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.
No comments:
Post a Comment