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.
No comments:
Post a Comment