Jules Massenet, Chérubin (1905)

More Massenet? Really? Yeah, but I was actually legit interested in seeing what this would be like, once I learned it was about Cherubino from Le nozze di Figaro (or possibly from Beaumarchais' original play, but especially seeing as it's an opera, it seems fair to associate it with the more famous version). And, you know, it was four dollars to rent on amazon, so whatevz.

I don't know what I expected, really, but there's not actually much plot here. Our hero is joining the army! Isn't that the thing he didn't want to do in Mozart? Well NOW HE'S A-OKAY WITH IT, SO SHUT UP. He's still girl-crazy and lusting after all the noblewomen that he meets. He almost gets in a duel, but avoids it. In the end, he learns his lesson and now he's going to be faithful to his true love, Nina. Wait, who the hell is Nina? We are never told.  She's just...there.  And into him.  Wasn't Cherubino going to marry Barbarina in Mozart? What's the point of using the character if you're not even going to bother following the original story even ever-so-loosely? I guess his general horniness is the connection--which is hit upon constantly, to the point that it becomes a bit monotonous--but if you're looking for Mozart fan-fiction, as I was, this may underwhelm you.

Yes, well, as you can tell, I wasn't overly impressed with the story. BUT HOW IS THE MUSIC? Well...it's Massenet. Dammit. SERIOUSLY, I keep thinking one of these days I'll really really love something of his and it'll be annoying because I'll have to rethink my opinions about those operas of his I've already seen, but it just doesn't seem to be happening. I'll say--I'm sure I've said this before, but I'll say it again--I like some of his purely orchestral music more than I do the vocal work. There's a short ballet in the first act of this that I thought kinda ruled. But I have never heard a Massenet aria that I thought memorable. And then the other issue is just that the libretti all seem dramatically weak in ways that feel similar to each other. You'd think he wrote his own; of course he didn't, and nor were all his operas written by the same people, but, well, it is what it is. Something did not go right. In my opinion.

He wrote a shit-ton of operas, but only a few ballets, none of which seem to be regularly performed. Still, maybe he should have specialized in those instead. It seems to me they would likely play a lot better to his strengths.

Peter Maxwell Davies, Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969)

Here's Profiles in Integrity for you: Per wikipedia,

Davies's appointment to the post of Master of the Queen's Music was initially controversial, as he had expressed republican views. However, he confirmed in 2010 that contact with the Queen had converted him to monarchism. He told The Daily Telegraph, "I have come to realise that there is a lot to be said for the monarchy. It represents continuity, tradition and stability."

Hmm. Rather than "converting him to monarchism," I think we can safely say that she converted him to really wanting this position. But that is neither here nor there. It is sort of surprising to me that they would want such an avant-garde musician for their official post. You'd think they'd go with someone more, I dunno, traditional and stable. Not that I am objecting! The weirder our "official" artists are the better.

This is a short monodrama about George III in his madness: the libretto consists, I think, mainly of his real demented ranting. There's really not a lot more I can say about the "plot," which doesn't exist. It's a depiction of one man's breakdown.

But I really wanted to talk about this as a contrast with Punch and Judy, below. As you can see, the two pieces were written and presented at about the same time, and they are in extremely similar challenging atonal idioms with similarly stylize singing. And yet...while I hated Birtwistle's work, I actually more or less liked this. True story. I felt that the music here really enhanced the drama. Obviously, it represents the king's internal state, all the more so because the "songs" are sort of loosely based on original folk music, sometimes bubbling to the surface in kind of a mutated way. For me, it worked (and it certainly helps that it's only a half hour long).  It's unnerving, as it's meant to be. No, it's never going to be my favorite thing, but I can appreciate it, which makes me more confident about not liking Punch and Judy, so that's cool. You can watch it here; Kelvin Thomas is very effective as the singer.

Harrison Birtwistle, Punch and Judy (1968)

Punch and Judy shows are...well, they're not something I've thought super-much about, but they, and puppetry in general, seem to occupy a historical niche that's very hard to categorize nowadays. I know they still exist, but they can't help feeling like a throwback. Do they have any relevance here and now? I am not sure. But I want to see one. You don't really get much of an opportunity these days, at least not in the US. I guess you do if you go to a British beach. There's also a Commodore 64 game, which is apparently not bad.

Well. Anyway. You hear about Birtwistle sometimes--that's Sir Harrison Birtwistle to you--and there's a production (a prize-winning production, apparently) of this, his first opera, on youtube. So I decided to have a look in.

It's not exactly a Punch and Judy show. It's a...is "deconstruction" the right word? Something like that. Punch is generally amoral, is my understanding, but here he's just psychotic: right at the beginning, he kills both Judy and the baby (although all killed characters reappear in different guises) and then goes off in search of his love, Pretty Polly, which results in a sort of ritualistic, repetitive series of journeys. The subtitle situation was not ideal; it's often very hard to make out the words, and the fact that the subtitles are in French, and don't always correspond to with the spoken text often make them more a distraction than anything.

I think this plot conceit is interesting...in theory. It sort of made me feel like I was reading Deleuze and Guattari again. It should be the kind of thing that's right up my alley. And yet: GOOD GOD was this ever excruciating to watch. I absolutely hated every second of it. From the horrendously irritating, screechy music to the stylized, yelping singing to the way the characters mugged (which I'm sure is true to the spirit of the thing)--seriously, fuck this opera. I still feel a kind of reluctance to call something like this "bad," thinking oh, maybe I just don't understand it--and I don't know. Maybe not. But I feel comfortable in saying that I have never had a worse operatic experience. Supposedly at the premiere, Benjamin Britten left at the intermission. I am dumber than him, unfortunately.

And yet, the way my brain works, I can't help thinking, I must be missing something. In a perverse way, I want to see more Birtwistle to see if I can make sense of his idiom. But fuck me, man. This was not an auspicious introduction.  If I ever see an opera I like less, I won't write about it here because it will have literally killed me.

Richard Wagner, Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen (1842)

This opera doesn't get that much attention these days, but it was actually very popular in its time.  I want to draw your attention this bit from the Medici page: "after Die feen and Das Liebesverbot, Rienzi is the composer's first opera." You have to admit, that's a really great point: if you don't count his first and second operas, his third is indeed his first. Profound.

It was also--what a fun story this is--allegedly Hitler's initial inspiration. "At that hour it all began," he supposedly said, when reminded in 1939 of first having seen it in 1906. One might well be skeptical of that--it seems awfully historically pat--but it IS documented that he was a big fan, and in fact owned the original manuscript, which was lost after the war. Welp.

It's based on a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who I know is metonymous with bad writing, but I dunno. I can't say I've ever read him, but I doubt most people even know why they're supposed to think "it was a dark and stormy night" is such a horrible line. I guess just because "dark night" is considered redundant? Maybe he's bad, but I feel like most people don't really have any clear idea of his relative talent; they just want to point and feel superior like the other cool kids. Anyway.

It's about an Italian politician in the fourteenth century who gains power by the popular acclaim of the people in spite of being hated by the corrupt nobles. He also has a sister Irene with whom a guy named Adriano, the son of one of said nobles (and also the only trouser role in Wagner) is in love. Rienzi shows them mercy when they plot to kill him, but then they attack him again, so he murders the shit out of them, to Adriano's dismay. He tries to get Irene to leave with him but she won't. The people, pissed off, set the building they're in on fire and kill them. I mean, you can sort of see what Hitler would've seen to like here. It's easy to see how he would've imagined himself a successor to the title character.

Apparently the original version of this is actually Wagner's longest opera, pushing six hours. However, bowing to market forces (out-of-character to say the least), he allowed it to be cut for performances, as it generally is nowadays. I don't know if the full version is ever performed--you'd think so, given what maniacs Wagnerians tend to be--but the version I saw was only three, which seems more reasonable.

Wagner was trying to imitate French grand opera here--albeit in German, making it unique in my experience. Naturally, he disavowed it later in his life, but it's really pretty good, certainly musically--definitely better than his leaden effort at comedy Das Liebesverbot. The drama is just unbearably intense in places.

And yet, I can't claim to have thought much about the story. None of the characters came across as notably appealing. Rienzi really does seem like a proto-fascist figure, all about renewal through the popular acclaim of himself as a Strong Leader. Fuck 'im, I say, and fuck all fascists, proto or otherwise. Still, I have to admit, part of the problem may be the production, which I think is not good. It tries to be...political, in a very inchoate way, which seems like a bad idea for an opera with the history of this one. The overture is interspersed with decontexualized footage of protests and political violence, and while the sets are sparse, the weird costumes and facepaint seem meant to suggest real-world parallels that I can't exactly put my finger on. The cast is largely uncharismatic and doesn't make much impression, though that may possibly be the libretto. Who can say?

Now I've seen every Wagner opera except Die Feen, which is only available in a heavily-cut version "adapted for children." If the full version were available somewhere, sure I'd see it for completeness's sake, why not, but I don't necessarily care enough that I'm gonna watch the Kidz Bop version.

Charles Gounod, Le médecin malgré lui (1858)

Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Here we go! This is some ADVANCED OPERA-WATCHING SHIT, you betcha! Definitely one of the rarest I've ever seen. This is based on Molière's comedy, obviously. Quoth wikipedia: "As the work uses spoken dialogue and verse taken directly from Molière's play, the Comédie-Française tried unsuccessfully to block performance of the opera." Seriously, guys? You thought you should have exclusive rights to a play that was at the time one hundred ninety-two years old? Current copyright law is plenty draconian, but this is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous.

I have actually seen the play, albeit in English translation. The plot is that there's this drunken woodcutter, Sganarelle, who is made to pretend to be a doctor when his wife--to get revenge for his abusive behavior--tells the servants of Géronte, a rich guy looking for one, that he IS, but won't reveal it unless he gets the shit beaten out of him. As you do. The problem is that Géronte's daughter Lucinde has seemingly been struck mute, and thus can't marry the rich guy that he's arranged for her. But in fact, she's just faking it because she wants to marry her sweetheart, Léandre. Léandre gets Sganarelle to agree to distract Geronté so he can elope with Lucinde. As soon as she sees him, she magically regains her voice. Geronté, being hell of pissed off, is going to have Sganarelle executed (if you were a rich guy in seventeenth-century France you could just do that?), but then it turns out that Léandre has just inherited a bunch of money from his conveniently rich and conveniently late uncle, so...he doesn't. One of these things where a modern sensibility would prefer to see a change of heart rather than the circumstances changing to accommodate the regressive reality of the thing...but the story is from a pre-modern mindset that doesn't want to destabilized the status quo, so that's what we get. It's why there are all these stories about people from humble backgrounds actually secretly being nobility.

This opera is almost never performed, but it's hard to say why. It's my first Gounod comedy (and probably only, the way things are looking), but he proves himself perfectly adept at writing comic music. I do have the same problem that I've had with a number of comic operas: the story is just so silly and lightweight that it doesn't feel like it has as much heft as you'd like. That's part of the reason truly great comedies like Figaro, L'elisir, Falstaff, or Rosenkavalier stand out so much. Nonetheless, there's really no reason we shouldn't see this performed more often. Is it because the idea of a drunken wife-beater doesn't seem as winsome as perhaps it once did? But the original play is still regularly performed. As far as I know.

I was able to watch this thanks to this bootleg DVD. Given that the recording exists, it is an abiding mystery why there's no official release, but such things happen. It has French subtitles which I was more or less able to follow, but alas, the spoken parts (yes, as a comic opera, it has spoken bits--never my favorite thing, but eh, it's fine) are unsubtitled, which was a bit rough. I mean, I knew what was happening, basically, but I definitely missed some jokes, but that the audience was exactly roaring with laughter. The second and third acts take place in a kind of normal room with some sofas, but the first one features this extremely bizarre assemblage of metal bands seemingly set up to look like a whirlwind with various furniture and other household sundries caught up in it. I guess it's meant to suggest the chaos of the woodcutter's hut. Well, it was fine.

I've liked every Gounod opera I've seen, and if you give me more, I will watch them too. I realize I say something along those lines in regards to bugloads of operas I watch, but it is frequently true, dammit!

Gioachino Rossini, Ricciardo e Zoraide (1818)

Here's this. It's based on an episode from an extremely unknown epic poem called Il Ricciardetto by a guy called Niccolò Forteguerri, who doesn't even have an Italian wikipedia page. There's an English translation of...the first canto, which seems inadequate. Well. Anyway. It seems to be sorta-kind in the same family as Orlando Furioso and Gerusalemme liberata but not exactly. Not familiar character names.

Anyway, the idea is that Ricciardo is a Christian knight, but his sweetheart Zoraide has been captured by those perfidious Nubians, and the Nubian king, Agorante (is this name a variation on the Carolingian Agramante?), is in love with her (in spite of already being married). Ricciardo infiltrates the Nubian palace in disguise, but he's caught. Zoraide's father Ircano tries to save them but fails. But then everyone is rescued by some Christian knights who were just hanging around, I guess. Agorante is spared, and now Ircano no longer objects to his daughter marrying Ricciardo. If you want to know why he objected to this in the first place, you should PROBABLY bloody well read Forteguerri, shouldn't you? Yeah, the fact that this is based on a work that's basically completely unknown today does not do it any favors, and parts of it are a bit hard to follow.

It's kind of a non-comic version of L'italiana in Algeri with a bit of Die Entführung aus dem Serail thrown in, innit? Nothing wrong with that. I chose this one out of all the available Rossini operas (which is most or all of them) mainly on the basis of the casting: the title characters are played by Juan Diego Flórez and Pretty Yende, both of whom I like. You can see Flórez in hell of Met Live in HD productions; Yende is less established, but she was great in L'elisir d'amore and I wish to see her more (also, can you tell from my frequent use of "hell of" that I'm rereading Achewood lately?).

Really, how are you not going to like it? I will believe that there is a bad Rossini opera when I see it. That said, I have to admit that it perhaps wasn't quite as great as I was hoping for. Don't get me wrong, there are a number of memorable bel canto flourishes, but I also couldn't help but feel that it dragged on a bit, with not much really happening. Of course, this in no way dims my desire to see every Rossini opera.

Pietro Mascagni, Zanetto (1896)

This is a short one-act piece with only two characters and a very simple plot. It's sometime during the Renaissance; there's a rich noblewoman living in a palace of some kind, lamenting that she cannot find love. A youth named Zanetto (a trouser role)--a minstrel/jack-of-all-trades--comes to visit. He thinks it would be nice to settle down, and she likes the idea of living with him. And yet, for some reason, she feels compelled to reject him and send him off. He says he wants to go see this Silvia woman he's heard about, who's supposed to be beautiful and rich. In fact--amazing twist!--she is Silvia but she advises him not to go looking for her. He agrees and asks her which direction to go. She points, and he leaves, and she breaks down. That's that.

I have something to say, and that something is this: Puccini and Mascagni are very similar composers--but Puccini is the best-known composer of his era, whereas Mascagni is a one-hit wonder. But in spite of that--hot take!--I'm not at all convinced that he's the lesser composer. Musically, everything I've ever heard from him, this included, is incredible. I think his status is down to a mixture of historical happenstance and the fact that he wasn't good at choosing libretti that would capture the public imagination (although this one is certainly moving in its small way).  Also, maybe because "Puccini" is easier/funner to say than "Mascagni."  Regardless, what that means, alas, is that even though he was actually more prolific than Puccini, his work is much less readily available--most of his operas have never been videoed at all. Dangit!

Regardless, as the above might indicate, I loved this. Go on, watch it! It's definitely better than whatever you'd been planning to do with the next fifty minutes!

Umberto Giordano, Fedora (1898)

A while back, a production of this was going to appear on Operavision, but at the last minute, with no explanation, they replaced it with a Butterfly--going from a relatively rare opera to one of the most common does not seem like a step in the right direction. But SO IT GOES! I had to see the old Met on Demand production. Pity me!

So. Fedora, a princess, is engaged to marry Count Vladimir, but then, abruptly, somebody murders the hell out of him. The main suspect is Loris Ipanov, felt to be a Nihilist sympathizer. He is exiled to Paris (it's unclear why exactly since he doesn't seem to have even been formally accused of anything at this point), to which Fedora follows to get her revenge. She's at a party, and Ipanov immediately arrives and is all "I love you!" Had he ever even met her or seen her before? Or is this just a "hello I love you won't you tell me your name" situation? Operatic convention is what it is, but this seems goofy even by those standards. But anyway, he tells his woeful tale: he killed the Count because he'd been his wife's lover (his wife then wasted away and died, apparently--the time frame here is not very clear). So now she's totally cool with it, and they're in love. Hurray! They're living together in an isolated villa, BUT! Trouble! This guy, Di Siriex (just a guy. That's all I know.) arrives to deliver some bad news: before she knew the truth about Loris, she had sent a letter accusing him to the police in Russia, as a result of which his brother was arrested (what?) and imprisoned. One night the river around the prison flooded and he drowned (what?). The news of this cause their mother to die (okay.). When Loris hears this and learns that Fedora was responsible, sort of, he is hell of pissed off, so she poisons herself. He forgives her, but she dies anyway. So it goes.

So yeah, the plot here is pretty dodgy, I have to say. I find the whole thing extremely hard to take seriously. The music is...okay. A kind of cool aria that's meant to mimc a Russian folk dance, and a good final death scene. But I can sort of see why Giordano is not that widely-staged nowadays.

The Met performance features Mirella Freni as Fedora and Plácido Domingo as Loris (they're both really too old for the parts, but in this case it didn't bother me much). It just goes to show how little I know about previous generations of opera singers: I had never ever heard Freni's name before, but she's a huge deal, it seems; she gets a long standing ovation when she first appears, before she even opens her mouth. I say, don't suck up like that! It's okay to applaud after a significant aria, but I think these people's egos are probably big enough as it is! She is given the Key to the City during one of the act breaks. Okay. The two of them are fine; I just don't feel they were given a lot to do. I really liked Ainhoa Arteta as Fedora's flighty, coquettish friend Olga; she's funny and charming, although it really does feel like she wandered in from a completely different opera.

As you can tell, I wasn't overly impressed by this. BUT HEY, it's on Met on Demand, so, you know, we can check off another one. Hurrah.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, The Enchantress (1887)

Enough of that! Back to Grim Tragedy. It's always good to use the word antepenultimate when possible, so let it be noted that this is Tchaikovsky antepenultimate opera, followed only by The Queen of Spades and Iolanta.

So...Nastasya, commonly known as Kuma, is an innkeeper, popular with the people. But there's a puritanical clerk, Mamyrov, who thinks she's a witch and wants the whole thing shut down. Nikita, a prince, appears to check things out, but Nastasya charms him and he humiliates Mamyrov by making him dance. Meanwhile, Nikita's wife Yevpraksiya is grumpy because she thinks that her husband is involved with Nastasya--she has bewitched him. Her son Yury appears and vows to kill her to avenge this. Nikita puts the moves on Nastasya, but she repulses him and he leaves, enraged. Yury appears and she reveals that actually, it's him she loves, and he decides that he loves her back. They're going to run off together, his parents having disowned him, but things do not go so well. To put it mildly. While Yury is off hunting boars, Yevpraksiya appears disguised as a peasant and offers Nastasya a drink of water, which she accepts. Bad idea! Yury reappears and she dies in his arms. Nikita appears and, thinking that she must be hidden somewhere, murders his son in a rage. He realizes the truth, goes mad, and dies. Fun for all ages!  It IS one of those operatic-tragedy plots where the only real message seems to be "life's a bitch and then you die," but hey, we're used to that.

I mean freakin' 'eck, man. It's late Tchaikovsky; how is it not gonna be good? The libretto is a little convoluted, but hey, both Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades have plot issues of their own, and that doesn't prevent them from being part of the standard repertoire, so why not more love for this one? As it is, there is only one video, from 1984, from the famous Nizhegorodsky State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (I wonder what it was like to be a classical musician in the waning days of the Soviet Union). The image quality isn't fantastic--it looks like it was indifferently transferred to DVD from a VHS tape--which it almost certainly was (that's also probably why there's a plot synopsis before each act--the original likely wasn't subtitled). I don't mind that, but the sound is a bit muddy as well, which is a bigger issue. It's certainly listenable, but I think for the opera to get a fair critical shake, there's going to need to be a better-quality recording made available.

This is my thirtieth Russian-language opera, incidentally.  Before I started keeping track of these things, I had this idea that Russian was a more prominent operatic language than German, but that clearly isn't true.  It seems firmly ensconced in fifth place, in no danger from sixth-place Czech but likewise no danger to fourth-place German.  I'm not convinced that, with what's currently available, I'd actually be able to reach forty.

Gioachino Rossini, L'italiana in Algeri (1813)

I watched this after hearing the news about Ginsburg. There was nothing I could do, obviously, so it seemed like the best course of action would be to watch a Rossini comedy.

So there's Mustafà, the Bey of Algiers. He's tired of his wife Elvira, so he decides to marry her off to his Italian slave Lindoro so he can look elsewhere: he really wants to marry an Italian girl. Fortunately, there's a new Italiana in the city, Isabella, there to look for her missing sweetheart Lindoro. Lindoro does not want to marry Elvira, but he gets a free pass home to Italy if he agrees, so he does. Isabella is momentarily nonplussed by this, but surprisingly, the two of them actually communicate and quickly clear up the confusion. Shocking! Isabella is fairly sure she can handle the goofy Mustafà, and she's right! They make a plan and do a plan and then escape. Oh, and of course Mustafà loves his wife again, because otherwise it would be a bummer.

This is actually the earliest Rossini opera I've seen yet by some years--written when he was twenty-one!--but in spite of that, yup, I got what I came for. The music is fun, the story is fun...it's fun. Though I do have to say...well, I wouldn't call this a criticism of Rossini per se, but I find that his pure comedies tend to be maybe a little bit too lightweight. You need some substance with your laffs, you know? In this one, the first act is a little bit goofy, but the second is extremely goofy. Shall I explain? So the plan that Isabella and Lindoro cook up is that they're going to tell him how he can become a "Pappataci," which is a special club for men who are never angry at women. You have to pledge to always have a totally chill life with lots of eating and drinking and sleeping. So he goes through this ceremony and is eating and while he's distracted the Italians escape, and when he realizes it he just decides, oh, what the hell, whatever. Silly! VERY SILLY!

Still fun, of course. There's a Met on Demand production available, but it starts a fifty-two-year-old Marilyn Horne (the role is actually for a contralto, but always played by a mezzo as far as I can see), and LOOK, we've been through this. So I watched this Livermore Valley production, and I thought it was pretty great, actually. Bojan Knezevic is hilariously gormless as Mustafà, but I was REALLY impressed with Kristen Choi in the title role--she has a really noticeably warm, resonant voice. I want to see a lot more of her. And a lot more Rossini, of course.

Jules Massenet, Thaïs (1894)

Well, if I want to fulfill my dream of seeing every opera available through Met in HD, I had to get to this eventually. There was no avoiding it. An even half dozen left, now. Is that "even?" Who can say.

It's based on a novel by Anatole France, taking place in early Post-Bible Times. There's a monk named Athanaël living in some monastery out in the desert. He's all hardcore ascetic and all, but he feels called upon to go to Alexandria to try to turn Thaïs, a courtesan he had known there, away from sin. So, he goes and does this thing. At first she makes light of him, but then she privately acknowledges the hollowness of her existence and decides to go with him. They escape into the desert. She enters a convent and he goes back to his monastery. But he's morose, and eventually he confesses that in spite of his efforts to be holy and everything, he can't keep from loving her. Off-stage voices announce that she's dying (of what? just of being in an opera, I guess). He goes to see her and tells her, no no, I was wrong about everything, earthly love is all that matters! But she's gone all holy-roller and can only see the angels and everything. She dies. He is sad. And that is that.

In a way, this is an interesting character piece: Athanaël, in spite of what he may tell himself, doesn't actually want to "save" Thaïs for pious reasons (if he care about the principle of the thing, why would he just ignore all the other courtesans in the Alexandrian court?). He's just hot for her, and even if he's not looking to get into her pants per se, he wants to control her. The dynamic is the same. That said, I found the irony kind of forced: oh look, he switches to being pro-hedonism just as she's becoming all religious. Woo. Nor is she a very compelling character, even if--it is alleged--the role is difficult and the opera's generally put on when there's a big-name diva (Renee Fleming here) who wants to sing it.

There are a few things here that I thought were, you know, okay: there's some kind of fun sort of orientalist, "exotic" music. And there's a long instrumental bit called "Meditation" with a prominent solo violin part. I like that the guy who played it got a bow at the end. And yet, I was underwhelmed, and left with a question: why don't I like Massenet? Seriously, it's weird. I keep watching his stuff, thinking that at a certain point it's bound to click with me. That happened with Lully. But having at this point seen five Massenet operas--trying as much as possible to keep an open mind!--it sure doesn't look like it's happening.

There's no REASON I shouldn't like him: if I say I don't like Stockhausen, say, well, you can tell me, you just don't get him. Your ears and mind are not properly attuned. And...yeah, okay. I'll accept that. But with Massenet, what is there to "get?" He's writing late-romantic music like many another composer whom I like just fine. But for whatever reason, I never seem to find Massenet compelling. It's just weird that I would be so off-putten (I have for some reason decided that "put" shall from now on have a new past participle) by the guy, given that I don't really have other composers in this milieu that I dislike. But so it goes, apparently. We can still be friends, Jules, but I'll have to ask you to lay off the music.

Claude Vivier, Rêves d'un Marco Polo (early eighties-ish)

Vivier was an avant-garde Quebecois composer. The back of the DVD set asserts that "many consider [him] the greatest composer Canada has yet produced," and since I can't actually think of any others...well, okay. He was a student of Stockhausen, championed by Ligeti. He was kind of a mysterious figure; he was raised an orphan of unknown parentage, which mystery he was fixated on. But he's most known for his lurid end at the age of thirty-four or thirty-five (his exact birthday being unknown), stabbed to death in his Parisian flat by a male prostitute he'd picked up at a bar. And as a coda to that, a final unfinished piece of music was found in his apartment with a text about him going on the subway and meeting a young man who fascinated him, and ends thusly: "So he came to sit beside me and said, 'my name is Harry.' I told him that my name was Claude. And without further ado he pulled a knife out of his black, Parisian jacket, and stabbed me right through the heart." You have to admit, that's kind of eerie. Although when one of the people in the included documentary opines that the murder was the only way his life could have ended. It was something deep within him," I have to roll my eyes. What a load of mythologizing bullshit.

So what do we have here then, anyway? Well, this is a piece in two parts, the first being his short 1979 opera or opera-like object Kopernikus: Rituel de la Mort, and the second of something that's been designated Marco Polo (a figure who always interested Vivier) a series of pieces, some of which may have been in some vague way related, put together to, in theory, form a whole. We are told that Vivier himself, in letters, suggested that his work could be put together in this fashion, and so it is done. The producer here (Pierre Audi, my old frenemy) suggests that all of this stuff together forms an "opera fleuve," although you really do have to strain to see any kind of unity here. I think more than anything else, it's simply a retrospective of what's considered Vivier's most important work. Both halves together are about two hours and forty minutes.

I was certainly warned about this. People like to use words like "punishing" and "unpleasant" to describe Vivier's music. And given that I'm not really a fan of Stockhausen or Ligeti, one might well think that I was not the ideal audience here. But I'm a glutton for punishment, dammit, and the DVD set was going cheap, so here we are.

Okay. Kopernikus is not about Copernicus, heaven forfend. Well, saying it's "about" anything might be pushing it, but there's a woman named Agni who is possibly actually Alice from in Wonderland (if she has anything to do with Agni the fire god, that is not at all clear), who stumbles around a stage. There are other people there, including Mozart, Tristan and Isolde, and Lewis Carroll. But they don't say or do anything that would really identify them as these characters, so they don't make a lot of impact. Nothing happens. Really. Some of it is sung in French, and some in a language that Vivier made up. The music is cacophonous and atonal--kind of what I would have expected from a student of Stockhausen. The singers often are required to buzz their lips or move their hands in front of their mouths, which certainly creates a different sound. Is it a sound you actually want to hear? Well...I mean, it's not like it's unlistenable, for the most part, but it does, I found, get pretty tedious, even at just an hour.

The second part, perhaps natch, doesn't hold together as well as the first, and the first doesn't hold together at all. It's a very heterogenous mixture of instrumental and vocal pieces, with any effort at recurring characters being, let's say, obscure. However, I do have to say, it's dramatically more musically accessible. It varies, as you might expect, but there are some jaw-dropping moments, I must admit. Does it nonetheless get a bit boring sometimes? Well...yeah. And certainly the "Marco Polo" theme does not come through very clearly. But I liked it more than the first part, and when it abruptly cuts out--after the unfinished piece about his stabbing, of course--well, that's a pretty dramatic moment, if nothing else.

Still, whatever rating I give this may be irrelevant, since, indeed, I'm clearly not in the target audience. Maybe others love this stuff. Or maybe they're just faking it as part of a diabolical conspiracy to seem cool! No. I don't think people actually do that. I think they are sincere. The set includes an informative hour-long documentary in which various people talk about the experience of hearing Vivier and thinking, "holy shit, this is something completely new," and I want to strongly identify with that. It's certainly something I value greatly. But alas, I am forced to concede that I have my traditionalist leanings, re music.

Mark-Anthony Turnage, Greek (1988)

This is my four hundred fourth opera, so please insert a "file not found" joke here.

I had previously known Turnage from his very good Anna Nicole, one of the first contemporary operas I ever saw. This one is his first: his music teacher--none other than Hans Werner Henze--kept encouraging him to write one for a music festival he was helping to arrange, and this is the result, based on a 1980 play which transplants Oedipus Rex to a working-class London neighborhood of the time. All the characters sing in Cockney accents.

I mean, if you know the story, you have a pretty good idea. Eddy is a kid trying to make his way. He leaves his parents (who in the past heard some absurd prediction from a carnival fortune teller: "you want to have a bunk-up wiv yer mum?"). They're too much for him, so he leaves. Outside the city is pounded by plague and police brutality, and yup, this just got too real. He stops in a diner where he gets in a fracas with the owner, kills him, and gets with his wife, who years ago had a baby who disappeared and okay I think you get where this is going to go. There's a Sphinx about whom he goes to deal with, by answering a riddle--which is the traditional one only with a Bawdy Twist which you can probably figure out just from the fact that I called it "bawdy." He wins, but the plague is still ongoing, and the Terrible Truth comes out--only he ultimately decides, screw this, I'm not gonna blind myself, she's not going to hang herself, it's all about LOVE, baby! Grab your own destiny!

Gritty stuff, albeit with a surprise upbeat ending, but I hell of like it. The music, as near as I can remember, is similar to Anna Nicole. Jazzy stuff, somewhat atonal, but highly rhythmic. A lot of percussion. No, it may not be exactly what a traditionalist is looking for in an opera, but I liked it a lot, and this recording takes full advantage of the fact that it's not staged to do a lot of cool video stuff. The feminist sphinx (played by two separate women, for some reason) are really cool, reminding my somehow of Angela Carter. I am definitely a fan of Turnage.

And because I have nowhere else to put it, I'll put this here: the New York City Opera almost went under a few years ago. Why? Because they did a production of Anna Nicole, and one of the fuckass Koch brothers--not sure if it was the one currently in Hell or the other one--was offended by the portrayal of the old billionaire she marries, who was apparently a Koch Industries investor, an withdrew funding. Obviously, the main problem here is that the arts are dependent on the good will of psychopathic plutocrat freaks, rather than the Kochs per se, but I hope we can still find a little room in our hearts and our guillotines for them personally.

Daniel Auber, Haydée, ou Le Secret (1847)

Who was Daniel Auber (1782-1871)? Well, he was a very popular composer of almost fifty operas who has more or less completely disappeared from the public consciousness. Besides this one, there are a few other DVDs of his work (including yet another Manon Lescaut), but these are all extremely out-of-print and--a bigger problem--lack subtitles. Seriously, why would you do that? We all know that operatic singing can be hard to understand even if you speak the language, and even if you don't care about that, you are really cutting yourself off from the international market. WHATEVER. There's this one, from the same series as the Halévy and Thomas. But this one has been uploaded to a streaming site by some helpful Russian person, so I figured I'd catch it.

It's the sixteenth century, and it's Venice versus the Ottoman Empire. The commander of their fleet, Lorédan, has a ward named Rafaela. What does "ward" mean in this context, and why would you bring a non-combatant woman with you to fight the Turks? Unclear. He also has a slave girl named Haydée. He also has--wait for it--a secret! The secret is that in years past, he cheated at dice to win a fortune from a noble named Donato whom he won a fortune from and who them killed himself. This fills Lorédan with remorse. His villainous second-in-command, Malipieri, learns about it when he sings about it in his sleep, and also has a letter admitting what he did. As you do. this super-keen young guy, Andréa, who is Donato's son, wants to serve under him so he can win the favor of Rafaela. He does this, and they defeat the Turks, but Malipieri knows The Secret, and he's going to tell it to everyone so that Lorédan--who is going to become Doge--will be disgraced. Haydée has a secret too: she's in love with Lorédan. He frees her, but she still wants to be with him. To make amends for his past crimes, he says, okay, Andrea and Rafaela, you can get married, but only if you agree to take my fortune. Malipieri is going to reveal the truth, but Haydée begs him not to. He agrees only on the condition that she marry him. She agrees--no greater love than this!--but then Andréa comes in, having killed Malipieri. So everyone's happy.

Wait, what? you might think. Yep. Andréa provides absolutely no reason or justification for having killed the guy, but everyone's cool with it. There are definitely a lot of plotting problems like this in the opera. So Lorédan just mentions the one time that he wants to give away his fortune: okay, so is this actually going to happen? Andréa and Rafaela don't, I don't know, wonder why he would do this thing? And are we supposed to think Lorédan has redeemed himself, or what? I mean, obviously we're meant to like him, but he never redeems himself in any official way. I dunno.

Well, regardless, you can see why Auber was popular. The music here is very crowd-pleasing, especially in the latter half, with many excellent arias and duets. And this performance may be the best I've seen so far from this series. Anne-Sophie--who m I liked in Noé--is back here as Rafaela, and is still very good. So is Bruno Comparetti as Lorédan also, and I just want to note that I couldn't shake the feeling that he looks eerily like Lin-Manuel Miranda. Maybe it's just the facial hair.  Anyway, I would love to see more of Auber.

There's this person on imdb who goes by the name "TheLittleSongbird" who's written reviews of all these obscure operas. I keep wanting to look through all their opera write-ups, but it's totally impossible, because they've written over SEVENTEEN THOUSAND reviews(!!!), seemingly of every movie or TV episode or cartoon short they see, which is a lot, and as such the list is totally unmanageable. But I wanted to give them a shout-out nonetheless. Very impressive.

Ambroise Thomas, Le songe d'une nuit d'été (1850)

Thomas is known today pretty much exclusively for his Hamlet. Well, and also for Mignon, maybe, but that one sure isn't readily available in video form. Sure, there are a few bootlegs available on Premiereopera.nl, but none with subtitles. I suppose if I were a huge Thomas fanatic, I might try to plow through nonetheless, but...I'm not. Anyway, it seems like one of these things that's probably going to appear on DVD sooner rather than later. WHATEVS. This one is available as part of the same series that gave us Noé, although I must note that this was a region one disc. I still very strongly disapprove of region locks, but at least it means I didn't have to futz around with VLC and HDMI cables to make it play.

In spite of the title, this has nothing to do with A Midsummer Night's Dream. Well, I suppose that depends on how you define "nothing to do with." But it certainly isn't based on it. Indeed, it's one of the weirder operatic plots I've seen: three of the five central characters are Sir John Falstaff, William Shakespeare, and Queen Elizabeth I. There's a party at a tavern where Shakespeare is chilling with various actors and characters from his plays. Elizabeth and her handmaiden Olivia come by. Elizabeth wants Shakespeare to stop getting drunk all the time and concentrate on using his genius. He passes out, and she orders Falstaff, here a gameskeeper, to take him to this forest (don't ask why--motivations are not one hundred percent clear; it's like a dream in form as well as substance). He wakes up and is confused, but he sees Olivia. Her suitor, Latimer, sees him and thinking he's in love with her, challenges him to a duel in which he, Latimer, appears to be killed. Back at the palace, Shakespeare is extremely confused by the goings-on, but he will, it is implied, use as inspiration for A Midsummer Night's Dream (which doesn't even slightly work chronologically, given that the libretto references later plays, but what the hey).

If that seems like a jumble that doesn't make a lot of sense...that's fair. It is indeed that. But you know, the music is pleasant enough, in spite of the sound on this DVD being a bit muffled. There's a lot of spoken dialogue, which I'm never a massive fan of: there's a later revision--so says wikipedia--that replaces this with recitative, which seems preferable--but the one available to us has a whole lotta chattering. As a whole, I found this to more a curiosity than anything else, but a pleasant enough curiosity.

The production in question was produced in 1994 to commemorate the opening of the Chunnel--presumably because it's a French composer writing about English characters. Cute. I want to quote this amazing statement from a British reviewer of the time:

Queen Elizabeth, Falstaff, and Shakespeare are introduced under the most ridiculous circumstances, and in absurd relations to each other. We could forgive our Gallic friends for scandalizing Queen Bess and rendering fat Jack ridiculous, but to profane the memory of the sweet Swan of Avon by introducing his name into such balderdash is at once an insult to all who reverence him and an evidence that the French are wholly ignorant of his glorious works. Poor fellows!

I don't mean to sound harsh, but this is the most ludicrous thing I've ever read that's not a defense of T****. Even if you accept the notion that it's UNACCETABLE to profane the memory blahdy blah...what are you even complaining about? The opera repeatedly refers to his genius. At no point does it announce that SHAKESPEARE IS TEH SUXX0RZ. This is easily understood, however, as a reaction against modernity. This anonymous reviewer sees Shakespeare as this stable, reliable aspect of British cultural identity, and is reacting violently to Thomas's however playful problematizing of that narrative. Modernity is indeed a mixed blessing, but if you react so violently to even this extremely benign expression thereof...well, I doubt the rest of this reviewer's life was very pleasant.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Iolanta (1892)

This is Tchaikovsky's last opera, and it's the third and final of his operas, along with Eugene Onegin and Queen of Spades, that's regularly performed. So I thought I ought to take a look.

It's a fairy tale piece, about a blind princess who's being kept in a cabin in an isolated forest. Her dad, King René, wants to hide her there so her fiancé from childhood, Duke Robert, won't know about her condition. Also, he's determined that she not know she's blind--that she not be aware of the very concept of seeing. the King comes by with a Muslim doctor (his religion is incidental; I gather the idea was just that these are exotic people who maybe have mystical knowledge), who says that her vision can maybe be restored, but first she has to be appraised of the fact that she's blind and that there's something TO restore. The King is unsure about what to do. A bit later, Duke Robert and his pal Vaudémont, who's another duke or something, stumble onto the scene. Robert doesn't want to marry Iolanta because, well, he's never seen her, and also he already has a sweetheart. But Vaudémont, natch, immediately falls in love, and, realizing that she's blind, reveals the truth. The King is annoyed about this, but hey, now that she knows, maybe her vision can be fixed. Probably not, says the doctor, because she doesn't seem to really want it that badly. So the King incentivizes her by announcing that if she's not healed, Vaudémont will be executed (don't worry; it's just a trick, he wasn't really going to have him killed). Well, anyway, she ends up being able to see. Lord Robert renounces his claim on her so she can be with Vaudémont. Hurrah!

I mean, it's a fairy tale, so it probably doesn't pay to think too hard about the logic here, but it's hard not to have a few questions: if the King thought Robert wouldn't be willing to marry his daughter if he knew about her blindness, why did he think keeping her hidden would help with this? He's gonna have to know eventually! And even if you accede to that somewhat dubious logic, I still REALLY don't see the point of not letting her know about her own condition. What possible purpose does that serve?

Still, never mind. I watched this Met Live in HD production. At one point, host Joyce DiDonato remarks that "this is what opera should be," and on the one hand I don't think that opera "should" be any one thing, and on the other, I had found myself sort of thinking the same before she even said it. Certainly it's the kind of thing that can make you fall in love with the form all over again. Iolanta's and Vaudémont's big love duet, MY GOODNESS, so passionate! Yeah! And you've gotta love Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczała in the roles (Ilya Bannik is also notably good as King René). The production features the house as a cube in the middle of the stage, rotating as need be, with the forest all around it. Very effective.

There's also, perhaps--not that I'm an expert--what seems to be to be a surprisingly progressive disability rights meta-narrative here: when Vaudémont first realizes that Iolanta can't see, he completely freaks out and pathologizes the hell out of her condition: OH MY GOD YOU CAN'T SEE THAT'S SO AWFUL. But she's like, no, I don't need to see, I can still experience the beauty of the world with my other senses, and he's like, yeah! You're right! It's no big deal!...but still, maybe it would still be nice to be able to see, perhaps? He learns and moderates his stance. So, I mean, I'm sure you can find aspects of it to criticize, but it seems like it could've been a lot worse in that regard?

Well, in any case, this was great and I loved it. I should definitely dig into Tchaikovsky's lesser-known operas to the extent that they're available. I am a fan.

Giacomo Meyerbeer, Margherita d'Anjou (1820)

Well...here it is. My four hundredth opera. The big four-oh-oh. As you can see, I made absolutely no effort to choose something that would be particularly big-name or otherwise significant. I dunno...there are shedloads of operas I haven't seen, and many of them are doubtless great, but I'm not sure how I'd find one that seemed "significant," whatever that means. Still! Good number! When I started getting into opera, I would have been skeptical that there even were that many available to see, but now I realize that I've only just scratched the surface. Well, maybe more than "just scratched." But I ain't running out anytime soon!

So this is this. The title character is Margaret of Anjou, wife--and, here, widow--of Henry VI. You might think that the plot would be Donizetti-esque, but it's not, really. It's an odd attempt to mix historical drama with opera buffa tropes. Not the Donizetti didn't take liberties, but here more than ever, do not expect the history to be particularly...historical.

So Henry VI (Enrico, I guess we'd call him here) was killed in the War of the Roses. Margherita had fled to France, but now she's back to try to reclaim the throne for her son. Various French people are with her, notably Gamautte, a Figaro-like barber and surgeon, and Lavarenne, who has left his wife because he's in love with her. Said wife, Isaura, is there also, disguised as a man. There's a general named Carlo who was banished by the queen, but then rejoins her with his troops. The Duke of Gloucester captures Margherita's son but is defeated. Lavarenne is convinced that he should go back to being in love with Isaura (not exactly psychologically realistic, but very typical in this sort of opera). So, everyone's happy. Although it should be noted that her son--Edward, Prince of Wales--is going to die in battle at the age of seventeen.

Considering how much I liked the other early Italian Meyerbeer I've seen, Il crociato in Egitto, I had high hopes for this one. They were not fulfilled, however. I think this is a pretty bad opera. Sure, the story's goofy, but that could easily forgiven if it were more interesting musically. But while it certainly has a moment or two (really good overture, fwiw), I was largely unmoved by this. And...well, while the story could be forgiven if it had a better story, the fact remains, it doesn't, and that fact doesn't do the music any favors either. The two are complementary.

However, we do have to talk about the production here, which is, unsurprisingly, the only way you're going to see this. The review are all frothing-at-the-mouth about how much they hate it, but I just wave my hand dismissively at that: we'll see. People are too touchy sometimes. But...well, as much as I hate to agree with anyone ever, particularly people who probably also hate plenty of perfectly fine productions, I have to admit: it's really pretty dire. The king of thing that gives Eurotrash a bad name. The first act takes place, seemingly, at some sort of fashion show, with a catwalk running across the stage where various extras parade in bizarre mixtures of medieval and modern-day dress. The chorus--in theory, Margherita's soldiers--consists of the audience at this show. There are cameramen all over the place. Gamautte is presented as this flamboyant gay hairdresser. The second act is mostly at some kind of spa/health club, with everyone dressed in robes. Lavarenne delivers his angst aria about how much he love Margherita and how bad he feels about leaving his wife on a shrink's couch. okay, that last bit is kind of clever. But the fact remains: all of this is just totally bizarre and unconnected in any discernible way with the plot of the opera. The fun of Eurotrash is seeing whether you can make a story feel natural in a completely different setting. This doesn't even try. It makes the action way more hard to follow that it should be, and it drains whatever drama there might have been out of it. I hate it. Would I go so far as the guy who wrote "if you are sightless, you may enjoy this opera. But, if you are a somewhat normal opera goer and someone who enjoys the French Grand Opera, look elsewhere," sounding like he's about to start ranting about degenerate art? Not quite. But it IS extremely awful. The most famous person here is actually the conductor, Fabio Luisi, who often works at the Met. Surely he deserved better. I might be more forgiving if there were other choices, but given that this is your only option...yeesh. The little blurb claims that it's an "exemplary production: the ironical setting of the director Talevi- the War of the Roses takes place at the London Fashion Week." It's "ironic" because...participants in the War of the Roses were famous for being slovenly dressers? I'm not convinced you know what words mean.

#OperaHarmony Finale

It just goes to show: you shouldn't ask me to predict anything.  I am totally out-of-touch with what anybody wants, ever.  Here were the finalists, two from each week:

You will notice that APART/MENTAL, which I was so confident about, didn't even make the list--but a lot of entries that I DID find pretty uninteresting did.  And seriously, no Threshold?  What am I even DOING.  And yet, there were SOME that I liked a lot, proving that my taste isn't literally the opposite of anyone else's.  The Den, Edge of Time, My Neighbor Figaro: solid stuff.  I voted for the Figaro with a clear conscience.  So who won?  Essential Business, A Life Reset, and The Den.  I assume those are first, second, and third places respectively, though the page doesn't really make that clear.  Of Essential Business, I raved that "I like the concept, but the libretto seems clunky."  A Life Reset I called "a little bit, dare I say it, boring. Definitely my least favorite this week." 

In conclusion, the fact that other people like other things than I do means they're going to Hell.

Fromental Halévy, Noé (1885)

Here's a rarity. This was Halévy's last opera, left unfinished at his death. His son-in-law Georges Bizet completed it (and then it wasn't performed until after Bizet's own death--the Meyerbeer/Halévy style of grand opera having more or less gone out of fashion). There's some confusion about how much of it is Halévy and how much Bizet, but from what I understand it seems like more the former. I doubt they'd be credited as co-equals, as they often are, if Bizet hadn't eclipsed Halévy's fame. Nobody remembers the name of the guy who completed Lulu (Friedrich Cerha). Still, you've gotta figure Bizet's name is the only reason it's available on disc at all, as opposed to any of Halévy's other grand operas that aren't La Juive, so just accept it.

What's an opera about Noah's ark going to involve? you might ask. As presented in Genesis, it's kind of a thin story, isn't it? Will there be comical interludes with the family looking for wombats to bring on the ark? Will it include Ham being cursed for laughing at his naked drunken father and that's why slavery's A-okay? Uh...not quite.

Noe's son Sem is coming back home with his new daughter-in-law Ebba, which is great and all; what's not great is that his other daughter-in-law Saraï is upset because her husband Cham has decided he doesn't love her anymore and doesn't want to be with her, and will not be dissuaded of this decision. He's actually in love with Ebba now, and tries to use his bandit goons to take her from her husband. While this is going on, there's an angel named Ituriel who is in love with Saraï. He's torn between returning to Heaven and forsaking God for this mortal love, but he ultimately chooses the latter. She resists his advances at first, but eventually gives in, and he takes her off to rule "the fallen city of Hénoch," where there's non-stop orgiastic dancing. Cham eventually shows up looking for shelter, and still refuses to take her back. Ituriel whips up an ever-greater frenzy (his fallenness by now being due to much more than just being in love with a human). Ham and the other brother Japheth show up. Finally, Noé appears and damns everyone. His family escapes and he summons a great flood. They all sing in praise of God. The end.

WHOA, I thought. Admittedly I'm not the most sedulous of Bible scholars, but you'd think I'd remember this stuff if it were canonical, wouldn't you...? I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I actually went back to the original story to see if there was anything whatsoever that would have been suggestive of this opera's story. Nope! If there IS some sort of apocryphal source for any of this, I have no idea. There IS an angel Ithuriel, "a being mentioned in the writings of the Kabbala and in 16th century conjuring books," but that's nothing to do with this. Sure, there are plenty of operas that take liberties with historical of mythological source material, but somehow, Bible fan fiction like this just feels extra-bizarre.

Still, I thought this was pretty great, in part because of its general unpredictability (although I do have to note that one of the main things in the opera seems to be Cham's redemption...and then he's never redeemed. He just goes with his dad because otherwise he'll drown, apparently. This seems like a pretty significant failing)...and in part, just because the music slaps. The orgy scene is reminiscent of the Ballet of the Nuns in Robert le diable or the Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila--both good things to be. A lot of characteristically grand-opera-esque arias and duets also. There's some good ol' noise here. Also, Anne-Sophie Schmidt absolutely kills as Saraï (it's a sad sign of the times that when you google her, the results are dominated by stories about her and other women accusing the conductor Charles Dutoit of molestation).

This production is, it should first be noted, on a region 2 DVD. Region-locked DVDs are a hideous and shameful blight. Fortunately, most opera DVDs are region-free, but occasionally you find an old one like this that's so afflicted. Once you get past THAT, the actual production is...interesting. The first act is a very traditional, somewhat kitschy Ten Commandments/Ben Hur type thing...but as things proceed, it gets more modern. The bandits have guns. The orgy participants are wearing contemporary clothes. Ituriel looks like an alien from the original Star Trek, which is...maybe not the all-time greatest choice. The flood is represented by a video montage of actual flooding. And in the end, Noé releases an actual, living dove into the theater. This is the second live bird I've seen in an opera recently (or maybe ever), after La Salustina.  Birds leading interesting lives.  I have nothing meaningful to say about that. Ups and downs, but I thought on the whole the production was enjoyable.

Yeah, by all means, see this if you can find a copy of the extremely out-of-print DVD. I would like to see a serious grand-opera revival. I feel it is a neglected subgenre.

Philip Glass and Robert Moran, The Juniper Tree (1985)

Here's a short opera by a famous composer and a significantly less famous composer. I'm intrigued by this, from the wikipedia entry:

Glass retained ownership of the opera, and did not allow for the "live" recording of the premiere...to be released until 2009. Until then, Moran encouraged his fans to distribute bootleg copies so that people could hear it.

"That jerk doesn't want you to hear our rad-as-hell opera! You should bootleg the hell out of it! That'll show him!" Glass' inflexibility is probably why the Met in HD recordings of Satyagraha and Akhnaten are not normally available--which sucks, as they're transcendent works of art. Come on, man!

Regardless, there's this Wolf Trap production we can all watch. It's a short, fairy-tale opera. The story is presented somewhat abstrusely, but it's not exactly a complicated story, when you get down to it: there's a woodcutter (or something--most of these dudes are woodcutters, right?). His wife dies, and his new one murders his son and serves him to his dad in a stew. Mm-mm good! The boy's sister buried his bones under the juniper tree, and his spirit takes the form of a bird and tells what happens and murders the hell out of his stepmother, then reincarnates. Apparently. And that's your lot.

The question you might be inclined to ask is: can I tell which parts are written by Glass and which by Moran? And the unsatisfying answer is: sort of, maybe, sometimes. There are definitely parts of this that sounds more and less the way I associate Glass sounding, but that's a pretty flimsy criterion to be using. Moran has his own operas, but none of them are available in any recorded form; it would be interesting to watch one and see if echoes of it are apparent here.

I will say, at any rate, that the two composers never clash: there's never a time when we get a jarring transition from one to the other. So the collaboration works in that sense. But I must say, on the whole, I didn't find it all that compelling. There were a few hypnotic, glassy elements, but overall--eh. The kabuki-ish production was effective, however, and it DOES make me want to see more Glass, which is a shame because I can't. Dang it.

Frederick Delius, A Village Romeo and Juliet (1907)

Where did I hear about this? I don't quite remember. But I did, and I watched it. BOOM.

So sometime in the past, a farmer died, only because his son is illegitimate, he's not allowed to inherit the land. So the two neighboring families argue over it and eventually legal proceedings eat up all their money and they're both left penniless. Of course, there's a son from one family and a daughter from the other, Sali and Vreli. They've been in love since they were small children, and they still are. When her father sees them together he tries to separate them and ends up getting killed, but that doesn't really have any other apparent relevance to anything. They go to a dance where people recognize them, but not in a condemnatory way or anything; more like, "what a cute couple." Still, they don't like being talked about, so they leave. They meet a group of wanderers who invite them to go off with them, but they don't want that life, so they refuse.

Now: at this point, we're ten or fifteen minutes from the ending. And as it got closer and closer, while the opera conspicuously failed to do any groundwork for the couple's tragic demise, it started to become clear to me that there were only two possibilities: either the couple would actually survive this (wildly unlikely); or, more probably, their deaths would be really abrupt and unjustified and generally bathetic. And boy that was not wrong! What happens is, after they leave the vagabonds, Vreli just comes out and says "we can never be united, so let's die together." To which my response would be, lol wut? But he's down with that, so they go off on a barge and drown. THE END. Oh yeah, and I should mention that there's another fairly important character known only as the "dark fiddler," the illegitimate son of the dead farmer, who keeps popping up and is he good? bad? it's sort of ambivalent, and seemingly he's ultimately good, but even more ultimately, he's not really anything, as there's no real payoff to his presence.

So...yes. The libretto here has really serious, obvious issues. But you know what? On the whole, I liked this in spite of that. The music is straightforwardly gorgeous romanticism, with some very good love duets, and more than that, I think the movie is very well-cast. It's mostly lip-synched; the only actual singer on scene is Thomas Hampson as the dark fiddler. I always like Hampson, and he invests the character with more intrigue and appeal than the story as written affords him. Sali and Vreli may not be actually singing their parts, but their, uh, meat puppets (that probably wasn't the most appealing possible way to put that) look the part and are just very appealing.  The only one whose non-singing I found really noticeable and distracting was Young Vreli at the very beginning. Until the silly ending, I was prepared to rave unreservedly about this; now, I have to do it reservedly, but the fact that the conclusion annoyed me as much as it did is a tribute to how much I was invested in the story. The words "Romeo and Juliet" don't exactly set my soul on fire; it just feels like such an overdone, calcified thing. But this revived it for me! So big ups to Delius for that.

This filmed version is quite good; very attractive settings and, well, people. The fair and the vagabonds' encampment are both lively and atmospheric. I would sort of like to see an actual staged version--it would be a very different experience--but it's all good. Delius, obviously, is not exactly a household name, and I think this is the only one of his operas that's still performed at all. But hell, I certainly wouldn't object to seeing more, given the chance.

Wolfgang Rihm, Jakob Lenz (1979)

This is my first opera by a living German composer. Whoo? Whoo. Sure. Why not? It's my third opera, however, to be based on a work by Georg Büchner, the poet who died of Typhus at the age of twenty-three, after Wozzeck and Dantons tod. The latter feels like the odd man out, but the similarities between this and Wozzeck are apparent.

The historical Jakob Lenz was a writer of prose and poetry who was friends for a while with Goethe, and who fell in unrequited love with a woman named Friederike Brion, his, Goethe's, former lover. He had a lot of mental problems and couldn't find a stable living situation until, to quote the booklet, "he was found dead on the street on 23 May 1792." Büchner's story, and then this opera, try to dramatize his mental states.

So yes. That's pretty much what one can say about the plot of this. Lenz is in a mental hospital, seemingly, at least here. The whole thing, naturally, is very internal; the booklet's synopsis makes it sound like more happens than actually does. There are just three character, Lenz himself and his friends Oberlin and Kaufmann, along with a small chorus. They talk about art and his mental state and what is to be done with him. He ideates obsessively about Friederike. In the end he's left alone and apparently dies, though that doesn't seem specified by the libretto. And that is it.

The music...well, it's a modern opera. Don't expect Puccini. The music is very jagged and dissonant, and of course none of what you'd call arias. It's dramatically effective, though. Or so I thought. Georg Nigl is very good in the title role, effectively portraying Lenz' desperation and raw psyche. This is definitely a work that benefits from being short: at three hours, it might be a bit much for me, but at seventy-five minutes, I have no problems whatsoever. Worth a look.

Chaya Czernowin, Infinite Now (2017)

Here's one of those pretentious "is this really an opera?" operas, like Einstein on the Beach or Stockhausen's Licht cycle. I'm not necessarily using "pretentious" as a pejorative here, but this is definitely nothing like anyone's classical definition of "opera."

There's no story, really; no characters. It's about war; that's about all you can say. That sense of everything happening at once that you get from the title. It's based--supposedly--on a mixture of a play based on All Quiet on the Western Front and a story by Can Xue (an author I really ought to read) about a woman who comes to a house on a hill and finds it hard to leave. Well, I say "based on." Probably "loosely inspired by" more than anything. Honestly, I can't detect any kind of plot having to do with the former, and while the latter IS clearly present, it's kind of inchoate and doesn't ultimately amount to much. A lot of the text is letters from World War I soldiers.  The libretto is more or less an even mix of French, German, and English.

It is, well, it is. It is. As you would expect, the music is...avant-garde. Sometimes barely there. Does this work? Sort of, sometimes. There's one part where the dominant "instrument" is just the howling wind, into which various background instruments sometimes intrude. It's actually kind of effective, once you get into it. There's a staggering sense of being overwhelmed. And sometimes there are parts that may remind you, thematically at any rate, of the famous crescendo in "A Day in the Life." I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that this thing doesn't have merit.

But (you knew there would be a but; let's face it: I like big buts and I cannot lie) overall, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that overall I loved or even particularly liked this piece. The narrative seemed just SO non-existent, which wouldn't necessarily be a criticism, but I feel that it's trying to be something, and not quite getting there. If you do like this, I feel you will probably also like Stockhausen: that's what I was most reminded of. Hurray for Operavision for bringing us weird shit like this, but I'm glad that I didn't pay for it.

Leonardo Vinci, Artaserse (1730); and Johann Adolph Hasse, Artaserse (1730)

"What th' heck?!? I'm seein' double! I've gotta stop hittin' the sauce so hard!" -You

These days, we think of libretti as individual things: one opera, one libretto. It would just feel weird if someone made a new opera with the libretto of Tosca, say. At best, it would seem like a postmodern experiment (though Benjamin Britten did do his own version of John Gay's Beggar's Opera). But 'twas not always so: back in the eighteenth century, they played faster and looser. By far the most popular writer of libretti was Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, known by his pen name of Metastasio. He wrote dozens of them, and each one he wrote was made into an opera by dozens of different composers. Depending on what source you read, the present example was set to music eighty, ninety, or a hundred times--and even the lower estimate is mind-boggling. It is not clear to me how much money he actually made from this, but you'd think that even with copyright laws loose or nonexistent, it would have to be a lot. Difficult to say. Gluck and Vivaldi are among the higher-profile composers to use his libretti; surprisingly, Handel never did. Today, his work is best-known through Mozart: his early opera Il re pastore is to a Metastasio libretto, and La Clemenza di Tito is based on another, albeit heavily revised.

These are the first two settings of Artaserse: Hasse's opera debuted a mere week after Vinci's. There are video recordings of multiple versions of several Metastasio libretti (L'Olimpiade, Didone abbandonata), but none where the two versions are basically exact contemporaries. So it may be interesting to look at them in tandem. Okay, that "so" is unnecessary: obviously, it would be interesting to look at those other pairs in tandem too. What the hell am I even doing here? Sheesh.

So here's the deal: Arbace is a friend of Artaserse (Artaxerses), son of Xerxes. He's in love with Artaserse's sister Mandane, but when he'd asked Serse for permission to marry her, he banned him from the palace, so now they're meeting in secret. But! Then Arbace's father Artabano appears, and reveals to his son that he has killed Serse. He had ambitions of becoming king. Arbace is horrified, but doesn't want to give away his dad because filial piety. Artaserse is also horrified, of course, and blame for the murder falls on his brother Dario (neither Serse nor Dario appear as characters); at Artabano's encouragement, he has him killed. Arbace ends up blamed for Serse's murder and still won't give away pa, in spite of Artaserse's efforts to get him to defend himself. Oh yeah, and Artaserse is also in love with Arbace's sister Semira. Anyway, baroque-type stuff happens. There's an uprising, but Arbace stops it by killing Artabano's flunky Megabise. This confirms his innocence to Artaserse, but he directs him to swear to his innocence by drinking from a cup that Artabano, thinking Artaserse would drink from it, had poisoned. To save his son's life, he confesses. Artaserse is going to have him executed, but Arbace begs for mercy for him, so he's banished instead. Everyone else is happy. Why their names all start with "Ar," however, is never revealed. This is extremely loosely based on actual history, to this extent: apparently, Xerxes I really was murdered by his vizier Artabanus, and he convinced Xerxes' son Artaxerxes that his brother Darius was responsible and got him to kill him. And that's as far as it goes; the rest of it, I believe, is entirely made up.

Regardless, it's a pretty good story. There's one thing I perceive as a hole, which is that it's never acknowledged that, in protecting his dad, Arbace is putting his friend and girlfriend in danger. This whole pleading the fifth business was untenable in the long run. Also, it's kind of weird the extent to which everyone just sort of forgets about Dario; his death seems like not that big a deal to his brother, and his sister never even alludes to it. No biggie, however. It's still compelling. Compelling enough to need to be made into one hundred operas? That's a matter of opinion, but I'm glad it was made into at least two.

Seriously, these were terrific. I was worried at first that I'd find seeing it for a second time tedious, but the two are different enough that it wasn't an issue (though I think piling a third version on top would've been pushing it). But the shameful truth must be admitted: musically, I can't even begin to tell the difference. Who's the better composer? Ya got me! Can I name some stylistic differences between the two? Hard nope! The differences that I see are exclusively in the production and the voice types.

The Vinci opera was originally performed with an all-male cast because female singers were still forbidden in Papal Rome (seriously, has there been any period in history when the Catholic Church hasn't been embarrassingly behind the times?). This production--the first one in modern times--holds true to that. Artabano is played by a tenor, and the other five roles are all countertenors (I'm sort of surprised Megabise wouldn't have been a baritone). Five countertenors in one opera is definitely a record for me.

Now, of course, there's the fraught question of men playing women. The cold hard truth is, there's just something inside us: women playing men seem cool and stylish, whereas men playing women seem generally seem comical and grotesque. The reasons for this aren't flattering: it's gotta be some mixture of gay panic/transphobia and the ingrained misogynistic feeling that men are somehow lowering themselves by playing women. Doesn't it? Not proud of it, but there it is. This production addresses that by being very, very stylized: all the characters are caked with white facepaint and decked out in outrageous costumes, such that they all look sort of androgynous--and it really works, dramatically, I must say. It doesn't feel in any way ludicrous. It also features occasional backstage people as part of the production, helping characters with wigs and things--weird, but fine.

Hasse is extremely different: there's a much more conventional voice cast here (this is in line with how his opera was originally presented, give or take, although of course these things were much more fluid back in the day, with roles constantly being rewritten to fit different singers). Here, the countertenors are pared down to just two, Arbace and Megabise (Arbace is sung in both the Vinci and the Hasse by Franco Fagioli--I wonder whether he ever had trouble keeping straight which version he was doing). The women are sung by women (including Rosa Bove, whom I enjoyed as one of the maids in Lo frate 'nnamorato), as Semira); Artaserse becomes a tenor, and Artabano--most surprisingly--is a trouser role, sung by an honest-to-god contralto. The production is much less stylized than the Vinci (within the context of opera, the most-stylized-ever art form, of course): more or less modern-day costumes. The men in military uniforms. It's all good.

So which one did I like better? Well...as I said, I am unable to judge who is the greater composer, but looking purely at these productions, I've gotta go with the Hasse. The Vinci production is definitely bolder, taking risks that mostly pay off, and I admire it for that. And yet, I can't help but think that, as much as I love countertenors, having them dominate the singing to this extent may be a little bit too much of a good thing. That's no criticism of any of their singing, but one does crave variety at a certain point. Also, I have to make a shameful confession here: I like how lady opera singers sound. I like listening to them. THERE, I said it. And on that note, Sonia Prina as Hassebano gives my favorite performance in either one of them. Really just spectacular. Also, the Hasse version would be way a way better choice if you were trying to introduce someone to baroque opera: all that countertenor singing in the Vinci would likely drive you insane if you weren't predisposed to like it.

I uploaded two arias, here and here. These obscure baroque composers deserve more exposure. There are a few more Vinci opera available on disc, but this is IT for Hasse, in spite of the fact that he lived to a ripe old age and wrote prolifically (meanwhile, Vinci also wrote prolifically until his death at forty-ish, allegedly having been poisoned by a jealous husband; this was his last opera). I suppose you can't argue TOO hard with Handel being the composer of the era that most people know, but given that these were basically unknown until their modern revivals, I think we can be sure that there's plenty else from them and others that deserves hearing.