André Grétry, Guillaume Tell (1791)

Rossini's was not the first opera of this title.  And I can prove it: the proof is that this opera exists.  Ha! I've run rings around you logically!

This has basically the same plot as the later opera, though since it's less than half as long--just an hour and a half--obviously digging in less deeply.  So the Swiss people, including Tell, his wife, and some guy named Arnold Melchtal, are being oppressed by the Austrians, and particular the villainous Gessler, although here, there's no conflict of Arnold being in love with an Austrian princess.  Also, Gessler doesn't kill his dad; he just blinds him.  But there is--of course--a part where Gessler forces Tell to shoot an apple off his son's head, and it ends with all the Swiss heroically fighting on.  Yup.

So there's spoken dialogue here, this being an opéra comique.  This is actually the second Grétry opera I've seen; the first was Les fausses apparences ou L'Amant jaloux, of which I wasn't a huge fan--some okay music, but way to much spoken dialogue.  Or so I thought.  I don't remember it very well.  I like this one better; there's less dialogue, and the music is really pretty darn terrific, if not quite Rossini-level.  But boy oh boy, this production: I actually like the look of it; it's very colorful and fun.  But the director, for whatever reason, decided that the spoken dialogue should be performed in this horrendously irritating style, with the characters drawing out phrases in unnatural ways and mugging hideously.  The audience occasionally laughs, being either more charitable or more easily amused than I am, but damn, man.  According to one amazon review--an unimpeachable source--this may be authentic to how these things were originally done, in which case I suppose I can't object.  But actually...I can and do.  Because I don't like it.  And the thing is, apart from the silly voices and faces, this really isn't much of a comedy.  I mean okay, sure, there are a few scenes that are I suppose formally comic, but it's mostly dramatic in the same way as Rossini's version is.  The furious goofing around just feels out-of-place.

I'll see more Grétry operas given the opportunity, but I would humbly request that the producers focus a bit more on watchability than they did here.