"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.
No comments:
Post a Comment