Rodion Shchedrin, Dead Souls (1976)

If I'm not mistaken, this is my first opera by a living Russian composer (Shchedrin is eighty-seven as of this writing). So...that's a fact. I'm not saying it's a fascinating fact, but at least it's not a horrendous lie.

Allow me to confess: I have not read Gogol's novel. What can I say? I no doubt should, but so far it hasn't happened, which might actually be a bit of an issue for understanding the action here, which is not always super-clear. It's about a man named Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov who is wandering around the countryside trying to get people to sell him "dead souls;" I am given to understand that "souls" refers to peasants (though that's definitely not in the libretto). What exactly he wants with them, or what indeed it MEANS to own one of these, is not at all clear. Regardless, he visits a few different people, and at first he's super-popular for some reason, but then rumors start spreading and everyone hates him. And then he's dead? No? Probably not. But again, it's not really clear, and that's why I should probably read the book.

I mean, that's not to say that it's too terrible of an opera. It actually has some pretty funny stuff, particularly when Chichikov is trying to get souls from this seamstress who's very pragmatic about the whole thing. Also, this one where he's talking to, I don't know, some kind of...professor? And the busts in the background--they really do look like inanimate busts--burst into song from time to time. Nice. It does, I must say, include a lot of babbling about god knows what, which it is my impression is characteristic of Russian literature in general. Geez, talk about painting with a broad brush.

The music...well, this is definitely one of these operas where it seems really firmly in service to the action and not something you would likely listen to by itself. Though there is some interesting, Arab-sounding chanting of abstruse poetry. That was cool. Good production, anyway, as expected from the Mariinsky Theatre. You could to worse, and it's interesting to see a contemporary(-ish) Russian opera. You could watch it on amazon if you wanted, but why bother when--at least in the US--it's freely available via EuroArtsChannel?

Gioachino Rossini, Il turco in Italia (1814)

If you think I'm not freaking out about the election, you are extremely wrong. I'm just not freaking out all over my blogs, because really, what good does that do? Watching Rossini is definitely a better option. Is this title here the opposite of L'italiana in Algeri? Well, not technically, but come on, you know that Rossini's librettists were not overly concerned with the cultural distinctions between different kinds of Muslim places or people, so I think it's fair to see the two as companion pieces.

So there's this poet, Prosdocimo, who's looking for a plot for his new comedy (is this an opera or a non-musical play? Unclear; that seems to shift around a bit). He finds his inspiration in the action going on around him: there's a gypsy woman, Zaida, a former slave in a Turkish harem; she and her master were in love and going to marry, but her rivals spread rumors about her unfaithfulness so he got mad and she ran away. Presently, who should show up at the harbor but the selfsame Turkish prince, Selim, who wants to see Italy. Meanwhile there's Fiorilla, an Italian woman who does not subscribe to the idea that a woman should love just one man, much to the distress of her husband Genorio. She and Selim flirt, to the dismay of both him and Zaida. Zaida confronts him but he's conflicted about what he wants. There's a masked ball with confused identities Selim and Zaida get together, and when it becomes clear that he's going to leave her, Fiorilla decides that she loves Genorio after all. As ever, the psychology is somewhat questionable, but what the hey! We're all happy.

The character of Prosdocimo is interesting; he's totally unnecessary to the plot, but he adds a cool meta element to the proceedings. Aside from that, it's Rossini comedy as usual: maybe a little less goofy than L'italiana in Algeri or Le Comte Ory, but not really that different. Which is a good thing, just so we're clear. This colorful traditional production from the 2007 Rossini Festival definitely does the trick. Alessandra Marianelli stands out as Fiorilla; I just recently enjoyed her performance in that weird circus-themed La serva padrona, so it's nice to see her in a bigger role.

Giovanni Batista Pergolesi, L'Olimpiade (1735) and Baldassare Galuppi, L'Olimpiade (1748)

Hurrah! Another Metastasio double-feature! Yes, it takes place admist the Olympic Games, but do not expect a notably sporty opera. What IS the most sporty opera I've seen? Gotta be Roxy und ihr Wunderteam, and even that's not very much so.

Well so, it's Ancient Greek times, and Princess Aristea is going to wed the winner. Lycidas was previously in love with another princess, Argene, but her dad rejected him, and he's given up his hopes there. He's bad at sports, so he wants his pal Megacles to enter in his place. He's only too happy to do that, particularly because Lycidas had previously saved his life. But! It turns out that Megacles and Aristea are already in love, and this leaves Megacles hell of conflicted. Meanwhile, Aristea has a friend staying with her, a shepherdess who turns out to be Argene in disguise, having run away not wanting to marry anyone other than Lycidas. So stuff happens, and as you'd predict, the appropriate couples all end up coming together, concluding with a rather dizzying plot twist where Lycidas is the king's son. I mean, not that things like that are unusual, but it's very abrupt and disorienting as presented here.

I enjoyed both of these. Predictably. Which one is better? GOOD LORD I DON'T KNOW. At least with that Artaserses, there were significant casting differences to talk about, but here they're mostly the same: the four lovers all played by women, the king and Lycidas' tutor Aminta by men. The only significant disparity--presumably how the operas were written--is that the minor character of Alcandro is played by a contralto in the Pergolesi and a Baritone in the Galuppi. My subjective opinion, possibly, is that the Galuppi features more barnburning arias, but maybe I'm just saying that because I saw it more recently. Another advantage Galuppi has is that he's named "Galuppi," which is probably the greatest composer name there is. So...yup.

Of course, we can talk about production differences. The Pergolesi is...not awful, but a bit strange. The stage is set up like a cross, with the audience sitting in the four ninety-degree angles created thereby (there's also a balcony from which characters sometimes declaim). This is a bit inexplicable, but fine; the part that creates a (small) problem is that for whatever reason, the singers are all wearing these floofy Ziggy-Stardust-esque wigs that make it sometimes difficult to tell who is who. I really don't know what possible purpose this serves. The Galuppi is less stylized--or at least stylized in a more comprehensible way. The background has what look like charcoal drawings of trees and classical columns, and parts of it take place behind these gauzy curtains, such that you can only sort of see the characters, who are dressed in nineteenth-century fashion. I definitely preferred this version, but it's all good.

I feel like a thing that I would appreciate would be if some expert wrote a book explaining, in layman's terms, the characteristic features and--most importantly--the differences between all these little-known baroque composers writing in such a similar milieu: your Caldara, Hasse, Vinci, Pergolesi, Galuppi, Jommeli, and so on. Only problem is, such a thing would be so specialized that i's hard to imagine it being in layman's terms. But regardless, I would do my best to understand! I guess I'll have to settle for Word Search Puzzles: Composers of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic Eras (Pocket Word Search Puzzle Books) (Volume 17).

Zhu Shaoyu, You and Me (2013)

Let us take a moment to be grateful for the glorious availability of Western opera. Granted, the pandemic may mean that the performing arts are over forever, but aside from that (Mrs. Lincoln), it's quite impressive. You can easily watch many different operas from any period and in any style there is. Sure, there are composers or particular pieces that deserve more attention, but really, that's just caviling. I'm coming up on four hundred fifty and I haven't even come close to seeing everything there is, so, I mean, really. For an art form that's currently considered extremely niche and/or inaccessibly highbrow, it's doing pretty darned well, I think. If you want to learn about Western opera, you can do that. It's not a problem.

Okay, but let's say that I, a Westerner, want to learn about Chinese opera, a completely different operatic form with a thousand-year-plus history. Well...good luck with that. What can I see? Well, there's this. There's also a recording of Farewell My Concubine (which I shall watch soon). There's a very small handful of dodgy-looking, out-of-print, unsubtitled DVDs. There are some documentaries and youtube clips of individual arias. And...that's pretty much yer lot. Even if you are a Chinese person, if you don't live in an area with a thriving performing arts scene, you're not going to have much luck. For an form with such a long and rich history, they've done a remarkably poor job of creating any kind of permanent record of it. Per wikipedia: "The total number of regional genres was determined to be more than 350 in 1957, but in the 21st century the Chinese government could only identify 162 forms for its intangible cultural heritage list, with many of them in immediate danger of disappearing." I know that, given the political situation, it's hard to really focus much emotional energy on a subject like this that most people don't care about, but nonetheless, I would say that that is a goddamn tragedy.

Of course, I say that more on principle than anything else: it's not like I'm familiar with the form in any way such that I have a personal investment in its perpetuation. But I believe in art generally. Sometimes it's all we have to keep body and soul together. So. Anyway. I saw this.

Here's the story: Emperor Zheng's brother has staged a rebellion, which he crushes (and executes is brother, apparently maybe? it's never referred to again, which seems weird), but he's pissed off at his mother, who had been supporting his brother, and wants to have her exiled, in spite of his courtiers' disapproval. At a feast, Yingkaoshu tries to sway him by commenting on the food--paraphrase, but this really is the exact sense: "Don't eat crows! They display filial piety, always giving food to their mothers before eating themselves! Now owls--those guys are total dicks who murder the shit out of their mothers! Eating them is hell of rad!" I am not sure about the ornithology here. Anyway, it turns out Yingkaoshu is hiding food in his clothing to try to sneak out; when caught, he explains that it's to give to his poor aging mother, so the king decides to send her food and then go there in disguise to see if this suspicious "having a mother" story pans out. It turns out it does, and said mother is hell of virtuous. This and other things make him question his decision re his own mother. Finally he decides, okay, he wants to see her again, but! There's a problem, which is that he had sworn that he would only see her again in "the Underworld." So the moderately-cunning Yingkaoshu comes up with a clever plan: he'll dig a giant tunnel so they can meet there, because that's...the Underworld. Sort of. Anyway, the king and ma make up, and everyone leaves together. Wait, now it's okay if they're together in spite of not being in "the Underworld?" Was there a proviso, "after you meet there one time, all bets are off!?" Given that he was clearly actually referring to Hell, I doubt it. But anyway. So it is.

Well there you go. Obviously, this thing is extremely heavy on the filial piety, revealing its Confucian roots. It's actually pretty darn didactic about that, especially in the last act. But I'm really not sure how to evaluate it. The last thing I want is to just be some shithead white guy going, ha ha, these Chinese people are weird and/or funny! That's not helpful to anyone. So I really, really want to underscore the fact that everything I say here should be taken with seventy-three grains of salt. I am a dumb foreigner and I don't know what I'm talking about. It is absolutely definitely one hundred percent the case that I didn't really get this. Still, since most people reading this probably are dumb foreigners also, hell, maybe it's of some use.

First, let's talk about the libretto, which strikes me as bizarrely clumsy and heavy-handed--in a way, however, that I recognize from Chinese movies that I have watched, so I don't think it's anything opera-specific. There may well be a lot lost in translation. There's the aforementioned "crow rules, owls drool" bit, and in that same act these waiters are preparing to bring out food for the banquet: "the dishes are full of eight kinds of food from both land and sea!" "What are the eight kinds of seafood?" "Shark's fin, shellfish, fish gristle, shrimp, abalone, seal, shark's lip, sea cucumber from the East!" "What are the eight kinds of land food?" "Dragon's liver, phoenix's marrow, bear's paw, tiger's kidney, camel's hump, monkey's brain, elephant's trunk, moose's jaw from the West mountain!" And seriously, what am I to make of this? Is it supposed to be funny? It seems like it HAS to be supposed to be funny. And yet, to me it just comes across as alienatingly weird. The opera showcases universal emotions, for sure. And I like that! And yet, there were only a few moments when I felt any kind of emotional resonance at all.

How about the music? Well, actually, the instrumental music here was the least problematic thing for me. It's completely different than Western classical music, featuring hell of instruments that I don't have names for, but it's straightforwardly enjoyable. It's kind of exactly what the stereotypes say Chinese music sounds like (think the famous "Oriental riff"), but it's good. Badass in a few places. Maybe it occasionally feels a little monotonous? Maybe, but overall I really can't complain.

As for the vocal music: there's a lot of spoken dialogue here, and unlike Western opera/operetta, it's not always entirely clear when the spoken ends and the sung begins. I mean, they're definitely different things, but they seem to exist on the same spectrum in a way that's totally unlike anything I'm used to. Which is fine, that's interesting, but...you know, I'm just not sure about the singing. Obviously, Chinese being a tonal language, there are definitionally going to be differences from Occidental (I'm trying not to write "Western" over and over) singing, and even beyond that it's not trying to be the same thing. But as I say: I AM NOT SURE. There are lengthy arias, but to me they are mostly not particularly gripping, or indeed musically varied. Sometimes singers would go, like, aaaaah, aaaaah, aaaaah, and these were the points at which you would often get a certain amount of applause from the audience (the applause was subdued in general, but I'm pretty sure that's just a cultural difference, not lack of enthusiasm), and I'm kind of left thinking, is that impressive? Should I be impressed? I don't get it.

(Also, for whatever reason, the speaking voice of Zheng's wife in particular, oh my god, I know I said I didn't want to sound like an uncultured foreigner, but it was JUST SO WEIRD; I wanted to burst out laughing every time she spoke--her singing sounded more normal)

Let it be noted, there are also intangible things I definitely didn't get: stuff involving the spoken dialect, and the highly stylized movements of the actors. I don't want to pretend like it's just me reacting to what I perceive as rough analogues to Occidental opera and not understanding them in comparison. The lack of understanding is more all-pervasive than that: the sort of thing where you aren't even aware of the things that are lost on you.

Of course, since this is the only one I've seen, I am also wholly unable to place it within the larger tradition, and unfortunately, there's not really much of an opportunity for that. I do want to say, though--just so I don't look like a total goon--I feel like I...could get into this. There were definitely a few moments, as long arias went on, where I thought, you know...I feel like I am sort of perceiving the appeal of this. Maybe? Maybe not. It's a flickering flame.

This definitely looks good, featuring very elaborate costumes into which a lot of money clearly went. It's clearly somebody's idea of a bid at a cultural export (the production is by Zhang Yimou, director of Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers, and other movies, and the promotional copy puts WAY more emphasis on his name than on the composer's, presumably because it's one that more Westerners might be expected to know). And yet, I feel that that's not enough. I'm not sure how much I've written about this here, but Western opera was very much an acquired taste for me. I didn't really start to love it until I'd seen, I don't know, maybe a dozen operas. So if you want to make me like this art form which is even MORE foreign to my sensibilities, you're going to need to make a very concerted effort. This would have to just be the beginning.

Paul Dukas, Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1907)

Dukas is mainly known from his "L'apprenti sorcier," and that's not just because of Fantasia; apparently in his lifetime he was irritated that people were focused on that one short piece to the exclusion of all his other work. Well, here we have his only opera, so hopefully now we can give his unquiet ghost (trying to get in a seasonal mood) its due.

Clearly, the main Bluebeard opera that we know is Bluebeard's Castle. Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. Béla Bartok's bizarre, beautiful Bluebeard's Castle. Sorry, I'm just spouting gibberish. But in all seriousness: that is a hella unnerving opera. Might be a good one to watch for Halloween, if you're looking for something seasonal. Though I don't know; maybe the US teetering on the edge of fascism is scary enough for you. Opinions vary!

Why did I write the above paragraph? Who knows? This is not that, anyway. It's based on a play by Maeterlinck, more or less retelling the basic story, though with differences. Ariane goes to Bluebeard's castle, but she's convinced his previous wives are still alive and that she can save them. She has the seven keys of which she's allowed to use but six; she opens the first six doors and finds a bunch of precious jewels; behind the seventh are the wives. A mob attacks Bluebeard offstage and renders him helpless, leaving the wives to decide what to do with him. They spare his life, but they're still free, in theory: Ariane tries to get them to leave with her, but all of them refuse, so she departs with her nurse. That is it. In spite of the opera's title, the part of Bluebeard is actually extremely small; he only sings in one short scene.

So that's about it. It's sort of hard to determine what particular point is being made here. It is what it is, I suppose. Unless I'm wrong! Maybe it's not what it is. Still, I really like Dukas' music. In particular, the scene in the first act where Ariane and her nurse are opening the doors is pretty stunning. A very ecstatic, Wagnerian sound. To be honest, the actual story didn't engage me much, especially as it wore on, but I'm certainly glad to have seen it. The production--the only available, naturally--probably didn't help: it's not, like, egregiously horrible or anything, but it kind of arbitrarily takes place in this clinical, hospital-like environment. As you know, I don't object to some Eurotrash, but the problem here is...it's just not very interesting to look at, and it underemphasizes the mythic aspects of the story. OH WELL!

Vladimir Deshevov, Ice and Steel (1930)

There is very little information on Deshevov on the English-language internet. Seriously, do a search. Almost everything you'll find is related to this production of this opera. There's a short biography in the DVD, but it's nothing that notable: a left-wing intellectual musician, 1889-1955, this his only opera. The Soviet authorities were extremely down on Shostakovich's operas, and even Prokofiev was viewed with some suspicion, so what did they like? This guy, apparently. Only not so much after all, because, again according to the DVD booklet, while successful at first, this one quickly disappeared from the stage as well, even though it's a blatant propaganda piece. SHEESH. There's no pleasing some people.

Well, this is sort of a collective piece; there are people with names, but only one who has any chance of sticking in your mind--and it's not like she's sharply detailed either. It's more a sort of collage. You have people arguing about ideology and being pure or not pure and everything, but then everyone united because there's trouble brewing: the Kronstadt Rebellion, which was problematic because the people involved in it were themselves communists and other assorted leftists. Hard to frame this in a Politically Correct (in the original sense) way. Well, but here, they're definitely BAD. And this heroic woman, Musja, infiltrates the rebels; she's caught and tortured, but then she blows the place up with a grenade, as pictured on that cover. And then the Soviets hear about it and are all, YEAH! There's a whole bunch of Musjas among us! Up the proletariat!

Right, so I wouldn't say this is a particularly good opera (though it IS only a svelte hour and a half, which is a point in its favor).  The protagonist-less presentation is sort of theoretically interesting in an avant-garde way, but not really in practice, and it's fairly musically uninteresting--very subdued stuff for the most part that will not give Shostakovich or my man NRK a run for their money. The moment where Musja blows up the rebels is pretty cool--you can see it on the cover there; she stands there in that triumphant pose with an explosion in the background--but because art in propaganda can only be incidental, it doesn't actually end there; instead we get the epilogue, which reeeeaally spells out the message.

And then there's the way the producers handled it: you see, these days we may not be so euphorically giddy about communism triumphant. So it works thusly: after the final chorus where all the people are standing around defiantly, we see them fall over one by one until they're all dead, and then some guys use ropes to pull down Musja (who is clearly represented as a statue now, you see). And, I mean, really now. If this piece has any value, it's as a historical artifact. What is gained by reading it against itself like that? And if you insist on doing that (which I don't think you should, but clearly you don't care what I think), the production doesn't even have the courage of its convictions: Musja's sacrifice is clearly set up to look cool and badass, which it does. So what are you even saying if you decide, oh, that thing that we set up as a triumphant moment? It actually sucks, and we should be glad it's gone.  I ask you!

I would say we need a better production of this, but eh. We probably don't. As a bit of ephemera, it may hold some limited interest, but I can't say I'm really up for revisiting it.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Adriano in Siria (w/Livietta e Tracollo) (1734)

After being disappointed by that misbegotten production of Il prigionier superbo, I wanted to have a better Pergolesi experience, so here's his third opera seria.

It's to a libretto by Metastasio. Dozens of others were set to the same one, of course, but as far as I know, this is the only one available in video format. Here's my question: what was the last opera ever to use one of his libretti? You don't get an answer by doing a google search for "last opera with a Metastasio libretto." Nobody else seems interested in the question. There's this from 1823, which seems really late, but anything after that? I feel like by the nineteenth century, people had mostly embraced the romantic idea of individual genius. Sure, you likely weren't writing your own libretti, but you wanted your work to seem unique to you; there wouldn't have been much appeal to the idea of your opera jostling around to compete with dozens of other with the same words and story.

Who knows. I ask that because I've been kind of preoccupied lately with this idea: why doesn't some contemporary composer write an opera to a Metastasio libretto? Not imitating the style of baroque music (although if someone wants to do that, that's cool too), but just setting this text in a radically different musical idiom. Wouldn't that be fascinating? Don't you want to see Thomas Adès' Semiramide riconosciuta? I know I do.

Well, this one is set in Roman Times. Knock me down with a feather. The Roman emperor is Adriano (ie, Hadrian), and you will NEVER GUESS where he is. He's just conquered the Parthians, and the Parthian prince, Farnaspe, is petitioning him to release his imprisoned fiancée, Emirena, playing on the well-known Roman qualities of mercy and justice (you can complain about historical revisionism in these things if you want, but the very fact that composers of the time considered these the most noble of qualities seems to me worth celebrating). However, Adriano is also in love with Emirena, in spite of already having a wife, Sabina. The situation is also complicated by the fact that Adriano's adjutant Aquilo is secretly in love with Sabina, which leads him to encourage his infatuation with Emirena so he doesn't reconcile with his wife. And finally, there's Emirena's father Osroa, who tries to assassinate Adriano and is imprisoned. But don't worry, in the end everyone is reconciled and/or forgiven and Adriano and Sabina are back together again.

The more opera seria I see, the more I realize how formulaic the genre is. It was undoubtedly a good thing that opera evolved from this. But crud, man, it's a solid formula. It may be that it will never surprise me, but I'm more or less guaranteed to enjoy it a lot, as is the case here. My subjective perception is that, production aside, this is a stronger work than Il prigionier superbo. The production is straightforward, but really, sometimes that's quite enough. The most notable thing here is that it features an actual goddamn falcon onstage.  Looking at the cover, I wasn't sure whether it was real or not, but it totally is.  Well, technically it's a Harris's hawk, but those are commonly used in falconry, and that's clearly the intended impression. Its name is Aron, and there are two credited falconers--all for a bird that appears onstage at the beginning and end for no more than a minute or two. That kind of extravagance seems Met-esque, but hey, I'm glad to see falconers getting work. I can't imagine there's a lot of it these days.

Oh yeah, we also have the intermezzo, Livietta e Tracollo. Unlike La serva padrona in Il prigionier superbo, this is presented probably more like it originally would have been, with the first half after Act I and the second after Act II. It concerns this robber, Tracollo, who, disguised as a woman, is captured by Livietta, a woman disguised as a man. Later, he's out of jail and disguised as an astrologer. She pretends to faint. He tells her where, allegedly, he's hidden his treasure. They agree to get married. That is about that. It's fine; why wouldn't it be? You can probably see why it isn't as famous as La serva padrona; there's not much of a story, and the mucking about I didn't find that fascinating. Also, authentic or not, I found that as presented here it kind of dulled the momentum of the superior Adriano in Siria. Whatevs! It's fine.

Luigi Rossi, L'Orfeo (1647)

Yes! It's the other seventeenth-century opera called Orfeo. Actually, you've gotta figure there are probably more, but these are the most prominent [UPDATE: yup, this page lists five others, plus sundry more from later times]. This one two is at least somewhat historically significant: La finta pazza may have been first, but this one was actually specifically commissioned for the French stage. And it had wider political significance than just that: supposedly resentment at how expensive the staging was lead to the Fronde, a series of rebellions against Louis XIV that he ultimately crushed and used to consolidate his power. At least that's how I understand it. Look, I'm American; we don't do European history, except for things like World War II where we can insert ourselves into it and cheer about what great heroes we were.

You might ask, is this going to be basically the same as Monteverdi? Will I be able to easily tell the difference? The answers are no and yes. This is extremely different from that. Monteverdi, as you know, is rather stripped down, just telling the basic story. There is A LOT more frippery here, with extra gods banging around and featuring Eurydice's dad and just being...different. Momus and his satyr pal are there for comic relief, as is the skirt-role nurse (BOY did that ever kill in the seventeenth century!). But the biggest difference between the two is that this one seems oddly uninterested in its title character. The bulk of this is about Eurydice and this guy Aristeo, her frustrated, would-be lover (that's Aristeo there on the DVD cover with her).

Who is Aristeo? He's this guy, who supposedly invented beekeeping, among other things. There's a version of the story where he was chasing Eurydice and that's when she got bitten. This pissed off the gods and he wasn't allowed to beekeep any more until he made sacrifices. Which, fair enough. You've gotta wonder what his relationship with Orpheus was like after that, though; I'm guessing the answer is Not Cordial.

Anyway, he spends a lot of time pursuing her, and gods intercede on his behalf, but all in vain as she's bitten by a snake and then refuses the antidote he offers because she doesn't want to be implicated with him in any way. Then at her grave, he imagines her ghost yelling at him--seeing an opera character's inter turmoil externalized that way is not something you see every day. Or, indeed, any day. I mean there must be other examples, but they don't come to mind. Extraordinarily sophisticated stuff. Anyway, he ends up going mad, after which is narrative just kind of stops. I has this idea that he was going to somehow sacrifice himself after Orpheus screws up so Eurydice can live again, but I guess that's kind of a fan-ficcy idea (not that baroque opera isn't frequently fan-ficcy). This definitely has the darkest ending of any Orpheus opera I've ever seen, as, having lost his love, he laments and then just recedes into the darkness. Curtain. The wikipedia entry claims that Jupiter appears to tell him that he and Eurydice will be turned into constellations, but that entry seems very suspect to me, given how much it leaves out. We do learn that there's a prologue and epilogue, however, which are not featured in this production, which I suppose begun the tradition of glorifying France in general and Louis XVI in particular.

Terrific opera, at any rate. The unfamiliar elements to the story really keep you involved (me, at any rate); the whole thing feels so confident and self-assured, and the music is in turns funny, dramatic, and spine-tingling. It's a modern-day production, which could go either way, but it feels very natural and appropriate. Francesca Aspromonte as Eurydice steals the show; one of the many pleasures of watching this is that she feels like much more of a defined character than is normally the case, and Aspromonte really inhabits her.

Rossi only wrote one other opera, Il palazzo incantato (an Orlando Furioso opera--really covering the baroque bases here); unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available on video, but I hope it will be one day.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Il prigionier superbo (1733)

If you do a search for this, google helpfully corrects you:

Ah yes, that world-famous opera, Il prigioniero superbowl. I know it well.

This is most famous as the opera that was originally wrapped around La serva padrona, but destined to be much less popular. It's about this prisoner. He is a truly superb prisoner. In fact, he's such a great prisoner that all the guards signed his birthday card. And then they had a big party with cake and ice cream and presents and okay okay, "superbo" just means "proud" in Italian. WHATEVER. So what's it REALLY about? Um...dead kings many things I can't define? Well, basically, this here prisoner is a king who's been captured. By another king. As oft happens. And these kings all have various daughters and love interests who are in love with other people, and...you know. Typical opera seria stuff.

Still, if that description sounded vague, there may be a reason for that. The plot's complicated, sure, but is it difficult to follow? That is hard to say, actually, because GOOD GOD, this production. I feel like I have never seen one that I found as enraging as this. The concept is that there are some people at a party in some sort of cave or something, and they find these puppets and decide to put on a show. So there are these puppets and puppeteers on-stage, one alter-ego for each character. The production makes zero effort to concretely situate it in its place, and get this: five out of the six characters are sung by women; I might have enjoyed a few countertenors, but fine. But the real issue is, they do not make even the most token effort to have them look like men. They're all wearing dresses and have absolutely zero male signifiers--I suppose because that would violate the extremely important "concept" that we have decided we must arbitrarily lay over the proceedings. What all this boils down to is that the plot--which probably would've been pretty twisty anyway--becomes effectively impossible to follow, and all drama and emotion is completely leeched out of the story. I simply cannot imagine what the fuck the producers can have been thinking. Unlike most opera DVDs, there's no synopsis included in the manual; normally, there's no need for such a thing, but the ONE time you actually want one...there's an amazon review that goes to truly heroic lengths to summarize the plot, but even with that summary, it would take A LOT of effort to make sense of this.

It is too goddamn bad. Musically, it's what you'd expect, which is very good: lots of kickass baroque music with some impressive arias. And yet, I still feel short-changed. Unsurprisingly, this is the only way to see this opera, but having seen it, I have to wonder: DID I actually experience the opera in any meaningful way? GOOD GOD, Pergolesi died at the age of twenty-six; isn't that bad enough? You also have to run roughshod over his work? Talk about adding insult to injury.

Well, as you can see from that cover, this also includes a production of La serva padrona (that's where the image comes from). So how's that? Well...it's comprehensible, at any rate. It would be hard for such a simple story not to be. But it ain't great: it takes place in a circus. Uberto is some sort of ringmaster and/or lion tamer, and Serpina is...well, it's not exactly clear what she is, but some kind of circus performer. This is bizarre; the idea that someone working in this environment would have a "servant" makes little sense, let alone that people like this would be preoccupied with the idea of marriage. It's tolerable, I suppose, but it's not wonderful. It's a shame: the music, of course, is great, and Alessandra Marianelli is actually very charming and funny as Serpina. It's just...GOOD LORD, people. You're allowed to do a regular ol' opera production! There's nothing wrong with a little Eurotrash, but if you don't have a good idea for it, you're not required to go in that direction. I hope that the Pergolesi DVDs I have yet to see go a little less dumb and bad, production-wise.

Right, one last thing.  You may be interested to know what ELSE Pergolesi fans are interested in:

...one of these things is not like the others...?

Michael Daughterty, Jackie O (1997)

So...here's an opera about Jackie Onassis Kennedy. Obviously. Kind of. It's a very impressionistic thing, about which more anon.

The first act takes place at a happening in Andy Warhol's Factory, featuring also Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor. It's the sixties! It's groovy! Jackie shows up: as far as I know this never happened in real life, but Warhol did do a famous image of her:

Aristotle Onassis also shows up with his lover, Maria Callas. He and Jackie meet and spark up a relationship. In the second act they're married. Jackie's feeling depressed about the Unpleasantness that ended her first marriage; after a long duet between her and Callas, where they sort of reconcile, she hears Kennedy's disembodied voice. She forgives him his infidelities, opens herself up to future possibilities. It ends with a number based on Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you," which, seriously, everyone talks about like it's so inspiring, but how is it not a paean to fascism? What am I missing here?

Welp. That's it. How to even start? How about at the beginning, by quoting the opening chorus:

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, freeze!

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, smile!

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, click!

Things are happening!

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, freeze!

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, flash!

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, cheese!

It's a happening!

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, we communicate!

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, we annihilate!

One, nine, six, eight, 1968, sex with stars is great!

That is big Waiting for Guffman energy, and briefly, I thought this was going to be something I'd never seen before: an opera that's so bad it's good. But as things proceeded, it sadly became clear that, no: sadly, this is the much more common so bad it's bad.

I am one hundred percent here for this in theory: an avant-garde sixties collage and character study? Sign me the fuck up. I'm possibly the ideal audience for this, having consumed quite a lot of literature in that vein and also, obviously, being a huge opera fan. But while a good concept may give you a tiny step up, it's at least almost all in the execution, and the execution here is...not good. The libretto is really, really dire, and not mostly in fun ways. It's just utterly leaden, and its efforts to catch that sixties spirit are all clumsy failures. In theory it also includes evocations of the ever-popular story of Orpheus and Eurydice, but you'd need some better writing for that to be apparent. Then there's the music, which includes imitations of jazz and sixties rock stuff, plus some inevitable opera quotes because of Callas' presence, but the whole thing is really, really thin. There was one part that I thought sorta-kinda almost worked, where Onassis is inviting Jackie to see I Am Curious (Yellow) (weird first date movie), and that forms the backbone for an aria--I say "almost" because, like everything else, it's crippled by the terrible writing and the unimaginative music, but there are fun and creative aspects to it, and I could at least see the dim silhouette of a much better opera. That's about all I can say that's even vaguely positive, though. On the basis of this, I am not convinced that Daughterty is actually a very good composer, and it may be a mercy that this is his only opera to date.

The debut of this, at Houston Grand Opera (who commissioned it and therefore presumably felt obligated to stage it) featured an absolutely stupidly overqualified cast, including Joyce DiDonato, Stephanie Novacek, and Eric Owens. This recording, as you can see from the box...does not. Fair enough. It's actually a decent production, dominated by that big ol' soup can. Well...it's mostly a decent production, until you get to the end, which inexplicably features TV footage of 9/11. I'd say it's in poor taste, but you kind of get distracted from that by just how baffling it is. We will never know what the hell the producers thought they were saying. Or, to be fair, care. But regardless, that's a big swing and a miss. Probably accidentally hurling the bat into the stands and hitting a pregnant woman.

I'm happy I only paid four dollars to stream this, but even that seems a little much. Michael Daughterty, your opera is bad and you should feel bad.  And now I feel guilty about saying that.  What if he reads this?  You don't have to feel bad, dude.  I forgive you.  But your opera is bad.  I can't compromise on that.

Bernard Herrmann, Wuthering Heights (1951)

This one has a vexed history: it was written in the forties and fifties, but not recorded until 1966, and not actually staged until 1982--but that 1982 version was an abridgment, and it wasn't performed in its entirety until this 2011 production from Minnesota opera, streaming from now until the 24th for the price of fifteen dollars. Why is it time-limited? I don't know. I feel like some outfits do these things without considering that streaming a pre-recorded piece is not the same as an actual live performance.

Well, you know what Wuthering Heights is about, probably. Catherine? Heathcliff (no one should terrify the neighborhood)? Well, yes, so the idea is that he's an orphan brought to this estate; the father dotes on him, but then he dies and there's just his violent son, who hates him, and his daughter, with whom he forms a passionate bond. But she marries Edgar Linton instead and he marries his sister Isabelle for revenge, but those relationships aren't up to much. Then Catherine dies. The end. Well, not really, but that's the end of the opera. The book goes on for quite a while, with a romance between Catherine's daughter Cathy jr. and Hindley's son Hareton. None of that here, though. There's no indication that Catherine HAS a daughter, in fact.

I looked and I found that reviews of this are decidedly mixed, but I thought it was pretty great, for the most part: very passionate, very Straussian music; I never thought much about the Heathcliff/Catherine relationship before, but the music really helps with that. There are many musical highlights here. I did have some issues with it on a story level, however. First, my mellow was kind of harshed by the stuff at the beginning of the second act with Edgar and Isabelle; I mainly just felt sorry for the two of them, being sucked into this whole thing that is not in any way their fault. Passionate, immortal love is great and all, but it can easily shade into monstrous narcissism, and when your drama ends up having collateral damage, it's easy for that to happen.

My other, more serious issue is with what parts of the book are included. I don't think there's any need to closely follow the novel's plot; liberty hall! But I have to say, it does feel oddly incomplete as it's presented here. If you're not going to bother with the children, I think it would make more sense to have Catherine and Heathcliff die together. But nope--and the opera even opens with the Lockwood stuff, so you know Heathcliff is still around years later, and there's a sense that his story isn't quite finished, but...well, it is, as far at the opera is concerned. That doesn't work. Best to just cut poor ol' Lockwood.

Still, a very good opera, in an extremely handsome period production. Worth seeing. I'm sort of surprised there aren't more Wuthering Heights operas; there's one by Carlisle Floyd, but I think that's it. Anyway, I will conclude by presenting these Timeless Words of Wisdumb:

Indeed!

Camille Saint-Saëns, Henry VIII (1883)

Saint-Saëns wrote an even dozen operas. It's obvious why Samson et Dalila should be the best-known--evil sex witch, duh--but it is significantly less obvious why his other eleven should basically be completely unknown. Dude was a solid composer. Apparently this one was actually quite popular during his lifetime, but today...not so much.

He appears to be trodding on Donizetti's territory here. Do so at your own risk, my man! It's early in Henry's wifecycle. He's pursuing Anne Boleyn, but she keeps putting him off until finally she agrees to marry him if he gets rid of Catherine. He tries to get it annulled by the Catholic Church, and when they refuse, he decides he's going to start his OWN church! With blackjack and hookers! Kind of funny how the whole dang country changed its religion just because of this one horny king. Though I'm sure not uncommon in history. So anyway, Catherine is banished and forgotten by everything (which I believe is at odds with actual history, where she remained popular with the people after her unqueenment). Anne's problem is that she's not having any sons. And her OTHER problem is that there are love letter at large that she had sent to her former beau, the Spanish ambassador Don Gomez (this dude is totally made up, right? I know she DID have a fiancé before Henry, but definitely not this guy), and the king will be totes pissed off if he finds out. He says he's burned them, fortunately, but for reasons that are extremely unclear to me, Catherine has an incriminating letter of some kind. She goes and begs the ex-queen for mercy; when Henry shows up, she has an internal debate about what to do, but finally she nobly burns the letter and expires. Henry's like, okay, but if I find out someone's making a fool of me, THE AXE WILL COME DOWN. An ominous finis.

(How about "wifecycle?" Did you like that? I thought it was pretty clever.)

Kind of an unusual way for an opera to end. Usually if something's going to happen, it happens. It's not just suggested that it will happen. Obviously, there are plenty of historical liberties, and that's fine, but it does seem a little goofy to suggest that Anne's ultimate death might have been due to something she actually did, as opposed to Henry just looking for an excuse to get rid of her.

Anyway, though, it's pretty great. The music...is swell, as you'd anticipate. People talk about it blending in Renaissance elements, which...sort of. There' a long (and great) ballet sequence at the end of the second act, but mostly it just sounds like regular ol' Saint-Saëns, which, again--not complaining. Perhaps it's not performed much because there's a certain distance from the characters; there's not anyone to identify with much. But I think musically, it definitely holds up. Here is a great Aria from Anne, "Reine! je serai reine!"

Really good production, also, from 1991. In the title role, Philipppe Rouillon looks like a portrait of Henry VIII given flesh. Seriously, the resemblance is eerie. Top honors, though, probably go to Michèle Command and Lucile Vignon as the two queens.

I watched this because it was Saint-Saëns' birthday. I'd had the DVD lying around for a while, but for whatever reason never got around to it until now. And, I'm glad I did. That is all.

Francesco Sacrati, La finta pazza (1641)

This opera's claim to fame is that it was the first one ever performed in France. Well...maybe. The wikipedia page on French opera claims that this is the case, but the one on the opera itself claims that it was "presumably the second opera ever in France." OH WE PRESUME THIS, DO WE? So what was first? They're not saying. Nor is anyone else. I'm going to assume that this one holds the title until someone demonstrates otherwise. But regardless, the point is: "the opera is considered to be one of the most successful operas of the seventeenth century, and the first big hit of the genre."

I thought I wouldn't be able to see this, but hey, there's a production on youtube! With French subtitles. I looked on amazon to see if this or any other Sacrati operas were available commercially (he wrote nine of them, sez wikipedia, though it's not clear how many of those are extant); unsurprisingly, the answer is no, but I DID find this extremely inexplicable product:

Good for confusing all your friends and relations, for sure.

So what's this about, then? Well, it's about Deidamia and Achilles, which as you know was also the subject of Handel's last opera, called--wait for it--Deidamia. That is, the princess of Scryos who was Achilles' lover while he was hidden there disguised as a woman prior to the Trojan War. And this has a similar plot to that: Ulysses (here accompanied by Diomedes) comes to find him and bring him along to murder Trojans, and he's conflicted because of his love. Here, he's all ready to leave Deidamia, but she pretends to be insane (hence the title, "The Feigned Madwoman") to get him to marry her. IRL, I do not think that that's the best way to stop your lover from leaving you, but it works here. Well, he still leaves, and as we know dies at Troy, so I'm not sure that was worth the trouble. But it happens, anyway. There's also a subplot here where Diomedes had been Deidamia's lover in the past until she threw him over for Achilles. In the end, he's just left bitter and disappointed. I'm afraid he's been red-pilled.

So that's cool. Did I like this? Well...kind of. I like this kind of music, so there's no reason I wouldn't have, basically. I guess I was maybe slightly cooler on it than some. Just based on this, I don't like Sacrati as much as Cavalli, for instance, and it feels a bit overextended for what ultimately is a pretty simple plot. Also--I had this issue with the Handel opera too--Achilles is not a particularly sympathetic or likeable character, and I think Deidamia would be better without him. Ulysses is pretty amusing, though. Of course, honesty compels me to note that the subtitles were pretty rough going for me: I would have thought they'd be easy to understand, like they were for Cavalli's Erismena, but for whatever reason, that wasn't really the case, and it's possible I would have liked it more were it more comprehensible, not that I couldn't basically follow it.

Still, cool to have the opportunity to see it. As ever with these things, I really wonder that, given that they have the video fercryinoutloud, it's not available on DVD.

The Opera Story - Episodes (2020)

HUH. So I would never have known about these if I hadn't randomly clicked onto Operavision's "Digital Operas" page--they hadn't been promoted anywhere else on the site; just slipped in there apparently in the dead of night. They're not actually exclusive to Operavision; you can also watch them on The Opera Story's own youtube channel--though given that, as of this writing, they have all of seventy subscribers, they don't seem to have much market penetration, so it would be fine for Operavision to boost the signal--if they were actually doing that. WEIRD.

These are more or less obliquely COVID-inspired short pieces along the same lines as #OperaHarmony, although these are shorter and a bit less ambitious, on the whole--the longest is four minutes; the shortest, a mere ninety seconds. There are twelve of them, but that's only a total of thirty-six minutes. Well, let's have a look.

Episode 1: Skype Call (Vahan Salorian)

Two women talking over each other on a Skype call, with piano accompaniment. Most of these only have piano accompaniment. I understand that it would be unreasonable under the circumstances to expect a full orchestra, but it's still a bit boring to me. This is well-done, I suppose, but honestly, the whole "people having trouble videochatting" thing is just such a cliche at this point, and the piece doesn't do anything interesting with it.

Episode 2: Song of the Rocks (Lucie Treacher)

Lots of footage of rocks, and also water and stuff. It's about the natural world reasserting itself during COVID. Pretty good. I like both the lead singer and the wordless chorus in the background, along with the ominous, whatever, clonking sounds.

Episode 3: Glass Number Three (Dani Howard)

Footage of a woman looking like it was taken in a phone's portrait mode. Switching from her face to her bottom half, and particularly her hand holding a glass of wine. She's freaked out that she might lose a loved one to (presumably) COVID. And THAT is why she's on, wait for it, glass number three. The music is really minimal here--kind of just one sustained, high-pitched note. Hell, if it were longer than two minutes, it might be unendurable, but it's pretty okay as it is.

Episode 4: Soy Sauce (Alex Woolf)

Narrated by, yes, a bottle of soy sauce, who is unhappy because they used to be popular and useful for people everywhere, but now they're forgotten; people don't use them anymore. It's certainly a novel premise, but I don't exactly understand it: are people not using soy sauce because of COVID? Where does that come from? Is it because people aren't going to sushi restaurants as much anymore? That seems questionable, and there's no hint that that's the point anyway. Points for novelty, I guess, but I'm doubtful about the whole idea, and not a huge fan of the piano backing.

Episode 5: Egg (Vahan Salorian)

This is sort of the same thing, oddly enough. This egg wants to be eaten, but no one will eat them! Oh no! Is there a problem with people not eating eggs?  I eat eggs all the damn time! Or is it some sort of metaphor for people trapped inside under COVID? I don't get that impression. But...well, otherwise, it's even weirder than the soy sauce thing. Nice egg animations, but again, I really doubt the premise, and the music doesn't transport me.

Episode 6: Got Your Goat (Alex Woolf)

There are some baby goats. Yes, I know they're called "kids," but if I say "there are some kids," no one will know what I mean. They're talking about how, with all the people inside, they're able to munch on the plants with impunity. Hey, you get to look at footage of cute kids for a few minutes. Who could object? Again, the music is just, eh, but it's fine.

Episode 7: Cookies (Joaquim Badia)

A woman is going crazy about websites asking her to accept cookies. She does not want to. She's against cookies, I guess because she's supposed to be on some kind of diet. But then, in the end, she eats a cookie anyway. Caught! It's not really related to COVID except maybe in the sense that people are online more, but it's cute enough, AND HEY, it features a string trio, which to me is a lot more interesting than just the piano. Whoo!

Episode 8: Three Two One Ready or Not (Noah Mosley)

People--as represented by animated hands with faces on them--are playing hide and seek. It's kind of inexplicable, but it has an appeal, especially when the one hand keeps going "you'll never find me Janet, you'll never find me." Still, I feel it could do with a bit more context. Blah blah, more piano.

Episode 9: Nature - Water and Air (Dani Howard)

Water and air sing about how people need them over attractive nature footage. They suggest that disasters like this may remind us how we're their guests, and we should respect them. Yeah, fat chance. We're really super great at never learning anything ever. Still pretty okay, though. Music features violin, cello, and flute, which I like.

Episode 10: Love and Light (Vahan Salorian)

A youtuber talks to their audience--as facebook reaction icons float across the bottom of the screen--solicits paypal donations, then, off-air, bitches about how they're not getting all they might want, only it's not actually off-air. Doh! Different than most of these, so that's all right. Of course, youtubers always want you to send them money (or more specifically, join their Patreon), so is COVID relevant? Eh, it's fine. Again, more diverse music than the norm, so good for that.

Episode 11: Life Is Sweet Life Is Shit (James Garner)

A couple waking up in the morning. He sings about how life is sweet, but she's of another opinion because she's required to go back to work. They question their relationship. But they decide that they really do like each other, probably. This is really the only one of these that has a sort of linear story, in micro. For that reason, I liked it, though again with the piano.

Episode 12: Don't Just Clap (Lucie Treacher)

Images a series of stoops (clearly somewhere in the UK). The singer does not know what to do in these circumstances--not just the disease but generally environmental degradation and the like. A little bit banal, but its heart is in the right place.

--

So what did we learn from this? Not a whole hell of a lot! Some of these are okay, but none of them are anywhere near as good as the best pieces from #OperaHarmony, I'm sorry to say. Should I choose my favorites? I'm not going to choose least favorites; I don't want to be negative here. Okay, top there:

1. Life Is Sweet Life Is Shit

2. Three Two One Ready or Not

3. Nature - Water and Air

Maybe? I mean, I know the entries on these are kind of lukewarm. But I guess that's my feeling about the whole thing! The Opera Story also has a few full-length pieces available; perhaps I will give one of them a try.

Brett Dean, Hamlet (2017)

This is my fiftieth twenty-first-century opera.  I thought you'd want to know that, even though I'm definitely wrong.  There are many operatic Hamlets, of course, but before this, the only one regularly performed was Thomas'. But this...is a completely different beast.

Do you know about Hamlet? It's a well-known play by a well-known playwright named William Shakespeare. Although some people think that his works were actually written by another man of that name. But in any case, I should stop babbling. The story of Hamlet is the story of this, more or less. Unlike the Thomas version, it's clear that composer and librettist are actually familiar with the play. It features a fair amount of original dialogue, albeit sometimes from different versions of the manuscript and always severely chopped and screwed for a kind of shock-of-the-new alienation effect that works well (two of the players argue about whether it should be "too too solid flesh," or "sullied"). Also, it features Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern (countertenor roles, a surprising choice that works well), and much larger parts for Horatio and Polonius than Thomas. Still no Fortinbras, however.

The music is this kind of ghostly, fragmented thing. I think it's pretty great. It's not better than the Thomas version because it's more faithful to the text or more self-aware of whatever; it's just better because it's better. You can watch it here if desired. the title role is played by Allan Clayton, and, well, I think that casting is also trying to mess with our expectations, because--with no judgment implied in this statement--he's a fat guy with a big bushy beard, which is not how I think of Hamlet (although my image of him as a consumptive romantic hero is clearly anachronistic). Still, you get used to him, and he's really good. Also notable is Barbara Hannigan as Ophelia. She really gives it her all, especially in her mad scene, which is possibly the best such thing I've ever seen, though I'd have to revisit Lucia di Lammermoor to say for sure. Other highlights are Rod Gilfry (who I found totally unrecognizable throughout) as Claudius and John Tomlinson bringing some spooky gravitas to his triple role as the Ghost, Gravedigger, and Lead Player.

I'm not talking about a specific character here, but I must highlight the climactic duel scene at the end, which is absolutely incredible. There's this chorus while Hamlet and Laertes are fighting chanting from what I assume must be an authentic fencing manual of the time, which is kind of bizarre but amazing and the whole thing is just so apocalyptic. You're kind of wishing for Fortinbras in fact to show up just to show us, don't worry, this isn't literally the end of the world; there's some kind of renewal. But nope! I mean, not that I'm complaining. This is a great opera, and if we can only have one Hamlet, it's definitely my preference.

Pascal Dusapin, Faustus, the Last Night (2006)

Huh. Another Dusapin. I wasn't overly taken with his Macbeth Underworld, but evidently I thought this would be worth seeing anyway. Well, I was looking up Georg Nigl, who played the male lead in Von heute auf morgen, and the wikipedia entry said that he was known for creating the title role in this opera. So I idly looked it up, found a youtube video (which, yes, features Nigl in the lead--recognizably the same guy, even in such a wildly different role) and just impulsively decided to check it out. What more can I say?

This is not the Faust story as you'd get it from Berlioz or Gounod or Boito: it's a very stripped-down, intentionally abstruse thing. That video is unsubtitled, so even though it's in English, a lot of it was very hard to follow, but I don't get the impression that I would likely have been able to make much more sense of it even with subtitles. The whole thing--in this production, anyway--takes place with the characters--Faustus, Mephistopheles, an angel, and a few other characters whose purpose is not entirely clear--clambering around a giant clock face. This may be the last night, but it's not clear whether time is actually passing. There's not much action; Faustus grills Mephistopheles a lot about light and about the nature of the universe. Which, hey, gives him a step up over the character as portrayed in other versions, who, in spite of allegedly having sold his soul for knowledge, basically just idly dicks around. Mephistopheles--who is made up to look almost identical to Faustus--seems rattled and uncertain at his questions. You really do have to wonder about this world's cosmology.

I feel that this sounds pretty similar to Macbeth Underworld, from what I can remember. I think I like this one more, though. It definitely has that eerie, atmospheric feel to it. Wouldn't mind seeing it again with subs for greater comprehension.

Arnold Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire (1912) and Von heute auf morgen (1930)

Actually, Pierrot lunaire isn't an opera, even though it comes up when you do a google search for "Schoenberg operas." But I'm sort of trying to figure out Schoenberg, so I watched it anyway. There's a good performance with English subtitles here.

What it is is a song cycle for a chamber orchestra and soprano based on a series of poems by the symbolist Belgian poet Albert Giraud, featuring the protean figure of Pierrot in a number of situations, some lyrical, some gruesome, and some just surreal. This was written before Schoenberg worked out his twelve-tone system, so while it is atonal, it's not that. But it raises the opportunity for me to try to answer the question: can I tell the difference? And the answer is: nope! If you told me this was a twelve-tone piece, I would happily nod along. There's a good post here about the differences by a person who seems to know what they're talking about, but I think if I want to understand, I'm REALLY going to just have to spend some time staring into the sun.

Regardless! Whatever it is, I liked it (and I liked Kiera Duffy's singing). It may be atonal, but it doesn't have any of the jagged, dissonant feel that one, by which I mean me, associates with the form. It's just kind of pretty. I thought. Good late-night music. I might actually be willing to just listen to the music here, which isn't something I'd ever have said about any other music of this sort.

So that's encouraging! How about Von heute auf morgen? Well, that is an opera--the first one ever written in twelve-tone. You associate this kind of music with grim tragedy or at least with Very Serious Drama, but this is a short domestic comedy--and a rather charming one at that.

There's a married couple who've just come home from a party, at which they were both taken with other people--her with a famous tenor, him with her friend. They think about their marriage. Do they still love each other? What kind of relationship do they want to have? Do they want to be free and easy, like "modern people" are? The answers turn out to be yes, the same kind they've had, and no. Their two objects of temptation turn up, but they're not interested. They don't want to be "modern" in that sense.

The music is...well, what it is. It's fine, which is sort of my all-purpose unhelpful description of all music like this. The story has a more or less conservative message, but not in an offensive way. Also, their bickering never comes across as mean-spirited, like The Lockhorns or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It doesn't hurt that Georg Nigl and Brigitte Geller in the leads really act the hell out of them--they really bring the characters alive.

So I liked this a lot. But I want to draw your attention to the plot summary on wikipedia, screen-capped in case it's changed:

It seems to me that the person who wrote this either didn't understand or was too freaked out to mention the fact that the drama here revolves around whether this couple should open up their marriage. That "they champion the latest trends in society"--yes, specifically, the trend of not being bothered if your spouse is sleeping with someone else. There's something oddly childish about this description.

Good stuff, good stuff. I would like to see more Schoenberg, but I don't think his other two operas, Erwartung and Die glückliche Hand, are on video anywhere. Shame.

Christoph Willibald Gluck, Alceste (1767)

I suppose this is Gluck's best-known opera after Orfeo ed Euridice, but I had never seen it and I wasn't all that excited about seeing it, due to my somewhat muted response to most of the other Gluck I've seen. But I did! And I'm glad of it! So there!

This is of course from Euripides, from whence also Handel's Admeto. The king, Admeto, is dying, and can only be saved if someone else sacrifices their life in his place. Who will do it? None but his wife Alceste. So she pledges to do just that, and Ademto gets better, but they are both heartbroken by her impending demise. But then Apollo comes down and says that because of how much they love each other, Alceste is saved. That's the original Italian version, that I saw. The biggest difference from the original play, as well as the Handel opera, is that Hercules--who saves Alceste from death in those versions--does not figure here. Which is clearly the right choice, given the tone that Gluck is trying to strike. The whole point of it is that Alceste is saved because of the strength of the couple's love. If instead she's saved because of the strength of Hercules...it sort of dulls the impact, doesn't it? But for whatever reason, when Gluck extensively revised it years later for a translation into French, guess what? Hercules is BACK, baby! Yeah! Yeah? Yeah.

Well actually, I loved this. It's definitely become my favorite Gluck opera. The depth of Alceste's and Ademto's love for each other is...well, quite possibly more vividly conveyed than love in any other opera I can name. Very impressive. And not a dry eye in the house while they're mourning, even though you know a happy ending (really, the purest deus ex machina) is coming. Excellent production from the Teatro La Fenice, also: very clean, minimalist design with checkered floor tiles, a low staircase, and a few columns and arches in the background. Ideal for conveying the drama, I would say.

Seeing this made me want to seek out more Gluck. Before, I'd never really made an effort to see what's available, and now that I have, I'm kind of shocked to see that I've basically seen everything that's available, apart from a few low-quality, unsubtitled videos on youtube. That's five, for the record, out of a total of forty-nine--kind of shocking that there wouldn't be more available from as important a composer as Gluck, even granting that his early works--when I guess he was more a straightforwardly-baroque composer--are considered of less interest. Which candidate is running on the pro-Gluck platform? I am a single-issue voter on this, so I need to know before I cast my ballot.

Francesco Cavalli, Il Giasone (1649)

I think from now on I'm going to include DVD cover images with these reviews where applicable. Make the blog a little more visually...something. "Dynamic" might be pushing it.

Supposedly, according to various articles on the internet that may or may not all stem from one claim that may or may not be in any way factual, this was the most popular opera of the seventeenth century. Quite a claim. This would be based on number of performances, but I have a hard time seeing how that can possibly be verified. Still! They say that, so it's probably worth seeing. I mean, it's Cavalli, so it's probably going to be worth seeing anyway. I don't need an excuse. But...I don't know how I was going to finish this sentence.

It's...well, based on the story of Jason and Medea. Sort of. Very, very sort of. It never ceases to amuse me how little respect people in baroque times had for classical mythology. Sure, it varied: Cavalli's La Didone, in spite of the grafted-on happy ending, basically takes the drama seriously; L'Orfeo is very, very solemn; and Charpentier's Medée is a grimmer, more mythologically-grounded take on the same material here --but people of the time were extremely willing to just travesty the shit out of this material. And I love them for it!

SO ANYWAY. It's very busy, with characters constantly dashing on and off-stage; it would take forever to provide more than a basic plot outline: Jason and Medea are in love, in theory. But Jason is already married and already has children with Hypsipyle, the queen of Lemnos, and she wants him back so she sends her servant Orestes to find him. There's also Aegeus (Theseus' father?), who apparently had a thing with Medea in the past and is still in love with her. And there's Aegeus' comedy servant, the stammering Demo. Ultimately, Hypsipyle finds Jason and demands that he return to her, but he's vacillating around like a big dope. Medea is pissed at this and demands that he kill Hypsipyle. He doesn't want to get his hands dirty, but it's cool if one of his men does it, so he orders her to go meet with his captain, Besso and say a specific thing to him, and he orders Besso to fling whoever says this to him in the ocean. However, instead Medea comes, says the specific thing, and gets thrown in the ocean, only to be saved by Aegeus. Now she's in love with him again (and sorry for trying to get her rival murdered). So Jason is ordered to return to Hypsipyle, which he does, and everyone's happy. And that's that. Also, did I mention that there's a horny old nursemaid? That's a character type that Cavalli is extremely fond of.

I know that SOUNDS goofy, but I don't think it quite gets at how goofy it really is in the small details: Demo insisting that he drowned in the ocean and now he's dead and also he's swallowed a whale; Besso declaring that he won't drown Hypsipyle because "I only kill one queen per day;" Jason's sitcom-level efforts to placate both Medea and Hypsipyle--it makes me feel closer to our seventeenth-century forebears to realize that they had whimsical senses of humor like this.

There are actually two productions of this available on disc; the other, being I guess older, seems to be much more watched--it has a bunch of amazon reviews while this has none--but I was extremely happy with it. Goofy, sure, in a way that people complain about sometimes, sure, but it seemed to fit the general tone of the piece very well. A confident mixture of anachronistic setting and especially costuming, with Hypsipyle (pictured on the DVD cover) and her attendants dressed in 1920s chic lugging steamer trunks around; the Argonauts looking like some kind of mixture of bikers and black-clad secret service people, with Ercole himself (of course Hercules is a character here; you know he's always hanging around) as a huge-muscled Hell's Angels type; and Cupid (another singing character) as a person in a somewhat terrifying giant, anatomically correct Cupid costume. It's pretty darned nutty, in all, but in a way that brings me delight in great measure.

Is it the best opera of the seventeenth century? Well...hard to say, really. Not necessarily, but it IS super-good, and if we have to choose one, hell, I guess we could go with this, while recognizing that it's necessarily at least a somewhat arbitrary distinction.

This is what I watched instead of the Presidential debate, by the way. This was self-evidently the correct choice. I don't know what you people were expecting.