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.
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