Jean-Baptiste Lully, Persée (1682)

I probably would've seen this earlier, but I was sort of intimidated by the length: it's in two parts on Medici, the first two hours and six minutes, the second an hour forty. The idea of listening to almost four straight hours of Lully was a bit...much for me. However, I needn't have worried, because Medici really botched this one: actually, the first video is the entire thing. So what's the second? Behind-the-scenes stuff? Historical context on Lully? Nope: it's just the entire thing AGAIN, only with the last twenty-five minutes cut off--it stops mid-scene. It's obviously not a big deal, but I don't know how you do that.

This is about Perseus. What a revelation that was. Most of it seems to basically be based on the mythology that most of us know. Juno is pissed off at Cassiopeia for daring to compare her own beauty to that of the goddess. Greek deities were unbelievably petty. So she sends Medusa to terrify the countryside, and efforts to placate her fail. It's up to Perseus to slay the monster, which he does with the help of several other gods. Everyone's happy. But OH NO: Perseus' betrothed Andromeda is to be sacrificed to a sea monster! He slays the monster and stops that from happening. Everyone's happy again. But OH NO: now Andromeda's former fiancé, jealous, tries to mess everything up. Perseus defeats him and his men with Medusa's head (I don't think that part is quite how the story ever went in the mythology). Now everyone's happy forever. FOREVER.

So going in, I was still sort of ambivalent about Lully. But I must say: this opera FUCKING RULES. I loved it so much. It's possible that the first two Lully operas that I saw and was lukewarm about, Cadmus et Hermione and Atys are genuinely not as good...or, it could be that I just wasn't used to the idiom. I don't know. The music here isn't notably different than anywhere in Lully, I suppose, but I thought it was great. The whole thing has a very epic feel: all kinds of gods from machines, a hilarious turn by Medusa and her backup gorgons (all skirt roles), a cool papier-mâché sea monster, tons of great dancing--what's not to like? I feel like the technology used here would have been state-of-the-art in the time of Louis XIV, and it's still very cool today--more so, I feel, than the state of the art for the twenty-first-century would have been.

My only complaint: this production--the only video, naturally--cuts out the traditional prologue in praise of the king. Dude, I thought--did he forget to write one this time? But no; the libretto is freely available online, and you can plainly see that it is indeed present and accounted for. That the wikipedia entry makes no mention of it makes me think that whoever wrote it was basing the entry entirely on this production. I suppose you could argue that, oh, that stuff's gonna be too alienating to a modern audience, but come on--if you're the kind of person to be watching seventeenth-century opera in the first place, I think you can probably handle it.

Regardless, I would still highly recommend it. I now want to watch a WHOLE BUNCH more Lully. And you Lully and Rameau partisans? STOP FIGHTING. Both of your preferred composers are good! You're allowed to like more than one thing! Sheesh!

Fromental Halévy, Clari (1828)

Halévy is exclusively known for La Juive these days, but that was only his first big success: he was very prolific, and he wrote a lot of successful grand operas after the fashion of Meyerbeer. And also like Meyerbeer, he dabbled a little in Italian opera, resulting in this early, semi-successful work.

It could hardly be more different than La Juive in tone: it's a goofy, very lightweight comedy in a bel canto style strongly reminiscent of Rossini. The plot is trivial: Clari is a peasant girl who goes off to marry a duke known only as "Il Duca," to her parents' distress. This happens before the opera opens. As it does, she's at his mansion and everyone's getting ready for a party. However, she freaks out and has a nervous breakdown from the culture clash and because she thinks he won't really marry her. They have a fight and she runs back home to be with her parents. Realizing how much he indeed loves her, he goes after her, they get back together, her parents accept the situation, and everyone's happy. Also, there's a servant couple, Bettina and Germano.

The DVD has a funny cover:

And that's not all: the booklet includes an eight-page pictorial plot summary with screenshots from the opera coupled with speech balloons. It's a hoot. But I'm not so sure about the motivations here: "In the way that its story was told, Clari seemed to [the producers] an utterly over-the-top melodrama. What a public 180 years ago, at ease with such material, could swallow without difficulty, is for today's audience hard to digest." Honestly, I hate that attitude: sure, some operatic plots are dated, but you have to accept them as they are. Don't try to save them from themselves. And in any case, if such saving was necessary, I can't say that I think they really do it here: if it was an over-the-top melodrama back in the day, and over-the-top melodrama it remains. I don't know what they think they did to save it from this fate. Sure, it's a goofy, cartoony production, but I can't imagine it ever would have been anything else. They point to the photo-novel concept as their "solution," but I would have no idea that that's what it was supposed to be if not for the material in the booklet. I mean, don't get me wrong, the production's fine--I'm just not sure the producers really knew what they were doing if their goals were as they're articulated.

So as you can see from that cover, we've got Cecilia Bartoli in the title role. Bartoli's such a big name, I feel like it's weird that I've only ever seen her in this and Handel's Semele. She's fine; it's kind of a soppy role, but there's certainly a lot of opportunity for great singing. John Osborn--a fairly big name in his own right--is funny as the duke duking the exaggerated dreamboat thing.

This is fine. I like it. Honestly, given the choice, I'd probably rather have seen one of Halévy's other grand operas, but I can't complain. I feel like at least a modest Halévy revival is overdue.

Antonio Vivaldi, Motezuma (1733)

This is my one hundredth Italian-language opera, if my numbers are correct, although they might be off by one or two.  It features in Alejo Carpentier's novella Baroque Concerto; unfortunately, he never got to see or hear it, as the music was considered lost until its rediscovery in 2002. Well, about two thirds of the music was recovered: the entirety of the second act and parts of the first and third. But enough to recreate it, filling out the rest as usual with other Vivaldi material. I've gotta say, the more I get into baroque music, the more I'm cognizant of what a goddamn tragedy it is that so much of Vivaldi's operatic output is lost. Because DAMN he was good.

Seeing the title at the top of this post, you probably either didn't notice that the 'n' was missing, or you assumed I'd made a typo. But nope! It's Motezuma, not Montezuma. That's not some quirk of Italian orthography; I'm pretty sure the librettist just fucked it up. Maybe he was obsessed with motets and that preoccupation led to him making a mistake. Who can say? A number of times in this production you can hear singers pronouncing it with the 'n' sound, so I dunno.

Well, yes. This is about the conquest of Mexico, as you might expect. Motezuma, his wife Mitrena, and his daughter Teutile are in despair because they are losing the battle to Fernando Cortés. Also, Teutile and Fernando's brother Ramiro are in love, but circumstances have understandably created a certain amount of tension between the two of them. But in the end, Fernando respects Motezuma's strength and passion, and as long as he agrees to be part of the Spanish Empire, he can still rule his people. Just like it happened in real life!

Obviously, there's a lot to unpack about this, and yet it's actually very normal stuff on one level: historical fan fiction was the norm for baroque operas, so giving this story a happy ending was really what you'd expect. And yet, this history feels more relevant to today than a story about Xerxes or Tamerlane or Julius Caesar does, so we can't help but see it differently. You can accuse this of whitewashing history if you want, but I don't suppose anyone in the audience was under any illusions about this being what actually happened. It's probably more relevant how sympathetic it is to the Aztec characters. Yes, Motezuma himself is a bass-baritone role, indicating "barbaric-ness" (as compared to Fernando, a castrato), but while the Spaniards are on some level meant to be the "heroes," they come off as less sympathetic than their adversaries. It's easy to overstate these things or inaccurately view them through twenty-first-century sensibilities, but Fernando certainly looks like something of a pious hypocrite, and there's one part where he sings an extremely douchey aria mocking Asprano the Aztec general, who's kind of hapless and non-heroic. And in the end (his last line, in fact, if I'm remembering right), Motezuma asserts that Mexico will rise again, and it certainly seems to me that that's where our sympathies are meant to be.

Regardless of that, the plot is a bit messy, but really, who cares? As in Ercole s'ul Termodonte, the reconstruction is very good, though it does feel like it ends a bit abruptly. Again, I have nothing new to say about the music except that Vivaldi rules and I love him. Mitrena especially gets some real barnburners to sing. I don't know; maybe as much as Handel. He just has the disadvantage of so few of his operas being extant. But I have and shall see all that I am able.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Samstag aus Licht (1984)

Soooo...between 1977 and 2003, Stockhausen wrote this seven-opera cycle called Licht--each named for a day of the week and, if I understand correctly, somehow dealing with the mythological/religious characters associated with the days. Who can say? It's supposed to be twenty-nine hours in total, but if that's the case, this Saturday installment must be an outlier, clocking in at only three and a quarter hours.  These things are sometimes performed, but I believe this is the only one that exists publicly on video--exclusive to Medici, it appears.

Let me try to describe this, although I will fail: we start with an overture, which is the most prominently "musical" thing here. Lotta brass and atonality. In the first act, Lucifer summons his musician, who plays on the piano while he and Lucifer both take it in turn to...count, mostly, up and down. At the end, Lucifer dies, maybe. The second act consists mostly of a single Flautist playing, with background chirps and things, while numbers appear on a background screen and slowly count up to twenty-four, with little animations between. There's a dancer also. I'm told this is meant to be a kind of resurrection ceremony, because in the third act, hey, Lucifer's back. This consists, basically, of him declaring it to be the dance of various facial features (eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, nose, tongue, &c); as he declares each one, it appears in the background, creating a kind of demonic face. More subdued atonality in the background. The final act takes place in a church (like, an actual church, with the audience in pews--this thing apparently involves a certain amount of moving around). Ambient background music with low chanting, as priests sing in praise of the virtues. In the...climax?...we go outside the church, where the crowd watches as the priests in turn lift coconuts over their heads and smash them down onto the concrete. I daresay they have their reasons.

Well, this is definitely what it is. Here are things I liked about it: the demon head in the third act is kinda cool. Damien Pass puts in a very committed performance as Lucifer. And...I guess that's all, and yeah, you--I, anyway--always feel self-conscious about disliking something like this that a lot of people clearly love, because argh I probably just don't understand it I'm not sophisticated enough. Oh noes! But I gotta say: to me, it all come across as so much punishingly avant-garde tedium. And you know me; I LIKE a lot of avant-garde stuff that other people would dismiss in similar terms. But I dunno: I like a wide range of opera, but I have to think that if you like this, you like the form for different reasons than I do. Which is okay, let a thousand flowers bloom, but the idea of someone listening to the music--which you CAN do, though it's way out of print--boggles my mind.  And HOW is that thing with the coconuts not incredibly silly?  Somebody tell me!  Dammit, I was thinking throughout, I wish I were listening to Verdi now. Or Cavalli. Or, really, anyone making actually goddamn music--or barring that, anyone telling an actual story.  The closest thing I've seen to this in terms of experimentalism is Einstein on the Beach, but at least there there's some real music.  Dammit.  I'm always glad to see new kinds of things, but it would be safe to call me Not A Fan of this.

Would I listen to another Licht opera, given the chance? Yeah, probably, if I didn't have to pay for it, just because I don't know if you can get a good idea for the whole just from one single part. Would I see ALL of the Licht operas, given the chance? Jesus Christ, man, that's a hell of an ask. I suppose it's at least possible that if I embarked on that journey, at some point I would start to appreciate them more. But I am, let's say, not enthused by the idea--and this coming from someone who read all of Proust just (okay, not "just," but to a substantial degree) to say he'd done it.

George Frideric Handel, Arminio (1737)

Here's a milestone: I've now seen every Handel opera that I know of that's available in any English-subs-having form on video (there's still a handful of staged oratorios available that I haven't seen). That's fourteen, if I'm counting right, about a third of his total extant operatic output. In a way, it's exciting to know that given how many of these there are, one of the others could easily appear at any moment, but on another...get with the picture, people. Handel! He's great!

This is about Romans vs Germans, Arminio (based, very much sort of, on a historical figure) being a Germanic chieftain. He and his wife Tusnelda are captured, due to collaboration by her father, Segeste. Jerk! Arminio is going to be executed for refusing to submit to Rome. There's also another couple, Segeste's son Sigismondo and Arminio's sister Ramise. There's also a Roman general, Varo, who's in love with Tusnelda. This sets up a standard sort of plot, where eventually Varo is killed in combat, all the couples are together in the appropriate ways, and Segeste is reconciled with everyone.

This is a not-very-well-known opera, and it was kind of ignored in its time, for whatever reason. And really, I have no idea what reason there could be, because, well, it's a really good opera. I have run out of new ways to describe Handel operas. If indeed I ever had any. A lotta bangin' arias, a predictable but fun plot, WHATEVER.

You can watch it on youtube if you want, albeit without subtitles (that channel has A LOT of tantalizingly unsubtitled Handel--maybe if I were cooler, I'd watch them anyway like that). It's a somewhat odd production: it's...French-Revolution-themed, I guess? Eighteenth century at any rate. And you know my views about transplanting the action in operas, but this just feels pretty weird. Everyone in those elaborate costumes. I mean, it's fine, I don't object to it, I'm just wondering...why? There are few sexually suggestive moments also that I thought didn't really work. Again, not that I'm opposed to such things on principle. You've just gotta know when they're appropriate. Also, there's just a really puzzling part at the very very end where a figure, it's impossible to tell who, is audibly beheaded via guilliotine. THUNK. Who thought this made sense? I'd say it breaks the mood, and it sort of does, but more, it just makes you go, WTF? Guh?

That's okay. See it anyway. See all the Handel you can...handle. Sorry.

Antonio Vivaldi, Ercole su'l Termodonte (1723)

MY GOODNESS is Greek mythology ever a tangled, contradictory mess. When you're a kid (at least if you're me), you learn some cool, fairly simple stories about various heroes and gods bopping about, but you probably don't learn about the sheer mind-boggling proliferation of alternate narratives and realities. Also, people back in the day seemingly had a way better handle on these things than we do, so they could write stories about them assuming that the audience would understand the background. Less true now, I think.

This is one of those "reconstructed" operas: as I understand it, we just had the libretto, the music thought to have been lost, but then (recently, but there doesn't seem to be any available information about exactly when), thirty arias and two duets from it were found in archives. What archives. You know: archive archives. So then the opera was rebuilt, with music for recitatives taken from other Vivaldi works. But are ALL of the recitatives from elsewhere? Are ALL the arias performed here from those archives? And what percentage of the final product is originally from the opera itself? These are questions that I can't find answers to. Still, whatever the case, the final result (by Alessandro Ciccolini, who has an instagram account) feels seamless. Ciccolini also did the reconstruction work for Vivaldi's Motezuma, which I hope to see very soon.

So this is based, kind of, on Hercules' ninth labor, in which he was meant to obtain the belt of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. In what's usually presented as the original story, he kills her, but there are of course variations where that doesn't happen, and it doesn't happen here. Hippolyta meets up with one of Hercules' companions, Theseus (I'm just using the English versions of the names because it's easier--also, it does seem kinda pretentious to insist on the Italian all the time), and falls in love with him when he saves her from a ferocious bear (which he instantaneously kills off-stage, somewhat humorously). Meanwhile, there's also Hippolyta's sister and...co-queen? it's not quite clear, Antiope, whose daughter Martesia is captured by the Greeks and ends up falling love with Alceste, king of Sparta. Theseus is captured by Antiope who wants to kill him, Diana supposedly demanding the sacrifice of a Greek, but Hippolyta begs for mercy. Hercules (a smaller role than you might think) is pissed off and wants to not just take the belt but kill him some Amazons, but when Theseus is feed and begs him to show mercy, he calms down and agrees to just take the betl but let the Amazons keep doing their thing. Antiope is going to commit suicide rather than be disgraced, but Diana manifests and tells her not to, that instead the two couples should be married and everyone should be happy. And that is that. I sometimes think: considering how anti-man this Amazon society is meant to be, they all sure do fall in love with and marry outsider men with very little prodding. Hard to imagine how this society would have ever had the chance to develop.

Really, this is pure baroque enjoyment: if you like this kind of thing, you will like this, no question. The thing that everyone (including me, apparently) talks about re this production is that for most of the opera, Zachary Stains as Hercules is wearing only the skin of the Nemean lion as a cloak. I've seen full-frontal nudity (both male and female) in operas before, but never quite so prominently and consistently as here. Given how we're socialized, it can't help but be a little distracting, but the justification for it does make sense: first, you have the enraged, vengeful Hercules, wearing this skin ripped from an animal in anger; but then when he calms down, moved by mercy and justice and love, only then is he dressed in normal clothes (well, normal for these guys--they're all still wearing super-short skirts). It does work, and it is moving, and it's impressive that Stains was able to, apparently, avoid any self-consciousness. It's somewhat less great that he's a pedophile.  So it goes.

Philip Glass, In the Penal Colony (2000)

So this looks to have been a French webcast (there are French subtitles, at any rate) of a Czech production. Premiere Opera may be a super-gray-market thing, but we're talking about Art here! Quibble me no quibbles about legality! There would have been absolutely no other way to see it, and there are too few Glass operas available in video form anyway. SO.

As you have no doubt gathered from the title, this is an opera based on Kafka's short story. It takes place in a penal colony (whodathunkit?) where a European visitor is inspecting things. An officer explains to him how the place works, and in particular this punishment device that carves the names of prisoners' crimes into their flesh and then kills them in the space of twelve hours. However, this device, invented by the previous commander of the colony, has lately fallen out of favor. The officer wants the visitor to speak in favor of it, but he won't, so he decides to release the current prisoner and use it on himself, only it malfunctions and kills him immediately, denying him whatever edification the twelve-hour thing would've brought. The visitor leaves.

Do you think Glass is the most recognizable composer there is? I mean, Mozart may be better than Salieri, but are you confident that, faced with pieces by each, you could correctly identify which is which one hundred percent of the time? I'm sure not. But I've never heard anyone that really sounds like Glass. Maybe that's my parochialism. But anyway, this is very definitely our ol' pal Philip, and while I think you could argue that his music is most suited to impressionistic operas like Einstein, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten, it also works with the sinister atmosphere of this one.

There are only two singing roles here, the officer and the visitor. Apparently some productions feature Kafka himself in a spoken role, but not this one. I guess the prisoner is a screaming role. Jiří Hájek and Miroslav Kopp as the singers are fine, both very forcefully projecting, although it must be said, they both on occasion pronounce English words in a non-standard way that makes them a bit difficult to understand. The production is a bit perplexing, featuring random dancers are women with a sort of barbie-doll look there for...unclear reasons. But I suppose it's not a very "normal" opera in any event.

Did I like it? Yeah I liked it. Whatever issues I had with it are probably more down to the story itself than anything about its execution here. It's certainly a bit chilly, and you come out of it thinking, okay. But and? Still, it's memorable. It may be the least of the Glass operas I've seen, but it is still not at all bad.

Francesco Cavalli, La Didone (1641)

Wikipedia insists that this is just called Didone, but dammit, the DVD box and the credits (in BOTH of them; there are two different filmed versions) are very clear that there's a "La" there. The Dido. Deal with it.

Is this the first opera about Dido and Aeneas? Maybe so! Interestingly enough, it's structurally weird in exactly the same way that Les Troyens is structurally weird: the first act concerns the fall of Troy and all the suffering that that entails, and then the second and third actually involve Dido. That's what you might think, BUT! Dido doesn't die: instead, she gets together with her other suitor, Iarbas, who had been mooning over her for two acts. He's kind of whiney and petulant--but in his favor, at least he isn't trying to sell a cock-and-bull story about how I've gotta go because, uh, the gods want me to go be king of Italy. Really. You just missed them. They were really serious about it. Who's gonna buy THAT one? Anyway, even if this is just a brief rebound fling for Dido, it still seems more emotionally healthy than offing herself. I'm glad to see something going right for her for once. Hey, I know PERFECTLY WELL what the original story is! I've read the Aeneid! I've seen both Dido and Aeneas AND Les Troyens! You don't have to tell me!

I liked this the best out of the Cavalli operas I've seen so far. The first act, I think, is the best: Dido may get a happy ending, but Aeneas' first wife Creusa sure doesn't, or Hecuba, or Cassandra, or Cassandra's suitor Coroebus. They don't have dramatic arcs per se, which does make it feel a bit choppy, but they do all have really good dramatic arias. Maybe I'd be into an overall more serious Cavalli opera. Also, in spite of not dying, Dido has some very good singing preparatory to what WOULD be the dying part if she did.

As I said, there are two versions, but I saw this one. it's fine. To be honest, both Claron McFadden as Dido and Magnus Staveland as Aeneas are sort of wooden, but this is more of an ensemble piece than you might think, and it's ultimately fine. The other one, being from Les Arts Florissants, might be better, but whatevs.

Francesco Cavalli, Il rapimento d'Helena (1659)

The only previous Cavalli opera I've seen is Egito with horrible AV quality, so he was definitely due for a revisiting. I mean, not JUST for that reason: he may not be particularly well-known these days, but he was definitely one of the most important figures in seventeenth-century opera. Lully made opera French, but post-Monteverdi, Cavalli was largely responsible for its direction in Italy. Further, he played a big role in making opera into an entertainment for The Common Man, not just limited to royal courts where only nobles could partake. ALSO, the fact that he wrote several dozen operas over the course of thirty years, most of which are extant, means that he's the only opera composer of the century whose work you can trace so extensively over such a long time period, charting his development and the development of opera as a whole. I mean, YOU can do that, maybe. It's probably a bit too high-level for me.

Interestingly, this opera had remained unperformed since its debut until this 2013 revival: a three-hundred-fifty-four year gap (I'm sort of surprised it remained extant after such long neglect). It's also--perhaps more commonly--known simply as Elena, but that title seems less interesting and more generic. And this is an interesting opera: even if you don't speak Italian, you can probably guess that that title means something like "The Abduction of Helen," but what you might NOT expect would be that this has nothing to do with the Trojan War: it's a zany romantic comedy (okay, in the prelude, Discord does tempt the three goddesses with a golden apple, but that's as far as that goes).

The idea is: Menelaus is in love with Helen from afar, so to get close to her, he dressed up as a woman and has his servant Diomedes present him to her (putative) father, Tyndareus. Meanwhile, you have the rather dimwitted Theseus and Pirithous, who determine to abduct Helen themselves. When they find her, they also find the disguised Menelaus, with whom Pirithous instantly falls in love. So they kidnap them, and there are other characters and love interests including Hippolyta, deserted by the faithless Theseus. things are kind of mixed up, and then in the end they work out for most of the characters (implausibly, Theseus falls back in love with Hippolyta for no reason, although then he has to beg her after she rejects him, which is satisfying). Note that this thing with Theseus and Pirithous IS from actual Greek mythology (though definitely not the books I read as a kid): they did kidnap Helen, though I'm pretty sure Menelaus in drag is a baroque invention.

The libretto isn't wholly satisfactory: it's very choppy, with all these characters who appear and sing with no introductions whatsoever, leading the viewer to think, wait, WHO are you supposed to be? It's very chaotic, and I think it presupposes a deeper knowledge of Greek mythology than most of us are likely to have these days. Also, you can't help noticing that there's really no sense of place: the characters appear to be mostly stumbling around in a void. This may just be because of how it was written, however: Cavalli's long-time librettist died, and it was finished years later by someone else. That might explain the incoherence.

Still, I basically enjoyed it, and not only because it's fun to see composers make an absolute hash of Greek mythology. I like the music, and the aria has been firmly established by this point; even if we don't exactly have any barnburners like we'd later see from Vivaldi and Handel, it's all good, and I think I'm going to see all the Cavalli I'm able.

Tod Machover, Death and the Powers (2010)

This is the Opera of the Future, or so its website says. I feel like you're just asking for trouble by making claims like that. Still, I cannot deny that it is future-y in a way that opera normally is not: science-fiction story, music heavily augmented by electronics, on-stage robots (who give their own robotic bow during the curtain call--it's really cute), and twinkling LED displays--what more do you want? It was produced in cooperation with MIT, and you can definitely see how that works. It's all very impressive, no doubt about it.

The story: well, there's a dying billionaire named Simon Powers (I get the polysemic nature of "power," but even so, shouldn't it just be Death and Powers? Or if it's meant to refer to his whole family, Death and the Powerses?) who has his consciousness translated into a computer, maybe, and how this affects the other people in his life: his ward (with cybernetic implants) Nicholas, his wife Evvy, and his daughter Miranda (obvious nod to Shakespeare), as well as, you know, everyone in the world, who is impacted by this rich guy...changing. Will the other people join Simon in computerized life (or death), or not? Oh, and also, this is a story from the past being viewed by robots who are trying and failing to understand the concept of "death." The libretto's by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, and it's very well-done, if frequently abstruse and perhaps a bit excessively thematically weighted-down.

Still, never mind that: it's quite compelling, dramatically and musically. Just because it's allegedly the Opera of the Future, don't think it abandons traditional operatic values. There are robot voices, sure, but that's a small minority of the whole; mostly, it's regular ol' singing. I...well, to be honest, I think as far as being the "future of opera" goes, that's a bit overstated: I like it, but I can't help but think that too much of this would start to seem like a samey creative cul de sac. Maybe my brain just isn't creative enough! I dunno. Machover has written other operas seemingly in the same vein, but none are available on video in any form (that includes one based on Philip K. Dick's Valis, which seems like the least operatic PKD novel possible--the whole thing is just him ranting about his weird post-mental-breakdown theories--it goes without saying, probably, that in spite of or because of that, I'd still love to see it). This is an odd case, in that it IS available on DVD...but I didn't realize that until, like, just now. It's not catalogued on amazon, and there are no copies listed on ebay. For that reason, you can hardly blame me for instead seeing it via bootleg DVD from the ever-sketchy Premiere Opera. Not sure if it's the same performance, but I think it has the same singers.

Not, maybe for traditionalists, but I don't know--as non-traditionalist works go, this is pretty accessible, so maybe go ahead and see it and broaden your operatic horizons.

Daniel Catán, Florencia en el Amazonas (1996)

I got lucky with this one: it was available on Florida Grand Opera's youtube channel; it was only supposed to be up until July 5, but it was still there when I chanced upon it a few days after that. It's gone now, but not before I downloaded it. This is a pretty well-known/well-regarded opera, but there's otherwise no video of it anywhere, so I'm very glad to have had the chance to see it. Catán was a Mexican composer who did a lot to add Spanish-language opera to the repertoire. Cool, cool. It opens with a very odd disclaimer:

I mean, I think I get what they're trying to say: nobody involved in this knew that the recording would be made publicly available, so it's not fair to judge the singers or producers based on it. But really now: if they were doing a half-assed job, I don't think "I was only half-assing it because I didn't know there would be any visual evidence of my half-assing!" is going to get you much of anywhere. Not that they were. But still.

Now I'm convinced that every opera--at least every one performed in, I don't know, the twenty-first-century exists on film in some archive. Like that Hamilton video they recently released. But will I ever be able to see Bomarzo or Mourning Becomes Electra? Who knows? Life is full of mystery.

This is a story inflected with Garcia-Marquez-esque magical realism, although to say that it's "based on" Love in the Time of Cholera--as the wikipedia entry does--is pushing it, and kind of suggests that whoever wrote that has never actually read Love in the Time of Cholera. It's about a group of people traveling in a riverboat down the Amazon to the town of Manaus to see a performance by Florencia Grimaldi, a famous, reclusive soprano. These passengers are Rosalba, a woman writing a book about Florencia; and Alvaro and Paula, a bickering couple. Another woman on the boat is actually, unbeknownst to the other passengers, Florencia herself: she's still obsessed with her lost lover Cristóbal, who disappeared years ago in the jungle while hunting butterflies. Rosalba begins a romance with Arcadio, the captain's nephew, who is unsatisfied with his lost and wants to become a pilot. There's a storm and in saving the boat, Alvaro is thrown overboard and they're grounded. The boat gets back on track, as Paula mourns her husband, realizing how much she loves him in spite of their fighting. But then, thanks to the river gods (or something), he's returned to the ship. Hurrah! Anyway, they reach Manaus, but there's a cholera outbreak and they can't land, but the two couples are united, and Florencia is reunited--either bodily or in spirit, it's ambiguous--with Cristóbal.

There's this whole thing with the first mate, Riolobo ("Riverwolf"--even my nonexistent Spanish is enough to suss that out), who's some sort of magical being; that's the main "magical realism" part of the opera, and to be honest, it feels tacked on to me and doesn't really work. Other than that, however, I found it very engaging; maybe the ending is overly sentimental, but fuck it, life is goddamn hard right now, and I will take happiness where I find it.  This production also has really gorgeous painted backdrops of the river.

And the music, MY GOODNESS: this is really absolutely gorgeous romanticism. It doesn't do anything new, but what it does, it does brilliantly, and I love it. Sure, I like innovation, but tradition can be good too. That's why I like Menotti, and it's why--on the basis of this--I like Catán. I'll be sure to see his operatic version of Il Postino soon.

Gian Carlo Menotti, The Consul (1950)

This isn't my first Menotti opera: I've seen his first, Amelia Goes to the Ball, a farce; Amahl and the Night Visitors, his popular Christmas opera; and Help, Help, the Globolinks! his weird science-fiction piece about the importance of music education (you see, music is the only think that can stop the alien Globolinks--is this really a widely-applicable lesson?). However, this is the first full-length one I've seen, and while all of those are comedies in one sense or another, this is a fairly grim tragedy, albeit with moments of black humor.

It takes place in an unnamed Eastern Bloc surveillance state. A dissident, John Sorel, is on the run from the authorities and plans to cross the frontier to another country. His wife, Magda, is to attain visas at the consulate of another unnamed country so she can cross the border along with John's mother and their infant son. But it's not easy to cross the border: you need a shit-ton of paperwork, and if anything's even slightly irregular, you'll be rejected. She keeps going back, getting more and more desperate, and meanwhile things are going from bad to worse at home: secret police agents are spying on them, the baby dies, and so too does Magda's mother-in-law. She hears from a fellow dissident that John is planning on coming back across the border with her, which would very likely lead to him getting caught and be extremely bad for the cause, so she resolves to send him a note to the effect that she's committing suicide so he'll have no reason to return. But it's too late; he returns anyway and is indeed captured, and at home, she kills herself. The end.

So yeah, not exactly cheerful, but compelling. There's a hallucination sequence at the very end after Magda has turned on the gas, which seemed to be dragging things out a bit, but otherwise, I have no problems with it. Surprisingly, the most compelling character--and the only one with a real arc--turns out to be the secretary at the consulate, who goes from blindly enforcing the bureaucratic order to recognizing the humanity of the people caught up in it. I believe Menotti wrote the libretti for all his operas himself, which is quite impressive.

Musically, it's pretty darned terrific--Menotti was a traditionalist, dealing in Puccini-esque romanticism, which causes some people to dismiss him as a minor composer, and in fairness, those other, short, operas that I've seen of his can't help, fairly or not, feeling a little slight. But this one to me feels kind of like a major artistic statement. It won Menotti a Pulitzer Prize, even! They give Pulitzers for operas? Apparently so. There are several performances available to watch, either on youtube or DVD; I chose this version, from a 1998 Italian festival. It's very good, really--Victoria Livengood as the secretary impressed me especially--but at some point the aspect ratio got screwed up, so everyone looks very squashed.

Actually, this wasn't Menotti's only Pulitzer: he also won one for his next full-length opera, The Saint of Bleecker Street, but for whatever reason, that one has not had the enduring popularity of this; there's no video available that I can see. Too bad. I'd definitely call myself a Menotti fan at this point.

Laura Kaminsky, As One (2014)

Here's an opera about the coming-of-age of a transgender woman. I think it's important for opera to engage with contemporary issues. It's a short piece; only seventy-five minutes, and it only features two singers: the main character--Hannah--as a man and as a woman. It hits kind of the beats that you'd expect in a story like this: the main character realizing that they like dressing as a woman, learning about the very existence of transgender people and reading up on it, having a flirtation (as a woman) with a guy, narrowly escaping transphobic violence, and then taking a trip to Iceland (okay, that's probably not a common transgender trope) to deal with her feelings in isolation. In the end, she feels whole.

In spite of not having any huge surprises, the story works, for me. I like it. On a personal note (it's my blog, so I can make it All About Me if I want), I am proud of the fact that I've never harbored any transphobic sentiment, in spite of not really being aware of the concept particularly until sometime in adulthood (I couldn't even say when). For a lot of people, being presented with something new as an adult can lead to phobia, so I'm doing well in that regard. I'll admit, however, that I'm definitely not as knowledgable as I could be about transgender issues, and how these things really work. Sure, I watch Contrapoints videos, but that's as far as it goes. However, I will say--in, perhaps, mild criticism of this piece: the way Hannah finds piece is by reconciling the male and female parts of her ("as one"), whereas my understanding--and I know everyone's different--is that that's not how trans people normally think of themselves: if you're a trans man you're a man; if you're a trans woman you're a woman. Anyone who knows more can feel free to educate me.

You can watch it here, if you want. American Opera Project, same as Harriet Tubman. This is a chamber opera. Now, that's a very broad category, without one specific definition: it can involve anything from a small orchestra to a single piano. Here, the entirety of the musical accompaniment is a string quartet, right up there on stage. I have to be honest: I like a bigger sound. In large doses, string quartets tend to bore me a little, and that was the case here, too. But that probably would've been more of an issue if the opera had been longer; as it is, I was glad to see it, and maybe you should too.

Christoph Willibald Gluck, L'île de Merlin, ou Le monde renversé (1758)

Boy, you think you know a guy...from having seen Orfeo ed Euridice and those two Iphigenia operas, I thought I basically had a handle on who Gluck was, but now I realize that I only knew part of the story, because this is utterly unlike them: different tone, and different musical approach.

It's a short, goofy comedy that feels very much like an operetta: the protagonists are Pierrot and Scapin (both the names of stock characters from commedia dell'arte), sailors who get shipwrecked on Merlin's island, where, it's reputed, you can have anything you want. These two want to get married, so accordingly, they immediately meet Merlin's nieces, Argentine and Diamantine. But before these marriages can happen, they learn all about its crazy, topsy-turvy customs, so different from France: here, artists are well-respected. Lawyers are honest and scrupulous. Actresses are virginal. And so on; you get the idea. There's even--mirabile dictu--a lady doctor! Simply preposterous! Obviously, this sort of thing can't help feeling incredibly dated in some ways, but modern in others: artists have always been starving, and everyone has always hated lawyers.

That's about it. Musically, it doesn't follow what I've always considered to be Gluck's normal pattern: baroque-ish music with a huge amount of repetition. The songs here are accessible, brisk, and to-the-point, which may or may not give it greater appeal than his other works. I'll tell you, if I hadn't known who the composer was, I never would've guessed: even when I looked it up and saw that, yup, this is who it is, I had this nagging feeling that there had to be some mistake. But nope!

Again, it's Wolftrap Opera: they really go for broke on the campiness; it seems like nothing else would suit. This was written before Gluck started trying to reform the operatic form, and as such, it's no doubt less "important" than his later works, but it's still a lot of fun.

Michael Tippett, The Ice Break (1977)

The Operavision page claims that this 2015 production from Birmingham Opera is the first time this has been performed since its debut; according to wikipedia, that's not strictly true, but it's certainly a rarity. Tippett also wrote King Priam, which people seem to think is his best opera. He's known for writing his own libretti, which are reputed to be...bad. King Priam's meant to be the one time he was able to rise above that, to some extent. That's all I know.

So...there's a pacifist (Russian, presumably, though it's not specified) who's going to be released from a prison camp after twenty years. His wife Nadia and son Yuri are there to meet him at the airport, although Yuri resents his dad and sees his pacifism as weakness. Also arriving is Olympion, the new world champion (champion of what? The WORLD, dammit! Don't ask dumb questions!). He's very invested in/proud of his blackness. Yuri gets angry because his girlfriend Gayle is flirting with Olympion, and things degenerate into a race riot. Gayle and Olympion are killed, and Yuri is critically injured. Nadia is also dying, for reasons never specified. I mean, you can infer that it has to do with the riot, but there's no actual indication of that. Anyway, she sings and dies. Two people appear to the crowd who are (maybe) some sort of collective divine messenger, or maybe just a mass hallucination; who knows. They tell the people to take care of the world; God will take care of himself (actually, they say "take care FOR"--is that really part of any native English-speaker's dialect?). Yuri's life is saved thanks to a doctor and Olympion's nurse girlfriend Hannah. He's reconciled with his dad, apparently.

So this plot is a godawful mess. Obviously, it's not supposed to be strictly realistic, but even in the context of what it's trying to do, it's really clumsy stuff. The title is suppose to refer to, you know, getting beyond racial tensions and prejudice and stuff, but...I don't know that it succeeds in that regard. None of the characters are more than one-dimensional, and none of their relationships are given any detail. You would think Yuri would be the main character, wouldn't you? But he's just...nothing. He's racist at the beginning. And he's not racist at the end? Maybe? Who knows? Olympion is clearly meant to be a Muhammed Ali type, but he mainly makes me wonder if Tippett had ever met a black person.  This article argues that all the opera's apparent weaknesses are intentional and are actually strengths when you think about it, but color me extremely unconvinced.

Not helping things is the fact that this opera seems to have colorblind casting, which I am ordinarily in favor of, but here it really muddies the waters: Lev is white, but Nadia is black, and Yuri appears to be Indian; meanwhile, the singer playing Olympion, Ta'u Pupu'a, is of Tongan descent (which to my eyes at least doesn't look black, though I'm well aware that these are basically just political categories). And before you say anything, let's establish that I'm fully aware that this could be intentional to underscore the essential meaninglessness of "race" as a concept. But...if that was the point, I don't think it comes across, and besides, what then are we to make of the fact that the doctor who saves Yuri is black: is that significant? You would think so, but with this muddying of the waters, it's hard to tell.

AND YET: ungainly and not wholly successful as this all may be, I have to admit, there's definitely something here. This opera has a fuck-ton of energy and Tippett's music--which I was a little on the fence about in King Priam--is pretty darned great here, filled with frenzied, Straussian rhythms. And the production is first-rate: it's one of these sort of interactive things, with audience members congregated in the back like they're part of the crowd, which seems to very much suit the material, making it feel immediate as hell. The riot is presented as this violent, fragmented pastiche, filled with memorable imagery. Whether, strictly speaking, the opera achieves its goals, it remains highly compelling, and you can't help but be impressed by such an ambitious effort. I wasn't paying attention, so I'm not sure whether Operavision added this to the line-up before or after George Floyd's murder, but in spite of being over forty years old, it really does speak to our zeitgeist--if not in specific detail, then certainly in spirit. It may well be the Opera for Our Times.

David Sawer, The Skating Rink (2018)

A contemporary opera, just for kicks. This is based on a novel by Roberto Bolaño--his first, I believe. Too bad the libretto isn't in Spanish. But don't worry; I will not detract points for that!

It takes place in a seaside Spanish town. It's definitely a novelistic plot, and a rather interesting one: it consists of three acts and a coda, each act from the viewpoint of a different man, and each going a little way back in time before continuing forward, revealing more and more about things we've previously seen and the motivations of characters. Unlike many or most operas, the plot is actually something you might not want spoiled; seeing things fall into place is probably the greatest pleasure here. But very, very basically: there's this French campsite, and three different men are in charge of it to different degrees. They're all pushed by forces above them to evict two homeless women, although they don't want to. There's also an ice skater whom one of the men is involved with and another obsessed with. There's an illegal skating rink, and then there's a body and things end more or less ambiguously for everyone.  It has a noirish aspect, but it's ultimately not as grim as you'd expect from that genre.

So I did admire how well the plot was put together. It's very sophisticated. And yet, I couldn't help feeling that there were a lot of parts that were really underdeveloped; that we didn't really have as much of an idea as I'd've liked as to the relationships of these men to the women in question. Might be because of inevitable cuts to go form novel to opera; might be because Bolaño at this point was an inexperienced young writer. The opera DID carry me through just wanting to know what would happen, but ultimately, the plot felt more sketched-in than I thought it ought to have been. I thought the music was all right: it's this sparkly stuff that at times reminded me of L'Amour de loin, of all things, though music and story certainly mesh together better in that one.

The opera was commissioned by Garsington Opera. I like the fact that companies are willing to spend money on new operas even though they must know that they're very unlikely to enter the ever-nebulous standard repertoire. It's a good production, too, with a little cubicle representing various office-type places being pushed onto the stage when necessary. Very good sense of place. Most of the comment on the Operavision video are negative, for reasons that I don't really understand. Yes, there are as noted some plot issues, but the whole thing is on the whole interesting and entirely watchable. Unless you just don't like contemporary opera, in which case fair enough, I guess, but I do, and I'm very glad Operavision keeps bringing us things like this which I'd never be aware of otherwise.

Viktor Ullmann, Der Kaiser von Atlantis (1943)

Here's another opera written in a concentration camp before Ullmann's murder. Those nazis, man. Imagine being so fucking stupid that you think you can simultaneously glorify German culture and murder your artists. Hoo boy. This one was not permitted to be performed at Theresienstadt, for reasons that may become obvious. How did the music he wrote there survive at all? Because he entrusted the manuscripts to another prisoner, who survived and passed them on to a friend of Ullmann's (this one was first performed in 1975). These things could very easily have turned out differently, and his work would be lost forever. But when we compare what Ullmann achieved with what those worthless piece-of-shit nazis did...it's not a hard contest.

Anyway, this is a kind of abstract story. Death is feeling unhappy because not death is becoming more automated, more impersonal, industrialized (remind you of anything?). The Emperor of Atlantis declares WAR, which will go on 'til everyone is dead. War with whom? We may never know, but this is the last straw for Death, who decides he's going to go on strike. The war proceeds, but the Emperor is annoyed to realize that nobody's dying: a man was hanged and shot, and he's expected to die soon, but eighty-two minutes later, he's not dead. Any moment now! The Emperor tries to cover for this by declaring that he's granted all his subjects eternal life, but he's privately baffled. There are also male and female soldiers who confront each other but seeing that death is cancelled, decide to be in love instead. Death explains the situation to the Emperor, who gives up and allows himself to die in exchange for Death getting back in business. Don't fuck around with Death. That's the moral.

It's short, only fufty minutes, but I did like it better than Der zerbrochene Krug, maybe just because the story's more interesting to me. Also, this production from Wolftrap Opera in Virginia is very creative and fun to look at. Watch it today, and then punch a nazi while you're at it. Brass knuckles recommended.

Stefano Landi, La morte d'Orfeo (1619)

Landi wrote two operas, this and the later Sant'Alessio, which I'd actually already seen and then didn't write about for inexplicable reasons. I guess I wasn't a huge fan, mainly because the story just seems perverse: it's about a fifth-century saint who comes home to his family in disguise as a beggar (they don't know where he is or even if he's alive) and lives like that for like twenty years, and then a guy appears and says, dude, this is a bad idea; reveal yourself to your family and to your grieving wife, fercrissake; live your life. This seems like exactly the advice he should be given--only that guy's the Devil. Angels appear to encourage him to keep doing what he's doing until he dies, which he does, and it's all triumphant. The sensibility behind this is so alien I can't even begin to wrap my brain around it (though it does feature some amusing comic-relief servants). Interesting to note that it was written by one Giulio Rospigliosi, the future Pope Clement IX. He actually wrote a lot of libretti, including--per wikipedia--one while he was Pope. According to his wikipedia page, he was a legit good guy and Pope, cutting against stereotypes about corrupt Renaissance Popes (and Medieval Popes.  And modern Popes.  I guess I should've just said "Popes," huh?).  Of course, that could just be Catholic propaganda. How would we possibly know?

Anyway, now I guess I've said all I wanted to say about Sant'Alessio, so that's good. But this is very different. While Orpheus narratives are usually about his effort to rescue Eurydice from Hades, this--as you'd guess--treats of his later life. Did you know Orpheus was a demigod? Well, he was. His mother was the Muse Calliope. That's, I guess, why the gods are interested in him. So he's having a birthday party, and all of them are invited! Whoo! Except for Bacchus, on account of he's renounced women and wine (though not song, obviously). This angers the god, who sends his maenads to tear him apart, to the grief of his mother, to whom the news is broken by her other son Fileno. Orpheus' shade ends up in Hades; he's invited to Heaven, on account of he's a demigod, but he wants to see Eurydice again. Unfortunately, having drunk from the river Lethe, she doesn't remember him and doesn't want to know him. This bums him out, but Charon encourages him to drink from it himself, which he does and then goes up to Heaven to be a god. The end.

I must say, that part with Eurydice is a bit harsh: if you can't be reunited with your lover even in death, where can you? Nonetheless, I liked this a lot--far more than Sant'Alessio. A lot of madrigals and choruses, and even some early flirtation with arias, as in a weirdly catchy number where Charon's talking up the awesomeness of the river Lethe. The production is by Pierre Audi--why do I keep running into this guy lately?--and I like it a lot better than anything previous I'd seen by him: a very attractive and accessible art-deco-ish kind of thing. Most of the singers take multiple roles, as--I guess--it would have been at the time. So this is a winner, and here's another important point: it's my first opera from the 1610s. Why is that an important point? Because I'm an absolute maniac, is why. Which would make it my second-oldest opera total, unless you count those intermedi, which you shouldn't, but which I kind of do anyway.