that her persona and acting style are appropriate for the role--even if Elizabeth Futral is more compelling as Stella (acting the hell out of the part). There's also Anthony Dean Griffey as Mitch, very good as a sympathetic character until he's not--he has a very bad virgin/whore complex. Oh well! He's as much a victim of The Patriarchy as anybody. The show is stolen, however, by Rod Gilfry (credited as "Rodney") as Stanley. I last saw him being saintly in Saint François d'Assise; he is somewhat less so here. But in Saint François, I remember thinking that, although he ultimately successfully inhabited the role, he didn't seem like a natural physical match. Whereas he just perfectly embodies Stanley's savage, thuggish charisma. A perfect match of character and singer.

One thing about this DVD: it includes no subtitles whatsoever. You can more or less understand most of it if you're a native English speaker, but there is inevitably a fair bit that's indecipherable (or maybe it would be decipherable if you rewound and listened to it multiple times, but that would sort of break the flow, you know? (also, isn't it interesting that I still use the word "rewound" even though the actual, physical rewinding process that you get with VHS tapes is a thing of the past? I think the word is commonplace enough that kids today know it, but do they know what it refers to?)). REALLY, what excuse is there for this? And not just for my benefit: shouldn't non-English-speakers be able to follow this? Okay okay, it would no doubt be impractical to include subtitles in every written language in the world, but in general, you should definitely be erring on the side of more rather than less.

Well, that notwithstanding, I thought it was an interesting and more or less compelling opera, even if I have issues with the story.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, May Night (1880)

Here's an early Rimsky-Korsakov piece. Does that mean it's not as "sophisticated" as later works? Possibly, but it's hard to imagine a situation where listening to a few hours of NRK would be anything less than pleasant.

It's based on a Gogol story and takes place in small village. The mayor's son Levko is in love with Hanna, but his dad also has ambitions to marry her (creepy in theory, but he's too much of a buffoon to be taken seriously). Levko tells Hanna story about a woman who lived in the village some time in the past whose stepmother turned out to be a witch and made her father drive her away such that she committed suicide by drowning herself in the pond, and now she lives with the other drowned maidens (rusalki). Later the witch was drowned to, but the stepdaughter doesn't know which one she is and needs someone to tell her so she can get revenge. I wonder why we are getting this extremely specific story? There is no way to know. Anyway, in the end, Levko points out the witch, and in gratitude, the drowned girl gives him a letter purporting to be from the commissar ordering his dad to let him marry Hanna. So he does.

That's the plot, but it's definitely not a tightly-plotted piece. The entire second act consists entirely of the mayor and his friends drinking and mucking about. That's fine, though, because the music--if perhaps lacking the high point of later NRK operas--is still very good. I must say, though, that this DVD suffers from poor audio and video quality--not excusable from a performance recorded in 2008. The image is very muddy, and there's audible feedback along with somewhat muted, distant music--and given that I'm not an audiophile and often don't even know what people are complaining about when they make criticisms like this, you know there must be issues. You get used to it, kind of, but a better recording would have made a world of difference.

Still worth seeing, even under suboptimal circumstance. Here are the Rimsky-Korsakov operas I have seen: May Night, Mlada, Sadko, Mozart and Salieri, The Tsar's Bride, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Kaschey the Deathless, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, The Golden Cockerel. Not bad, but alas, these are I believe the only ones available on video in any way. His Snow Maiden was apparently his favorite of his operas, but can you see it? You sure can't! Sure, I've listened to bits of it, and it's great! But it's an opera! I want to see it! Dernit. I wish Operavision would swoop in to our rescue.

Vincenzo Bellini, I Capleti e i Montecchi (1830)

This opera was streaming on the San Francisco Opera's website, but if you missed it, it's gone. Gone! But it's this production, so you can still see it if you are willing to pay the price. The ULTIMATE price!  Also, don't miss Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia with Renee Fleming this coming weekend.  That oughta be fun.

It's Bellini's Romeo and Juliet story, as you may have been able to figure out. This one is a little different: here the Capulets and Montagues are not just rival families, but actual warring factions--Guelphs and Ghibellines, apparently. I've said it before: if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the Guelphs supported the Pope whereas the Ghibellines were all in for the Holy Roman Empire. If you have trouble telling them apart, just remember that "Guelphs" and "Pope" are one syllable each. So there's that. The opera takes place after the lovers have already embarked on their fateful affair--no balcony scene here. There are some other differences, too: there's no Mercutio; there is a Tybalt (Tebaldo), but here he's a romantic rival of Romeo, and he doesn't even die; he just gets lost in the shuffle.

This is doggone great. I don't know if I'm just more opera-appreciative than I was when I saw Bellini's later, more-performed operas, but I feel like I appreciate Bellini's long, flowing rainbows of melody more than ever before. And goddamn, is this sexy: in particular Juliet's aria of yearning in her first scene, CRIKEY. And of course, in addition to being a great singer, Nicole Cabell in the role is drop-dead gorgeous, so nobody can complain. Romeo here is a trouser role, and Joyce DiDonato is very effective/convincing in it. Eric Owens is an appropriately wrathful Capulet.

The production is somewhat weird. It's fine; it didn't detract from my enjoyment. But still: the thing that a lot of people will mention--because it's stands out so much--is that Juliet delivers her first aria standing atop what appears to be a sink. "Aren't you worried that that thing could snap off?" you find yourself wondering. I dunno.

Still, production aside, I think this is definitely better than Gounod's take on the story (not that I don't like that one too). Bellini was some kind of composer.

Benjamin Britten, Death in Venice (1973)

Is Britten's last the most famous opera from the seventies? Gotta be. The only other possible candidate would have to be Einstein on the Beach, but I'd go with this one.

I have read Thomas Mann's novella, back in college. I don't remember it that well, but I think the opera follow it pretty closely: Gustav von Aschenbach is a middle-aged writer feeling kind of stuck who decides to take a vacation for reasons he only partially understands. In Venice, he sees a beautiful teenage boy from an upper-class Polish family, Tadzio, with whom he becomes obsessed, even though the two never interact (if you have ideas about why Britten might have found this story compelling, you will kindly keep them to yourself). Meanwhile, a cholera epidemic is sweeping the city, which the authorities are being vague about and trying to keep quiet (great, it's getting topical in here). Anyway, he has orgiastic visions as his health deteriorates and then he dies. And that's about that!

I watched this production, which is quite striking. John Graham-Hall is highly convincing as Aschenbach. Tadzio is a silent role, as it should. Instead, it's a dancing part, so it's not like it doesn't require talent. Sam Zaldivar, a trained ballet dancer, is very effective in the role (and, indeed, incredibly pretty).

It's definitely eerie in places, especially towards the end, and kind of hypnotic. I enjoyed it! Of course I enjoyed it! That said, for no reason that I can articulate, I found myself vaguely disappointed that it didn't live up to the opera I'd built up in my mind. I didn't exactly have my breath taken away, is I guess what I'm saying, which may be an unfair standard, but hey, it's Britten, who earned the right to be held to unreasonably high standards. I think my favorite of his is probably The Death of Lucretia. Though Turn of the Screw is pretty durned great also.

Dick van der Harst, Howard Moody, and Moneim Adwan, Orfeo and Majnun (2018)

I suppose every opera is a collaboration of sorts between composer and librettist, but it's surprising--well, maybe not surprising, but noticeable when you think about it--that there aren't more musical collaborations. Apart from posthumously-completed works, I think this is the first one I've seen. Ever. How about that? You'd think that different composers playing off each other could produce and interesting tension or drive them to new heights--or it could be a disaster, of course. But based on this one, I'd like to see more.

Good news: this is still available on La Monnaie De Munt's youtube page (though you'll have to autotranslate if you want English subtitles). It's an East-meets-West project: you have the familiar Orfeo and Eurydice, but it's combined here with the Arabic story of Layla and Majnun. A fairly typical story: Majnun wants to marry Layla but he's too poor so her dad makes her marry someone else. He runs off into the desert. He's sad, she's sad, and in the end they die. Well, in theory. In here, both couples are reunited, as we often see in operatic Orpheus stories.

It's a very abstract kind of thing, without a strong narrative thread. The most interesting thing is that the Orfeo and Eurydice part is sung in English, and the Layla and Majnun part in Arabic--first time I've ever heard an opera sung in the latter language. There's also spoken text in French and German, though I think this is just the ol "in the language of the audience" thing--which would make it odd if it were performed in an English- or Arabic-speaking country. Wouldn't be even.

Regardless, the music is really gorgeous and I liked it a lot, even if a part of me was begging for more actual story. Arabic singing is really appealing to me; I'd love to hear a full opera in the language. When you're in a Muslim country you have to hear the Call to Prayer many times every day, which is not sung, exactly, but in a song-like idiom. It can drive you crazy when it wakes you up at like four a.m., but it actually can be kind of beautiful, at least when you hear it through a high-quality sound system. I'm rambling, but my only point is that the language is good for music. I like it, and I liked this piece a lot. And it encourages intercultural understanding, so that's good.

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Alexander Zemlinsky, Eine florentinische Tragödie (1917)

A lot of full operas are being put online for free these days. Probably other things too, but let's get our priorities straight. This is one such, from Livermore Valley Opera in California. I really fear what's going to happen to these small companies as the pandemic rages on, but here we are for now. This is the only available video of this one-act opera.

It's based on an Oscar Wilde play. In sixteenth-century Florence, a woman Bianca is having an affair with Prince Guido. Her husband Simone, a textile salesman, comes back home and effects not to realize what's going on with the idea that he can use this as leverage to get the prince to buy stuff. So we have one of these situations where everyone knows what's going on and everyone knows everyone else knows, but nobody's saying anything. Obviously you'll know what happens if you know the play, but I had never even heard of the play, so I was kept guessing. I figured it was pretty inevitable that at least one of these people wasn't getting out of this alive, and I wasn't wrong, but I did not even come close to guessing the actual denouement. It's an interesting, very opera-worthy story.

And that's not all: it's accompanied by some very lush, Puccini-esque music (no arias per se, but in a compact story like this, I feel like they wouldn't have fit in very comfortably), which makes you wonder why Zemlinsky's eight operas aren't performed more often.

See, this is why I don't think I'm going to run out of operas to see: I keep finding new ones, and while some of these are not very impressive, some of them...are. So there you go. What a great insight that was.

Leonardo Leo, L'Alidoro (1740)

No sooner said than done, eh? Apparently this was only recently--this century, supposedly, though there's not much information available about this on the internet--rediscovered, and this is its first performance in modern times.

The story isn't actually that complicated, you can follow it while you're watching, but it kind of sounds confusing when described. So! There's a goofy old guy, Gingrazio. He wants his son Don Marcello to marry Faustina. But the problem is, Faustina and Gingrazio's valet, Ascanio, are in love. And the other problem is, Don Marcello's sister Elisa is also in love with Ascanio. And the OTHER other problem is, Don Marcello wants to marry a tavern-keeper, Zeza. And the OTHER other other problem is, Zeza is already involved with Meo, the miller. There's a lot of arguing, and then at the end, out of absolutely NOWHERE, it is revealed that, whoa, Ascanio is actually Gingrazio's long-lost other son. Sure, there's a similar twist in Figaro, but this is substantially more whiplash-inducing. Anyway, this is good because it means there's none of that filthy inter-class mingling. I mean, the opera doesn't say that in so many words, but it's pretty obvious. Apparently the commoners and nobles sing in different dialects of Italian as befits their stations, but that, unsurprisingly, was lost on me.

As a possible point against my assertion that the baroques hated low male voices, here all the male characters other than Ascanio are baritones and basses, which was interesting. Ascanio himself is here a trouser role, although most likely originally a castrato--as I said, there isn't much information about this online (if you search, you mainly just get a lot about Rossini's La Cenerentola, where "Alidoro" is the philosopher's name). None of the singers here are people you'd be likely to know, but they're all game with this unfamiliar material.

Anyway! It was fine, basically. I'd give it three stars on amazon, though honestly, two and a half might be more reasonable. There's some extremely pleasant music, and there are a few halfway decent comic and even dramatic arias and duets and trios and whatnot. But it must be said, the plotting is extremely ropy, and--never a good sign--I found myself getting a little bored at a certain point. It's cool to see a rarity like this, but you don't have to wonder too hard why Leo isn't as widely performed as Handel or Vivaldi.

Antonio Vivaldi, Dorilla in Tempe (1726)

Ain't no valdi like a Vivaldi 'cause a Vivaldi...okay, I have to admit, I didn't adequately consider how I was going to end this sentence.

This is a pastoral piece: Dorilla, the daughter of Admeto, King of Thessaly, is in love with a shepherd, Elmiro. But wait: there's another shepherd in love with her, Nomio, and he's actually Apollo in disguise. Oh yeah, and there's also Eudamia, in love with Elmiro, and Filindo, in love with Eudamia, but their role is pretty tangential. Admeto is ordered by the gods (O those zany gods) to sacrifice his daughter to a sea serpent, but Nomio kills it. As reward, he asks to be allowed to marry Dorilla; she and Elmiro try to run away, but they're captured and Elmiro's going to be executed until Nomio reveals himself in his divine glory and decides, okay okay, Elmiro and Dorilla should be married after all, and as reward for his constancy, Eudamia should marry Filindo. I don't think that last is a good message, and I have my doubts about the long-term viability of this relationship, but there you go.

A lot of fun, is what this is. It maybe takes a while to get going, and I'm a little disappointed by the distinct lack of countertenors in this production, but it's all good.  Probably not quite Orlando Furioso level, but that would be asking a lot.  Seriously, though: the only role here played by a dude is Admeto, and it's odd: you get the impression that composers felt some sort of obligation to include the one low-voiced role in their operas. You don't have to if you don't want to, guys! Maybe it's just so the high voices stand out more in comparison.

The interesting thing about this is that the original score for this isn't extant: the surviving version comes from a pastiche version from 1734 that cuts out some of Vivaldi's music and sticks in arias from various other popular composers of the time. The purist may complain, but I would challenge this purist to identify which parts are Vivaldi and which not--and this purist must provide very detailed explanations, or I shall be forced to call bullshit. Hey, there's a lot of classical music of disputed authorship; it's really not the case that someone sufficiently expert can identify the composer of a piece one hundred percent of the time. Anyway, the other composers whose work is used here are--per wikipedia--Johann Adolph Hasse, Geminiano Giacomelli, and Leonardo Leo. I wasn't familiar with any of these gentlemen, but now I want to see operas by all of them.

Hans Werner Henze, Boulevard Solitude (1952)

This is Henze's second opera. You wouldn't know from the title, but it's another Manon Lescaut story, by way of a theatrical retelling of the story by this title. It's more or less the same story, but updated to a modern-day (ie, fifties) setting. It's more focused on Manon's long-suffering lover, here named "Armand" and never referred to as des Grieux. He's sort of seeing her on and off while she's being the mistress of several other men, as facilitated by her totally amoral brother Lescaut, here a pimp/drug dealer who, in contrast to other versions of the story, has no redeeming qualities. Obviously, nobody's going to be exiled to America here; instead, at the behest of her brother, Manon shoots and kills the old man who's keeping her, and the whole thing ends kind of inconclusively with her being imprisoned and her ultimate fate unknown. Anyway, it certainly seems like more of a crime than just being a prostitute.

I liked this...okay. For some reason that is difficult to understand, I still feel a nonsensical psychological aversion to the story, but this version is at least different enough to keep it somewhat interesting. The music is a sort of discordant jazzy stuff. Definitely some dramatic moments. This production is a handsome fifities-ish thing. The highlight for me is Tom Fox as an extremely sinister, Walter-White-looking Lescaut.

It's kind of astounding to me that a guy who was writing operas in the fifties was likewise writing operas in the oughts. The three that I've seen so far are all spread out pretty well, so you can definitely hear his career at different phases, even if there isn't necessarily a clear through-line. Regardless, I look forward to seeing more. He has one, Das verratene Meer, based on Mishima's poisonous Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which isn't available anywhere but which I'd love to see. Seems like a great setting for an opera.

Rigoletto, The Mysteries of the Theatre

...or, as the Operavision page more descriptively calls it, "Rigoletto for Children." It "makes the opera's more mature themes accessible to a young audience," apparently. Now, it's easy--and fun!--to just laugh at that idea, but hey, let's at least watch it and take it on its own terms. Why wouldn't we want to introduce opera to a young audience?

Still, it's hard not to be skeptical: what do you mean, "make its mature themes more accessible to a young audience?" Rigoletto is what it is: a story about a feckless duke who seduces his hunchback jester's daughter and the assassin that said jester hires to murder the duke who then bumps off his daughter instead. Is that appropriate for children? You tell me, but it's not clear to me how you could alter that to any substantial degree and have it be the same story.

Well, in fact, this production doesn't. It's exactly the same story, albeit fiercely abridged (barely more than an hour). Apparently what it's doing to make it accessible to children is to present it as a troupe of actors performing the opera. I...don't really understand how this is supposed to work, I have to admit. The story still has all its themes, and this doesn't seem to work as a distancing technique. Still, it is shorter for the social media age, and it features fun(?) activities: line drawings periodically appear over the action, some of them indicating that you're supposed to sing along (with karaoke-style text--it seems incredibly unlikely that any child will be able to do this without extensive preparation beforehand), dance around, put on masks, or even shake a rain stick, and JEEZ, how much special equipment do I NEED?  I cannot shake the suspicion that this may not actually be all that engaging for the young'uns.

The singers are really singers, albeit ones without a great deal of professional experience, if the internet is to be believed. The musical accompaniment is limited to a single piano (and a conductor--is this guy really needed with only one instrument?), which I didn't love--I found the whole thing kind of tinkly and a little annoying, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with making anything more accessible to anyone.

Maybe kids will like this? I don't know. I have my doubts, though. The "activities" feel notably half-assed, and while kids may have short attention spans, I think if they're interested in this story at all, they'd probably be just as interested in a full version--and even if not, I personally did not find this particular abridgment all that engaging. Obviously, I'm not in the target audience, I just tuned in out of curiosity, but nonetheless my word is final and none may disobey my terrible edicts.

Oscar Straus, Die Perlen der Cleopatra (1923)

I was very interested in seeing another Weimar-era operetta, so I was glad to see this come up on Operavision (although, alas but inevitably, it's not a new recording; it's from back in 2016). Straus was originally Strauss, but he wanted to be seen as distinct from Johann & Co, so he got rid of the last S, even though he was writing in a similar idiom.

I got into it with a fucking nazi on the youtube page. I know that that's generally unadvisable, but it actually worked out well in this case; I'm pretty sure I left him absolutely seething, which is the most you can hope for in such a situation. The highlight was him seizing on my last name, leaping to the conclusion that I was Jewish, and referring to my "breed" and whatnot--and also repeatedly calling me "Moses," presumably because it accentuates my putative Judaism. You'd think the sort of person obsessed with International Jewry would know enough to know that "Moses" is not a characteristically Jewish surname, is what I'd say if I had any respect for the intelligence or discernment of fucking nazis. Family lore sez that back in the thirties or thereabouts, my grandfather got turned away from a fishing resort because they assumed likewise. Fun. Anyway, he ultimately did an inept flounce and then ruined whatever rhetorical weight that would have had by commenting again. This is SUCH an obvious thing: I don't think the Internet Flounce is particularly effective in any event, but if you're going to do it, you have to absolutely COMMIT to it. Otherwise, everyone can see that your lofty claims to not care and to be so over it are bullshit. Also, I think--I don't know this, but I think it, and I want to believe it, because it's hilarious--he went through what I laughingly call my youtube channel and downvoted all the videos. I mean, why else do they all suddenly have exactly one downvote each? That rules. I'm not mad! YOU'RE mad!

Anyway, you can't read our exchange on the page, because it's been taken down: I was going to give youtube credit for this--I DID report his initial comment as hate speech--but I suspect Operavision itself gets the credit. They also deleted another exchange he was having with another fucking nazi. I missed that one, but I thought there was at least a chance of this happening, so what do you know, I screencapped the one I was involved with:

It is interesting that this guy never actually refers to Jews or Judaism by name. I mean, when you write "we all know well who were behind the devaluing of human morals and values in Germany prior to 1933," you're not exactly holding your cards close to your chest--and yet, for some reason he doesn't feel comfortable coming out and just saying it. I mean, yes, nazis should feel instinctive shame about being such worthless degenerates, but do you really think that's what's going on here? That they're actually capable of shame? Maybe social pressure can act on people even when they're not consciously aware of it. I don't know.

Why are there so many goddamn fucking nazis appearing in the comments of classical music videos? Well, that's a difference between American and European nazis: the American ones are generally proud of being crude and uncultured, but a lot of the Europeans have this conception of what they perceive as high art as one of the main cultural outputs of white people that they're trying to save. And so, alas, some number of them legitimately enjoy the same things I do. Well, bad people liking the same art that you do is something that happens sometimes, alas. This is also something metal fans have to deal with, though it's harder for them, since a fair few of the musicians themselves are also nazis, crypto- to greater or lesser degrees (sure, Wagner was a horrible person in many ways, but even he was more complicated than that).

You might ask (I'm aware that this alleged "opera review" is mainly about internet nazis; so it goes sometimes), "is it really a good idea to engage with these people?" And the answer of course is hell no, it's never a good idea to do that. Validate their arguments by actually arguing with them? Fuck that shit. But if you substitute "shout insults at" for "engage with," things get a little more complicated, I think. There are some instances--maybe most of them--where even that isn't advisable. Many a liberal or leftist forum has been destroyed when it degenerated into regulars getting mad at right-wing trolls all the time, drowning out more useful conversations. But...well, in that youtube comments section, nobody else was responding to this guy. And it's a nominally apolitical arena. So, while obviously this particular interaction amounted to nothing in itself, I think you could say that people making a habit of not letting white supremacist bullshit like this go unchallenged could have two benefits: first, obviously you're not going to change the nazi's mind--fuck that guy--but it could be beneficial for observers to see that these things don't just go unchallenged. And second, if these people see that they can't just post garbage like this in neutral territory without being shouted down, they might--might!--think in the future, eh, these things are more trouble than they're worth. Maybe. Maybe not. But these questions are important in an age of rising right-wing extremism.

ANYWAY. The operetta itself. I know what you're thinking: "'Gayropean values?' I don't know what that means, but it sounds HOT AS HELL. Why are nazis offended by this operetta, aside from the fact that it's written by (((Oscar Straus)))?" Just how gay ARE these Gayropean values? And the answer is...not that gay, actually. And I'm actually surprised by that, given the tenor of both positive and negative comments on the video. What seems to be happening is that there's been a certain amount of semiotic slippage between "gay" and "camp," and this operetta is very, very campy. Needless to say, it's a complicated thing, and a lot of stereotypically gay stuff is camp, but it's really not the same thing. Sure, there are dancing boys here, but there are also dancing girls, and the actually gayness...less discernible than you might expect. Or so I think.

Anyway, the plot is some nonsense about Cleopatra and her staff and a few suitors, along with a secondary couple. It's sheer goofiness, as I think this screen capture ably demonstrates:

But it's good fun. I think there's a higher ratio of singing-to-spoken-text than there is in a lot of operettas I've seen, which can only be to the good. And the music is...well, pretty darned infectious, as these things go. I liked it a lot more than I did the more famous Die listige Witwe, I'll tell you that much. The singers aren't particularly notable qua singers, but then again, not that much is asked of them. Dagmar Manzel is apparently a cultural fixture in Germany, and she has a lot of fun with the capricious, flirtatious title role.

The only problem here is that, like Spring Storms, the subtitles are plainly inadequate: not as much so as in that one, but we're still clearly missing a fair bit. Dammit, why is this so hard? Oh well. I was still glad to be able to see it. More operetta, please!

One-Act Opera Three-Pack

That's what this post is.  This paragraph only exists so I can put the main body of text below the jump; otherwise, I'd have the first of these mini-reviews above it and the rest below and it would be awkward, unlike my explaining my strategy here, which is just about the smoothest thing you have ever seen.

Dominick Argento, Postcard from Morocco (1971)

This takes place in a train station in Morocco as people wait for their train, in the early twentieth century. I don't want to brag, but I lived in Morocco for a while, and during that time I did indeed spend some time in train stations. Admittedly, it wasn't the early twentieth century, but I still think this lends me a certain amount of expertise. Supposedly, this is based to some degree on Robert Lewis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses, which doesn't exactly have a plot, so neither does this. Nothing really happens here: people wait for their train, talk about their plans, and refuse to reveal the contents of their luggage to each other (symbolism! In this production at least, they're all at the end revealed to contain nothing but sand). I might have wanted more of a plot, but it's quite musically interesting, moving from straightforward romantic stuff to kind of jazzy sounds, with a kind of appropriate exoticism to it. I dug it, though this production, or at least the way it's shot, isn't ideal; it's from a fixed location with no close-ups, so you don't have much of a sense of what the characters look like. There are supertitles above the stage, but they're hard to read, and inevitably the singing can be hard to follow. Still liked it, but would like to see it in more ideal circumstances. It's still sometimes performed, I think, but there's no other video that I could find.

Tobias Picker, Fantastic Mr. Fox (1998)

Yes! It's an opera based on the Roald Dahl novel, which I loved when I was a child. I mean, I'm not trying to imply that now I hate it. Just that I haven't read it in years. But I think of it fondly. You might imagine that an opera based on it would be something of a novelty, but Picker has at least a certain amount of cachet: his American Tragedy, based on the Dreiser novel, had its world debut at the Met (and apparently just wasn't videorecorded, JEEZ, people, this was 2005, what the hell?). Not that the Met is necessarily a guarantee of quality (I still get annoyed when I think about Ghosts of Versailles), but it's at least worth considering. Surely. This is actually a three-act opera, but it's only seventy-some minutes, so it seems more like a one-acter, so I'm counting it as one, you can't stop me. Mr. Fox lives with his wife and four children, but there are three mean farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, who don't like the foxes stealing their livestock and aim to stop them. So they attack the foxes' lair with earth-burrowing tools, and things seem bad, but the foxes escape and with other burrowing animals, they dig their way into the farmers' barns so they can continue to eat their birds and also drink their hard cider. Unusual detail for a children's book, that last, but there you go! Opera strays significantly from the book in some regards: there's this whole thing with a hedgehog who's sad because she's single and then she falls in love with a porcupine (what, you think they're the same just because they both have spikes? RACIST). Also, interestingly enough, the Earth-moving machines are made into singing roles. It's all goofy and all good fun; I liked it. Apparently Gerald Finley created the role of Mr. Fox. That would have been cool to see.

Howard Moody, Push (2019)

This one WAS up on Monnaie de Munt's website and youtube page, but it seems to be down now. Gotta be quick if you don't want to miss these things sometimes. It's a story about a child--a real guy, named Simon Gronowski--who survived the Holocaust when his mother pushed him off the train that was headed for Auschwitz. The libretto is a mixture of French and English, for whatever reason, and the whole thing...I mean, if you say a piece of art about the Holocaust is "uplifting," what you generally mean is that it's mendacious schmaltz, and yet I feel like this more or less escapes that. It really is about humanity, and a heartfelt plea for love and understanding of a sort that we really badly need. The "push" is not just Gronowski being pushed off the train, but a push into what we can only hope is a better future. There is a disconcerting cohort of actual fucking nazis who are opera fans (more on that in the near future), so an opera like this is very welcome. And Moody's music--I'd never even heard of him before this, but there are a few more of his works on the Monnaie de Munt site right now, so expect more of him in the future--is inspiring, especially his choruses.

Mark Adamo, Little Women (1998)

I have not read the original novel, but I saw that movie that everyone loved last year and now I've seen this opera and once I read a New Yorker article about Alcott's context and the cultural impact of her work. I ask you: shouldn't all that count as reading the book? Close enough, you know? That's what I think.

Anyway: it's Meg, the domestic one! Jo, the one who writes! Amy, the one who draws! And Beth, the one who has no personality and dies! They have vicissitudes, and the ones who don't die end up married. I know that sounds flip, but I actually found myself appreciating the story in a way that I didn't from the movie. Maybe I'm just biased in favor of opera, but I liked this more.

Of course, trying to talk about story in an opera somehow divorced of the music doesn't makes much sense, even though I do it all the time. But seriously: part of the reason the story works to well here...well, the fact that Adamo's own semi-rhyming libretto is so good certainly doesn't hurt (it very effectively makes use of quick cuts between characters in different physical locations), but the music itself is really stunning. Music and words and story all come together beautifully, as you would hope for in an opera. Great romantic music, reminding me sometimes of Barber's Vanessa; in particular, there's a spine-tinginling climactic quartet that strongly made me think of "To leave, to break," although obviously this opera's in a more realistic mold than that one. By eyes may have welled up a few times.

There's a 2001 production from Houston Grand Opera that you can watch--and why wouldn't you? The biggest name in it by a wide margin is Joyce DiDonato as Meg; she's good, of course, but Stephanie Novacek as Jo steals the show, although as so often the case, I feel I may just be saying that because it's the best role.

I have a few issues, which may be more criticisms of the book than the opera per se; I don't know. But: as I said, Jo is really the main character, which I guess is fine, but it feels a little unbalanced: Meg in particular more or less drops out of the picture after getting married near the beginning. There's not even any kind of reconciliation scene between her and Jo, which seems odd to me. And Beth really is a non-entity. And then there's ol' Friedrich, the German tutor whom Jo marries at the end: the question of whether or not she should marry him was very controversial at the time, and no one seems to be able to handle it well: the movie addressed the problem by making him younger and hotter than he would've been in the original and then--apparently not confident that that was sufficient--adding extremely ill-advised metafictional elements to makes us doubt whether we're meant to take this whole thing seriously. This doesn't screw up that badly, but it doesn't do particularly well either: after the aforementioned final quartet between the sisters, he just appears in the last, like, two minutes of the piece, and you think, you know, I really wouldn't have objected if the libretto had just forgotten about him. But I suppose it's a hard problem to solve.

Anyway, seeing great American operas is the only thing that makes me proud of my country these days, so cheers to that.  If I met Adamo, I would...I was seriously going to write "shake his hand" here before I realized that I never want to ever shake anyone's hand again.  Jeez.  He's written other operas, but this his first seems to be the only one to have entered the repertoire, and I can find no way to see any of the others. If you find one, please let me know.

Philip Glass, Kepler (2009)

Glass was commissioned to write an opera about Johannes Kepler. He did this thing. It was performed. The performance was recorded. I watched the recording. Are you fascinated by this chain of events? I know I am.

(I wonder how much an established composer gets paid for a commissioned opera.  What are the terms of the contract?  It seems like you couldn't specify too closely, since that would strangle the creativity that's the thing you're presumably paying for, but for instance, to what extent can you dictate the length of the thing?  Are composers paid by the note?  Difficult to say.)

Well, it's recognizably Glass. All Glass, I'd say, is extremely recognizably glass. Pretty sure there's no other composer I could so instantly identify. I suppose if you were so inclined, you could spin that as a criticism: if he always sounds more or less the same, he must be very limited and gimmicky as a composer! Indeed, I think that's one of the main things haters say about him (other than "he's boring"). I don't know. You can say that if you want. But whether or not you're right, I still think he's great.

I'm not sure about this one, however. Short of Einstein on the Beach, if you even want to count that, this is definitely the most plotless Glass opera I've ever seen. Kepler and other scientists Keple around. They sing about science and religion (which people didn't really distinguish between in his time). The libretto is in a mixture of German and Latin, I think from Kepler's own writings. It also includes poetry by Andreas Gryphius.  As a whole, it's sometimes arresting--as how could it not be?--but somehow I wanted something to happen. Or for there to be some kind of overt drama. I may be willfully missing the point of Glass, which I should really know by now, by saying that, but it's how I thought.

I mean, I certainly don't regret seeing it, especially given how few of Glass' many operas are available in any form. But I would probably consider it the least of those I have seen.

Hans Werner Henze, L'Upupa und der Triumph des Sohnesliebe (2003)

This is my second Henze opera after The Bassarids. He declared at the time that it would be his last (he was seventy-seven when it debuted)...and then he went ahead and wrote two more, just for good measure. You've gotta admire that level of artistic drive.

Seeing another Henze opera was a perfectly reasonable thing to do given how much I liked The Bassarids; it needs no justification. But if you want to know how crazy my brain is, I'll make an admission: the biggest reason I had for wanting to see this was that I'd never seen an opera starting with 'U' before. Now the only letters I'm missing are 'Y' and 'X.' Those will not be easy. You could say that Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades shouldn't count for 'Q,' given that any romanization of the Russian title would not start with the letter, but you are overlooking the fact that I don't care. So, you know.

The libretto is Henze's own, following in the tradition of Arab and/or Persian folklore. It also owes a certain amount to Zauberflöte, as he himself acknowledged. The idea is that there's this king who's visited every day by this hoopoe in which he takes delight (I suppose it's obvious that that title is bilingual; "upupa" is Italian for hoopoe), but one day he tries to touch it and it leaves for good. He is heartbroken, so he sends his three sons to find it. His elder sons, Adschib and Gharib, are lazy and scheming and bad, but his youngest son Al Kasim is noble and virtuous and the usual things that youngest sons are in these stories. So he's the one who goes after the hoopoe. First, he meets a fallen angel known only as "The demon," who helps him. Why he's fallen is never specified. Anyway, he and the demon find the hoopoe, along with several other treasures. They also rescue a princess, named Badi'eat, and she and Al Kasim inevitably fall in love. His brothers try to take credit for finding the hoopoe but fail and are banished. Al Kasim and Badi'eat are to be married, but first Al Kasim has to go and give an apple to the demon, which he had promised. The piece ends there, and I guess it's meant to be ambiguous whether he succeeds or not, but the apple business seems to me like a fairly easy quest, I have to be honest.

Regardless, I found this one enchanting. There aren't, to my ear, any super-huge musical highlights, but the whole score is sparkly and evocative, augmented in places with the use of birdsong. Singing-wise, I really liked the countertenor Axel Köhler as Adschib--it's a smallish role, but I really love Köhler's voice; looking back, I see I singled him out for special praise in Rinaldo and, yup, I want to see and hear more of him. Really, though, it's the story that stands out. The whole thing has an appealing storybook aesthetic. Al Kasim and the demon will inevitably make you think of Tamino and Papageno, but while Al Kasim is, really, about as dull as his inspiration, the role of the demon--brilliantly played by John Mark Ainsley--outdoes his, really. He's one of the most interesting and appealing characters I've seen in an opera, and his relationship with Al Kasim is truly moving.

Yeah. Henze. Good stuff, and not just because it starts with 'U.'  I will definitely be exploring more of his oeuvre in the future.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Der Schauspieldirektor (1786) and Bastien und Bastienne (1768)

One of these is Mozart's third-ever opera, and the other was written much later, just months before Le Nozze di Figaro. So what do they have in common? Well, they're both rarely-performed Singspiel, is about it. But more to the point, Der Schauspieldirektor is about an impresario auditioning two sopranos for a new opera. So if you rewrite the spoken dialogue, the opera in question can be Bastien und Bastienne! Great idea? Well...maybe. Sort of. I'll concede that it's clever at least in theory, though given how rarely these are performed, one might want to see more "normal" versions. Still, that's what we get here.

So as for the operas themselves: you might wonder, dude, if Der Schauspieldirektor is late Mozart, why isn't it more performed?!? Well, it's highly self-referential, is clearly part of it; it's commenting on an opera world that doesn't exist anymore, making it not super-accessible. Also, there's only something like twenty minutes of music, and while it's fine--how could it not be?--it's not his all-time greatest work. It's fairly easy to understand the situation. Meanwhile, Bastien und Bastienne; to my mind, the real question is why this--and early Mozart in general--isn't more-performed (questions I pondered re his first two operas). It's a very simple pastoral thing, with shepherds in love trying to make each other jealous, and a magician who helps them out. It's pretty great, and you can feel how Mozart's character work is improving.

So that's that, but the presentation itself, HMM. So first, it must be noted, the producers apparently thought they needed a gimmick beyond just putting the two unrelated operas together, and that gimmick is the use of marionettes. The Schauspieldirektor (and the male singer who's helping him out) are just regular people, but the sopranos are...well, puppets. The actual singers are just women standing in the background in unobtrusive dark clothing. The puppeteers are clearly very talented, giving their charges very life-like movements, but...it remains what it is. Which is not so great, frankly.

I think even under the best of circumstances I wouldn't have been very fond of this concept, but I am SUPER not fond of the way it's executed here. So of course, as noted, the dialogue of Der Schauspieldirektor had to be adapted, but it was clearly adapted more than would have been necessary to make it about Bastien und Bastienne. I don't know what the original was like, but I don't think it was much like this. A lot of the dialogue is clearly meant to allow the puppets to do zany things, and there are cameos by marionettes of Papageno and other Mozart characters. Some may find all this business whimsical and delightful. I found it intolerably labored and heavy-handed. And how about this: the resolution of Der Schauspieldirektor is that both sopranos are cast. Everyone wins. But Bastien und Bastienne only has one female role. So how to square this circle? By nonsensically deciding that they'll both play Bastienne, with a time-out midway through for the one to replace the other. I found this so annoying, I can't even tell you.

Dammit, I was glad to be able to see these, and the singing is fine, but this...thing serves neither opera well, and I would much rather have seen straight productions.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: these were my three-hundredth and three-hundred-first operas.  I sort of watched them without realizing that I was making history (?), so I didn't choose anything super-notable.  But here they are!

Franz Schreker, Der Schmied von Gent (1932)

I was hoping that maybe things were good enough in Europe that opera houses could have been reopening, but no such luck, apparently: this was recorded on February 28, which must have been just before everything came crashing down. Urgh.

Well, whatever it is, it's a rarity: Schreker's last opera, and in a pronouncedly different idiom from the other two I've seen from him. Instead of the sort of difficult expressionism that we saw there, this is in more of a folk idiom, both musically and storywise. It takes place in Belgium (the city of Ghent; maybe the title makes that apparent), and the title character is Smee, a blacksmith. He's having trouble due to having been slandered a rival blacksmith, so he decides to commit suicide, but some demons convince him that it would be a better idea for him to sign away his soul in exchange for seven years of prosperity. So he does, but then he's not feeling too good about the situation after the time has elapsed. But then a family of beggars shows up, a husband and wife and their son, and Smee and his wife treat them generously, and they reveal themselves as Joseph and Mary with baby Jesus (?!?). As a reward, they offer him three wishes. He wishes for no one to be able to get down from his plum tree, or get up from his chair, or escape from his burlap sack unless he lets them; they must think he's extremely strange, but this is what he's come up with to escape from Hell, and his wishes are granted. He uses the wishes to capture the demons that come for him and gets his soul back, but they destroy his smithy and he is no longer rich. Finally, he dies, but is allowed into neither Hell nor Heaven. But when he recounts the story of how he tricked and defeated the demons, he gets to go to Heaven after all. There's also a political valence to all this: it takes place during the Eighty Years' War when Belgium was trying to gain independence from Spain, and the demons are represented as actually being Spanish higher-ups.

It's a fun kind of story, if sort of goofy as presented. But on balance, I'd say it's my favorite of Schreker's operas that I've seen. However, we must talk about the Operavision production, from Belgium's Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. It's very colorful, in an appealing way, so please enjoy the Der Schmied von Gent coloring book (seriously--that's a real thing you can download). The first two acts feature a revolving set with the city of Ghent on one side and the mouth of Hell, complete with giant Moloch statue, on the other. The characters are made up with all kinds of greasepaint. It's a lot of fun.

And yet, the third act may have been more jarring than any transition I've ever seen in any opera or anything. So as I mentioned above, there's a political aspect to this, and someone apparently decided that that should be expanded upon, and the third act, I shit you not, is all about the Belgian Congo. Seriously. The entire opera pauses for like five minutes to broadcast a Congolese Declaration of Independence from 1960. There's Congolese art all over the walls. And--most bafflingly of all--Smee's spirit for some reason turns into King Leopold, with the military uniform and jutting-out beard.

Now sure, this is important history, and it's probably true that Belgium hasn't adequately reckoned with its crimes. Former colonial powers rarely do. And yet, shoehorning them into this unrelated opera doesn't work on any level whatsoever. It's weird and distracting and arbitrary and makes the final act into something borderline incomprehensible. The grim truth is: you'd never know it from the first two acts, but this is Regietheater. Stealth Regietheater, we might say. I've mostly avoided such things, but this is the second of such I've seen from Operavision, after that bad production of La Juive. It's too bad, because it's obvious that the producers here have talent to burn. It's just that they used that talent in a misguided way. I can see through the production to the opera beneath well enough to appreciate it anyway, but damn, man.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots and Apollo et Hyacinthus (1767)

Right, so there are the four regularly-performed Mozart operas and then there are the three that are somewhat less-regularly-performed but remain part of the common repertoire, and then there are the fifteen that you don't hear much about. Fifteen! Why is that, I ask you? Because they were written before he had reached his full musical maturity, people will say (okay, and a few of them are fragmentary, which seems a little more justifiable). Well...okay. But, need I point out, most composers are not as good as Mozart at his full musical maturity, and yet a lot of them still write good music that people like to listen to? So why do we just ignore early Mozart? Early Mozart is derivative, people sometimes say, when they want to sound smart. And, again...okay. Obviously he wasn't composing ex nihilo. But derivative of whom, exactly? Name some names! Are you seriously telling me that you're worried you'll watch an opera by the young Mozart and go, YAWN I've heard it all before! Welcome to Snoozeville! seems sort of...doubtful.

So let's look at his first two operas, written in close succession by Li'l Wolfgang at the tender age of eleven. People differ about whether Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots counts as an "opera," but I say of course it does: it has operatic music and singing and a story, what more do you want? Well, it's an allegorical religious drama, which some people think is different somehow, but I'm not sure why. It is true that it's incomplete: it was a three-part piece of which Mozart only wrote the first (which runs about an hour and a half), and the other two (one of which was written by Joseph Haydn's brother Michael) are somehow non-extant. There's not a whole lot of tension about what happens next, however: basically, we have the Spirits of Justice, Mercy, and Christianity trying to bring a man only referred to as "a half-hearted but later zealous Christian" back into the fold, only there's an opposing Spirit of Worldliness arguing that actually, he should just sha la la la la la live for today. Oh no what will we do?!? Well, he's still in doubt when this first part ends, but we can probably take a wild guess.

Well, it's recognizably Mozart. It's not altogether the most thrilling piece, but that's as much due to the not-super-compelling libretto as anything, and there actually are some legitimately good arias here. To no one's surprise, Worldliness steals the show; I hope it's not blasphemous to say it, but the Spirit of Christianity comes across as kind of gormless. I enjoyed watching it, however, if only to see where It All Began. And NOT, in fact, "only" that, just so we're clear.

Apollo et Hyacinthus is more uncontroversially an opera, concerning as it does secular themes. It's also sung in Latin, which is unusual and quite interesting. It's Mozart's only opera with a libretto not in Italian or German. It was written as a short (seventy-five-minute) intermezzo for a longer non-musical drama. As you would surmise, it concerns classical themes; specifically, it's a story taken from Ovid (though with female characters added to avoid the Gay Stuff): Princess Melia is going to marry Apollo, but oh no: it seems that the god murdered her brother Hyacinthus by throwing a discus at his head (as you do). That's bad! Nobody's happy. But wait: it turns out that actually, Hyacinthus was killed by his perfidious friend Zephyrus, who wanted Melia for himself! Anyway, when the truth comes out, Apollo murders the hell out of Zephyrus (or maybe just banishes him; it's a little hard to tell) and resurrects Hyacinthus and everything's good.

If my praise for Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots sounded a little qualified, it's because I was saving it all for Apollo et Hyacinthus, which totally fucking bangs. You can easily hear the influence of Handel (which of course is no bad thing), but really, it's all Mozart. A simple story, but totally fantastic arias. Absolutely great, and it is really truly genuinely incredibly bizarre that it's not staged more.

In fact, these two pieces are only available in this set. WHY?!? Fortunately, it's quite good: very traditional staging that works. In comments to one of the reviews, someone gripes at length about the fact that "Worldliness" in Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots is portrayed as a devil, which I suppose wouldn't have been the case originally, but really, if that's the most serious complaint you can muster...this stuff is must-watch, I'd say.

Franz Schreker, Die Gezeichneten (1918)

When I saw Der ferne Klang, I stated my belief that none of Schreker's other operas were available on video. However, I was wrong as heck about that, and this is the proof. PROOF! You can even watch it on youtube if the Japanese subtitles aren't a deal-breaker.

It definitely feels of a piece with Der ferne Klang: very sort of abstruse, expressionist plot that I guess we expect from this milieu. We're in sixteenth-century Genoa, where this hunchbacked noble, Salvago, has this island paradise called "Elysium" that he's invented, which his dissolute friends (or "friends") use to take women for orgies. One of these friends, Tamare, wants Carlotta, the daughter of a Genoese official, but she has her sites set on Salvago. She's a painter and she wants to depict his soul. So he sits for her, and eventually they decide that they're in love, and they're going to get married. Only then she decides to go with Tamare instead. Wimmen, amirite? Although it's sort of an symbolist thing about outer and inner beauty and such and I dunno. Anyway, Salvago finds them together, he and Tamare shout at each other for a while, and then he, Salvago, murders him, Tamare. But Carlotta dies with Tamare's name on her lips and Salvago loses his mind.

Welp...it is what it is. I do like Schreker's music, which is sort of dissonant but also melodic and generally pretty exciting. This is a nice production, although they have made the decision to depict Salvago not as a hunchback but in drag for most of the show, which...this could potentially have unsavory implications if thought about too hard. But in general it depicts the spirit of the milieu well, with everyone dressed in elaborate, fetish-y leather. There are big statues lying all over the stage; according to the DVD notes, this was inspired by the Gardens of Bomarzo, as depicted in that popular novel, Bomarzo. Like Salvago, Pier Francesco Orsini, the novel's protagonist who oversaw the creation of said gardens, is a hunchback, so that's an interesting connection to make.

As for the opera as a whole, however...I dunno. When things get so detached and abstract like this, I feel it's a bit hard to appreciate the story on anything other than an intellectual level. It's certainly hard to feel anything about the characters. This was probably true of Der ferne Klang also, but I seem to recall liking this more than that. I'm sorry not to have loved something that the garbage subhuman nazis hated, but, well, I didn't dislike it, exactly. I'm glad to have seen it, and if you have a charity I can donate to that supports punching nazis, I will gladly give money to it.

Lorin Maazel, 1984 (2005)

There was a lot of controversy swirling around this opera back when its existence became public. Maazel was a conductor; he was not known as much of a composer, and this was his first and only opera, written in his seventies. It premiered at Covent Garden, and given his connections, and the fact that he plowed a lot of his own money into the production, it was suggested that this was just a vanity project. It undeniably seems at least a little sketchy that he was paying for at least a large portion of it himself. I've got to imagine that looks as dubious in the opera world as it does in the world of publishing. Oddly enough, Maazel does not see fit to mention this detail in the DVD notes.

When it came out, reviews were...mixed. Andrew Clements raved in The Guardian: "It is both shocking and outrageous that the Royal Opera, a company of supposed international standards and standing, should be putting on a new opera of such wretchedness and lack of musical worth." Did I say "raved?" I meant the other thing. Some reviews were a bit less hyperbolic, but praise tended to be muted. Still! There's the one amazon review that starts by saying that "operas such as 1984 make it very difficult for an operaphile to return to the standard operatic repertoire, which has become suddenly and irrevocably outdated and irrelevant to our times." I think we can safely assume that this is the reviewer's actual opinion, since a paid operative would have rejected that sentence as implausibly fulsome. Or maybe that's just what they want me to think! Oh my goodness wheels within wheels.

Well, the truth (obviously, I am the only purveyor of truth here) is kind of boringly predictable: no, it's not anywhere near as bad as Clements claims. But it isn't very good either. Then again, I dunno, maybe the actual truth is that...the source material isn't that good either either? Blasphemy. It's definitely the most famous book I haven't read, but I think I have a pretty darned exact idea of the plot from cultural osmosis, and did even before I saw this. There's a whole aria here where one of Winston's coworkers explains the concept of Newspeak to us, and...I HAVE to assume this wasn't how it worked in the book? That it was actually explained by a third-person narrator? Because the whole thing falls apart into complete nonsense (I mean, more than it already does) if everyone's self-aware about what the state is doing to people and to institutional memory. Regardless, the entire concept is dumb and badly misunderstands how people use language--but then again, Orwell also wrote that embarrassing essay "Politics and the English Language" that people somehow think is profound, so that's nothing new. But really: this whole society obviously would not work on any level. It just wouldn't, dammit. Sure, you can point to individual aspects of authoritarian countries--Stalinist Russia erasing people from photographs, East Germans reporting on their neighbors--and go OMG LIKE NINETEEN EIGHT-FOUR, but these don't remotely add up to Orwell's vision. Apparently--to judge by that essay--he legit believed that English was in danger of devolving into a Newspeak like construct, but that's just because he was not smart when it came to language. I know it's not supposed to strictly speaking be a "realistic" story--at least, it better not be--but in that case...what's the point, really? A cautionary tale for a nonsense thing that could never happen? Why do we need this?

Getting off-topic here! Well, not exactly off-topic, given that this is kind of the plot of the opera, but you know. Argue about it all you want, but as far as I can tell, it's the same as the plot of the book, so THERE! Doggonit! Anyway, you can forgive a lot about an opera's plot if the music is good enough, but this...well, okay, it has its moments: nursery rhymes with violent lyrics while proles are being hanged. A pretty good love duet between Winston and Julia. Winston being tortured with rats...but for the most part, it's pretty bland and forgettable. Trying to be like Berg or Strauss or even Puccini in its more strainingly romantic moments, but not succeeding particularly well at any of these efforts. And the libretto: very, very awkward. I mean, in parts it's okay, but when it's not you get bits like Symes singing about Newspeak to you, which is truly cringe-inducing.

The biggest thing you can say in favor of this, or at least the DVD production: they got an impressive cast, including Simon Keenlyside in the lead and Laurence Brownlee and Diane Damrau in smaller parts (they also got Jeremy Irons to do some spoken Big Brother narration). Brownlee as Symes is forgettable in a forgettable part, but Keenlyside puts in great work as Winston, really giving the performance his all, whether in rebellion, love, pain, or submission. Double-plus good! Damrau, in a small dual role as "gym instructor/drunk woman" is also a treat. As you know, I have my issues with Damrau, but she's a huge about of fun here, particularly as the East-German-style gymnastics instructor. Hilarious. It's just one scene, but I wish it were a bigger one.  I've uploaded it here.  Richard Margison is chillingly avuncular as O'Brien. The production is by Robert Lepage (Maazel could certainly draw in the big names); it's appropriate without being particularly, I would say, striking. Some of the propaganda-film images are good.

But, really, the most important thing here is the opera's title: 1984. I know the book usually spells it out--Nineteen Eighty-Four--but here it's definitely just the number. Which means it edges out Handel's Acis and Galatea for the number one spot in my alphabetical list of operas, where it's likely to stay forever. Congratulations on your alphabetical prowess, Maazel! If for nothing else--and if not quite nothing, it's not that much else--I salute you.

Giuseppe Scarlatti, Dove è amore è gelosia (1768)

From: gscarlatti69@gmail.com

To: princejoe@schwartzenberg.gov

Re: New Opera Buffa

Hello Your Royal Princeship--

Please find attached the opera buffa for your son's wedding, as requested. It includes all of the requested features:

1. 2 couples

1a. 1 of nobles and 1 of servants

2. 2 instances of crossdressing, resulting in comic misunderstandings

3. 1 purloined letter resulting in same

4. general philosophizing about the nature of love, jealousy, &c.

I trust that this fulfills the terms of our contract. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. I have sent you a separate payment invoice via Paypal.

Best wishes,

G. Scarlatti

Do I mock? Eh, not really. This may not be blindingly original, to put it mildly, but it's perfectly acceptable for what it is, which is a middle-of-the-road opera buffa. It is the fate of every opera buffa to be compared to Figaro and found wanting in comparison, but I certainly enjoyed it well enough, even if it lacks much in the way of depth. The premise, to the extent that it's specific enough to even talk about, is that the two couples have opposite problems: the man in the former is excessively jealous for no good reason, whereas the one in the latter refuses to become jealous even when his girlfriend is flirting with other men. So they have to learn to adjust their sensibilities in an appropriate manner. If you were invited to a wedding where this was the entertainment, you would think, man, that was one sweet-ass wedding.

The music here sounds very transitional between the baroque and classical periods, which is appropriate, as Scarlatti's wikipedia entry says that he was friends with Gluck. He was prolific; he wrote thirty operas--and yet, in spite of that, not much seems to be known about him, even how exactly he was related to the more famous Scarlattis.

This is his only opera one that seems to be available in video form. It's interesting, because it's a serious historical recreation, as recognized by UNESCO. All the musicians are in period dress, and we see dudes messing around with the backstage machinery at times. The opera itself may not quite blow your mind, but that aspect of it is extremely intriguing, and makes it all the more worth investigating.

Olivier Messiaen, Saint François d'Assise (1983)

"One of the major composers of the twentieth century," wikipedia calls him, which shows how much I know: I'd never even heard of him before I found this, his only opera, on Medici.

Messiaen was a devout Catholic, and this reflects that. His original idea was to write about Jesus, but he felt that that would be a little presumptuous and so went with Saint Francis, who has many Christ-like features while also being--I guess--more approachable. He worked on it for eight years, and thought that it really took it out of him; that it was shortening his life. But I'm not sure about that; he was seventy-four when it premiered and he lived another eight years after, so...difficult to say.

At any rate, it is what it is. BOY what a useful sentence that was. Naturally, this is about Saint Francis of Assisi. It's not a conversion narrative; he's already a friar when it opens. Apart from the general thread of his spiritual development, it doesn't really have a plot, being rather a series of vignettes: he and other priests discussing theology, him meeting and curing a leper, him preaching to the birds, and of course his ultimate death and transfiguration.

Messiaen's music is extremely interesting here. Probably not for the traditionalist, but very compelling to me. It's very percussion-heavy, heavily featuring bells and other unusual instruments, plus the theremin-like ondes Martenot (as later heard in Thomas Adès' Exterminating Angel--in fact, it's obvious that, in general, Messiaen was a big influence on Adès). He was also an ornithologist, keenly interested in birdsong, and that too is reflected in the score--which seems thematically appropriate, given Saint Francis' association with birds.

This was an intriguing one to watch. There are definitely times when Messiaen seems to get at the numinous. Rod Gilfry doesn't exactly look like I'd expect the character to (what baritone does? I'm not sure I have an answer to that), but in the end, he embodied the role well. However, at two-hundred-sixty-odd minutes, this is by no means a short opera, and at the risk of sounding like a philistine, I wished sometimes that more would actually happen. The most compelling scene to me was the one with the leper, because it presents actual drama: the leper is filled with rage and disgust at his condition, and Francis recognizes that his own instinctive revulsion at the man is something he needs to transcend: only when he's able to love him absolutely unconditionally can the healing take place. That was moving, but a lot of the rest of it can't help feeling a bit inert, and well you might say "hey! It's filled with spiritual movement! How dare you call it 'inert,' you filthy reprobate?!?" And yet, that was my reaction. Give me a break; I'm not saying I wouldn't recommend it. I think it likely that most people will find it a bit slow in places, however.

Gioachino Rossini, La donna del lago (1819)

I genuinely didn't realize while watching this that here's another opera that starts with "don." Sheer coincidence; I'd had it on my radar for a while. It's based on a poem by Walter Scott, so naturally it centers around Scottish people noisily stomping around.

To be a little more specific, la donna in question is Elena, daughter of a noble who had been banished from James V's court, named "Duglas" (sp?). She's being courted by a guy who I'm pretty sure the opera doesn't make clear until the end is supposed to be King Jim in disguise, but it's impossible to read a plot summary that doesn't tell you this, so you're sure to know it in advance. I mean, having read this you do. Sorry if that's a problem! Also in love with her is Rodrigo, the chief of a faction rebelling against the king. But as for herself, she only loves some guy named Malcolm. Anyway, the rebellion's put down and Rodrigo's killed and Duglas and Malcolm are going to be executed as traitors but Elena gets the king to magnanimously pardon them and let her be with Malcolm. What a guy!

The thing that you notice here is that it sure feels like there ought to be some sort of ideology but there sure isn't. Are the rebels justified in rebelling? You get one passing reference to James' "cruel oppression," and that's all. But he's depicted sympathetically, so...? It's very unclear. Maybe it's less so in the original poem, but if you think I'm going to go around reading Walter Scott poetry, or even wikipedia entries thereon, you have another think coming. Anyway, accept the opera for what it is.

...which is a romance similar in some ways to Guillaume Tell. And I'm not complaining; that's exactly what I was signing up for, and if it isn't quite on the level of that one, it's still very good, even if it took me a little while to really get into it. Story's a bit silly, but it's fine for the purpose, which is to create a beautiful racket. Somehow, operas with merciful kings--like Clemenza di Tito or Die Entführung--are always moving. Obviously, ideologically speaking, I'm not a fan of the idea of absolute rulers, and yet I find it interesting that even when most people--apparently--accepted this as an okay state of affairs, they always celebrated it when said rulers didn't actually exercise their absolute right to be huge dicks. I mean, okay, it's only logical, but you'd think it would've raised certain questions about whether this was actually a good system or not. But man, these days, think how amazing it would seem if our Dear Leader would ever use his power for good. Somehow, pardoning war criminals because he's a big fan of war crimes doesn't quite have the same redemptive force. Blah.

This performance was the first time the Met produced the opera. It has Joyce DiDonato as Elena and Juan Diego Flórez as Jim, so they're always good. But here's what I find interesting: Malcolm is a trouser role, here played by Daniela Barcellona, a singer I didn't know but who's perfectly fine. Why is that interesting? It's not; shut up. But what IS interesting is that DiDonato and Barcellona are both mezzo-sopranos, whereas originally Elena was a soprano role and Malcolm a contralto. So they just decided that soprano+contralto averages out to two mezzos? Hmm. I have my doubts. AND LOOK: we talk about contraltos being marginalized, but here's a perfectly good role that one of them doesn't get. It's a shameful state of affairs, I tell you. And just because I'm meandering crazily, let me note that, per wikipedia, the role was created by a singer named Benedetta Rosmunda Pisaroni, who was a soprano until she came down with smallpox, which permanently lowered her voice. THIS IS WHY WE NEED A SMALLPOX COMEBACK. So we can get some more contraltos. Bad taste to joke about something like that at this time? Maybe so. But you know what they say: when life gives you smallpox, make smallpoxade. LOOK, under the circumstances, you can't blame me for being a little flakey. I'm DONE, okay? This blog entry is OVER. Get the heck outta here, ya big palooka!