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.