Leoš Janáček, Osud (1907)

That title means "fate" or "destiny;" I just left it in the Czech so it would be more distinctive.  It was going to be on Operavision late last year, but was cancelled due to COVID.  Did you think that would stop me from seeing it?  HA!  You FOOL!  There's a high-quality production here, and a libretto here.  Still, it's definitely the least-performed  Janáček opera I've seen.

The plot's kind of weird.  In the past, Míla had a relationship with this composer, Živný.  Her mother makes her break it off to try to find a better match, but it turns out she's already pregnant, which kind of puts the kibosh on that.  Some years later, the two of them meet again and pick things up again, in spite of ma's disapproval.  Several years later, the two of them are married.  So that's nice, but in the meantime her mother has lost her mind.  The two of them have a scuffle on the balcony and they fall off and DIE.  Yikes.  And yet, that is only the climax of the second act (out of three).  The final act takes place eleven years later.  Some students are rehearsing Živný's unfinished opera, which is about his history with Míla.   Živný appears and lengthily monologues about the characters in his opera, who are clearly the two of them.  He collapses but recovers for the time being.  When the students wonder if he's going to finish the opera, he vehemently denies he will: it's in God's hands!

Is it?  Maybe so.  May. Be. So.  You might wonder, huh, if this is about a composer, is it to some extent autobiographical?  But I don't think so.  The story is that Janáček met a woman who had been in a similar situation to Míla--forced to leave her composer lover by her rich parents--and he wrote an unsympathetic opera about her, so she wanted Janáček to paint her more sympathetically (I love the idea of opera-as-diss-track).  Which...well, it's not unsympathetic, but you do have to wonder what her reaction would have been if she saw it, which she probably didn't, since it wasn't staged until long after Janáček's death, in 1958.

Well...it's definitely weird.  That booklet linked about characterizes the libretto as "sometimes verg[ing] on the incomprehensible," which...well, it's kind of fair.  Still, I liked it.  It's interesting, if nothing else, and as for the music, I feel like I might have the wrong idea about Janáček, as it's a lot more melodic than I remember his work being.  I should revisit Jenůfa.

Jules Massenet, Le portrait de Manon (1894)

From the sublime to the ridiculous--did you know that Massenet wrote a dang sequel to Manon?  Not withstanding my barely tolerate-hate relationship with Massenet, I had to check it out (okay, "hate" is too strong--I've never hated a Massenet opera; I've just never particularly liked one).

So what's ol Des Grieux been up to since Manon died?  Mainly moping around, it seems, mooning over the titular portrait.  He's also tutoring his nephew Jean in history.  When Jean reveals that he's in love, Des Grieux is dubious, and even more so when it turns out he's in love with the penniless Aurore, the ward of his friend Tiberge (a character in the novel who appears in no other operatic version that I know of).  So it seems hopeless, and the young lovers decide to off themselves, but Jean keeps rejecting Aurore's suggested suicide methods on the basis that they'd leave goofy-looking corpses (I'm not sure if this part is supposed to be macabre humor, but that's how it plays).  But then Des Grieux hears Aurore sing and thinks she sounds like Manon, causing him to immediately approve the match.  Tiberge then reveals that Aurore is actually the daughter of the late Lescaut, and therefore Manon's niece.  And there you have it.  The portrait itself doesn't figure very heavily into the plot.

First I should note that this is very obviously a lockdown project; it's done as a chamber opera with only piano accompaniment, which I don't love (but the only other performance I was able to find is similar; I wondered, was it just written this way?  But no; if you look at the score, you can see not).  Also, the four characters are very awkwardly partitioned into four parts of the stage for social-distancing purposes, which made it feel kind of disconnected.

But!  What do we think of the piece itself, if we're able to separate that from the particular performance?  Well...I found the novelty kind of entertaining, but as an actual drama it's pretty weird; the idea that Des Grieux would be okay with his nephew's marriage just because his future bride sounds like his dead lover is pretty warped in a way that I don't think was intended.  As for the music, eh...what can I say?  It's Massenet.  It's definitely unfair of me to judge it without hearing a fully orchestrated version, but I sort of doubt I'd be blown away.  Oh well, whatever, never mind.

Jake Heggie, Dead Man Walking (2000)

So I finally managed to see this, on a Spanish streaming site.  I was sorry the Met production was a COVID casualty, but this is a high-class production itself--from the Teatro Real--so I don't think this was any kind of downgrade from that, aside from the presence of burnt-in Spanish subtitles.  As is almost always the case with English-language operas, there's still some dialogue that's hard to make out.  Such is life.

This of course is based on the nonfiction book by Sister Helen Prejean about her experiences working with and counseling prisoners on death row.  I've never read it, but I did see the movie back in the day.  I was surprised to realize that both the movie and opera are lightly fictionalized versions of true events: in both cases, the inmate character is an amalgamation of two different people that Prejean worked with.  He even has a different name between them, but I think it's basically the same person.  In the opera, his name is Joseph DeRocher, and he's being executed for murdering two teenagers who were making out by a lake.  We see his bids for clemency being denied, we meet both his family and the parents of his victims, and of course his relationship with Prejean.  At first he angrily denies culpability at all, but in the end he breaks down and acknowledges his guilt.  And then, the state puts poison in him.  And that is that.

I must say.........this was harder to watch than any opera I've seen.  In a good--but emotionally draining--way.  With most operas, no matter how tragic they may be, there's a level of artifice that blunts the force somewhat, but here, man, we're talking about an issue that is still very, very alive and well.  "Well."  None of this is to say that it works so well because Heggie is a better composer than any other (although he is very good), but he--and Terrence McNally, the librettist, who suggested the idea for the opera in the first place--chose a very potent subject.  And Heggie's varied, tonal music works very well with the drama.

This performance features Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen (see, I told you it was high class).  She's great of course, but I've gotta say: Michael Mayes as Joseph I think is even better; a really tremendous performance from someone who apparently isn't famous enough to warrant a wikipedia page (or I may just be saying that because he gets the most overtly dramatic and emotional moments).  And you can tell he was feeling it:  during the curtain call, he looks emotionally overcome in a way I don't think I've ever seen before.  It is truly moving when he and DiDonato embrace.

The thing about America today is, there are so many things that are worthy of outrage that it's very hard to focus on any one of them.  I don't think that's a conscious strategy on anyone's part, but it might as well be.  Still.  Capital punishment remains one of our worst things (frankly, I feel a little self-conscious about this opera being performed in countries that, for all the problems they do have, don't have this one).  I listened to an interview where Heggie claimed that the story isn't demanding that you feel a certain way, but...come on.  The piece does not downplay the savagery of DeRocher's crime, nor the pain of his victim's families, so in that sense it's fair--but Prejean and her book are very, very overtly anti-death-penalty--it's the main thing she tweets about, and OF COURSE she has a twitter account.  And if his breakdown at the end does not move you to question your pro-cp attitude, then, well, the drama clearly has not worked for you.

The one criticism you could level against it is to say, okay, but he repents in the end.  A lot of executed prisoners don't do that, so if you're only concerned with people who are ultimately sympathetic, you're not really anti-death-penalty, are you?  That's a real argument; you can't just dismiss it.  What I'd say is that the argument is not that all condemned prisoners are actually nice people, but rather that they're human, with all the messiness that entails.  They are not solely defined by their crimes, and blank, institutional violence is not an appropriate response.  A story like this one forces you to confront that in a way that you wouldn't otherwise.  And really, if your argument is we've GOTTA kill 'em all; otherwise, we might accidentally let a bad person live, I just don't know what to say to you.

But that's neither here nor there...well, okay, it's both here and there all the time.  But still: this is a truly powerful opera, and I hope that in the future society changes in such a way as to attenuate some of that power.

Daniel Catán, La hija de Rappaccini (1991)

Hey, I absolutely get the many, many reasons that facebook sucks.  It's no exaggeration to say that if it didn't exist we wouldn't have gotten fucking T****.  And I'm totes cognizant of the privacy concerns, and they are real concerns.  AND YET...well, it knows very well that I like opera, and sometimes it recommends me things like this that are extremely time-sensitive and that I never would've known about otherwise.  And hey, if one side effect of the literal destruction of the world is that I get to watch a few more operas...well, you can decide if that's a price worth paying.  But here we are!

Yes.  So obviously, this is based on Hawthorne's short story--one of five such operas, per wikipedia (meanwhile, there are no fewer than eighteen Scarlet Letters, but is a one of them available anywhere?  To ask is to answer).  It's set in Padua, where a student, Giovanni, has come to study.  His boarding house is next to the house and garden of a doctor named--wait for it--Rappaccini.  A professor acquaintance of Giovanni's warns him that Rappaccini is bad news--he's obsessed with knowledge even if it means killing off patients.

Rappaccini has a daughter, Beatrice, but doesn't let anyone get close to her.  Giovanni sees her and naturally becomes obsessed.  His weird landlady tells him a secret path into the garden.  They're in love, but he gets pricked by a thorn tree that she warns is poisonous.  His wound starts to fester.  Baglioni warns him that Beatrice is bad news, being made of poison, and gives him an antidote with which perhaps to save her.  In the garden, the doctor comes in and rants about how now Giovanni and Beatrice can mate and breed a race of supermen.  Giovanni gives Beatrice the antidote which she drinks and--so it seems--they die together.

It's unsettling stuff; give it credit.  I suspect that high school students might like it more than The Scarlet Letter.  As for myself, I can't really say whether it's a good novel; all I can say is that it's definitely not a good novel to make fifteen-year-olds read.  

At any rate, this is a really good opera.  The music is very cool: a kind of sparkly, shimmering, minimalistic-ish thing that perfectly fits the macabre story.  Sort of reminds me of Saariaho in places.  I seem to recall the other Catán opera I've seen, Florencia en el Amazonas, as having a more conventional neo-romantic sound.  But I like them both!  And the Chicago production here is very cool, especially the garden with all its beautiful yet (we know) deadly plant life.  I recommend it; tomorrow is your last opportunity, at least for now.

Franz Schubert, Alfonso und Estrella (1822)

Here's Schubert's only other readily available opera--again, unperformed in his lifetime.  That must've been frustrating.

So it's Medieval Times, and Froila is the deposed king of León; exactly where he's living now is not clear.  His son Alfonso is sick of being stuck wherever he's stuck.  Meanwhile, the usurper, Mauregato, has a daughter Estrella.  His ambitious general Adolfo wants to marry her.  Mauregato isn't keen on this, but he can't deny him, having offered him anything he wants; he comes up with the excuse that the only one who can marry Estrella is one who has this special necklace.  Adolfo is unhappy about this and decides to incite a rebellion.  Alfonso and Estrella meet and fall in love.  Adolfo menaces her but is stopped and thrown in jail.  Mauregato feels bad about having usurped the throne and gives it up to Froila, who forgives him.

The libretto is kind of a mess, but as with Fierrabras, the music is good enough to redeem it--and unlike Fierrabras, there's no spoken dialogue here, which is for the best, I feel.  This production is good: it features Thomas Hampson as Froila, and also Nikolaus Harnoncourt looking entertainingly deranged as he conducts.

Yeah, okay, sometimes there's just not that much to say.  If you like pre-Wagnerian German romantic music, you're gonna like this.  That is all I can tell you.

Daniel Schnyder, Charlie Parker's Yardbird (2015)

I really want to like jazz more.  I feel I should.  It seems cool.  I mean, I don't dislike it, but there's definitely an extent to which I don't get it.  But maybe I could!  I'm certainly not a classical expert, but these days I can at least make basic distinctions between baroque, classical, romantic, and modern music.  Well, maybe in the future I'll become a jazz aficionado.  It could happen!

Well, at any rate, I saw this, which from what I can tell seems to be one of your more popular contemporary operas.  It's been performed a bunch of times all over the place.  That title is confusing to me, however: I know Parker's nickname was Yardbird, but that apostrophe stops me dead in my tracks.  Is it "Charlie Parker is in possession of Yardbird," or is it "Charlie Parker is Yardbird?"  Neither of these seems right.

Regardless!  So we start just following Parker's untimely death in 1955.  But his ghost is still there, and wants to complete a final piece of music.  From there we go into a nonlinear series of events, some happening in the present as characters interact with his ghost, and some in the past.  The other characters are the woman who found his body, his mother, his ex-wives, and his bandmate Dizzy Gillespie.  

Now, you might say that the libretto is a bit unfocused.  You have this conceit where he wants to create a posthumous masterpiece, but then that never really goes anywhere.  There's not much of a sense of progression.  And yet, I cannot bring myself to hold this against this, because I really loved the opera, and it even seems groundbreaking to me.  Porgy and Bess and Treemonisha both feature strong jazz elements, but I've never seen a piece that embraced the form as wholeheartedly as this does (it is said to mix Schnyder's music with Parker's own compositions, which I must simply accept on faith).  The singing is still obviously operatic, but also featuring jazz idioms (including occasional scat singing).  I thought it was just awesome.  Maybe I actually do like jazz, at least more than I thought?  Really, it's one of the best contemporary operas I've seen.

I liked everything about this Pittsburgh Opera production except...the fact that the singers are all wearing COVID masks.  I mean, I shouldn't complain; I'm very pro-mask, obviously, but man, it does NOT help the artistic experience.  Not being able to see the bottom half of everyone's face really limits the physical expressiveness that's possible.  OH WELL.  For an opera this good, I can overlook it.

Bohuslav Martinů, Julietta (1938)

Hey, it's my first Czech opera not by Smetana, Dvořák, or Janáček.  What a thrill.

The story is based on a surrealist play by Georges Neveux.  All the ins and outs would be a little hard to describe, and probably not of much utility.  But basically, there's this guy, Michel, who comes to a seaside town in search of a girl who he heard singing three years ago.   But nobody in this town can remember anything: that seems to be a characteristic of that town, so when outsiders come, they get them to recount their memories so they can take them on.  He gets appointed "captain" for having such a good memory.  Eventually he meets the woman in question.  They meet a "memory salesman," and she looks at photographs he's selling and from them remembers their supposed past.  She runs away and Michel impulsively fires a shot that may or may not have killed her.  He's going to be executed, but gets out of it by telling them more memories as inspired by the photographs so they forget about it.  He sails away on a ship.  He wakes up in this "dream bureau" where people come to have the dreams they want.  The clerk warns him that he's gotta get out of there before they close up, or he'll be stuck forever.  He ends up staying anyway, and as the opera closes, the opening is being recapitulated.

Right!  So there you have it.  I was really loving this for the first two acts, but much less so with the third, in the dream bureau.  The thing is...no, it's not "realistic," but it does provide a concrete explanation for what's going on, which makes the whole thing way less interesting to me.  And it doesn't make sense, either--and not in a good, surrealist non-sense-making way: he wants to be united with Julietta, okay, but why is he apparently also fantasizing about living in a weird, mutable world where no one can remember anything?  I mean, I suppose there could be a reason for that, or it could be just the nature of dreams, but neither of these things is even hinted at.  Still, the appropriately atmospheric romantic music combined with the strength of the first two thirds makes it worthwhile, if not quite the masterpiece that it could be.

It is not super-easy to see this opera.  First, you must obtain a bootleg DVD of the production that was on Operavision before you knew about Operavision.  But it has not subtitles, so then, you must purchase a CD of the opera that includes a libretto (in Czech, French, English, and German).  And you will do that because you have wanted to see it for a long time.  It's a good production, too: very dreamlike, as befits the piece.  The only thing you won't like about it--and you wouldn't even know not to like this if you weren't following it with a separate libretto--is that there are a number of scenes that were very noticeably cut.  They don't affect your understanding of the plot (such as it is), but a story like this really runs on atmosphere more than anything else, so why cut, for instance, a scene where Michel returns to Julietta's house only to be told by an old woman that there's never been anyone like Julietta living there?  If you can tell me the logic of cutting that, I will buy you a bánh mì sandwich.

Alberto Ginastera, Bomarzo (1967)

Hey, remember how I wanted to see this opera?  WELL GUESS WHAT!  I bet you would not guess what if you had one billion guesses.

Yup.  So obviously (obviously!), this is based on the novel by Manuel Mujica Láinez about the sixteenth-century duke Pier Francesco Orsini, who is best known for having commissioned this weird park full of giant stone monsters.  It is a large novel, so naturally the opera is much streamlined: it starts with Orsini drinking a drink that's supposed to make him immortal, followed by flashbacks to his previous life, followed by him inevitably dying from being poisoned.  So there you have it.

The libretto here is written by Mujica Láinez himself, so presumably it's his vision for how the staged version of the story should go, but there are big differences between this and the novel.  The most noticeable and fundamental of these is that Orsini here comes across as really hapless and whiney in a way that he didn't there.  And THAT is largely because it completely axes the conceit that Orsini, in a magical-realist kind of way, is narrating the story from the vantage point of the twentieth century, which enables him to historicize and put events in perspective.  It's been a few years since I read the novel, so maybe my mind is distorting things, but this obsession with immortality really wasn't a thing in the book, as I remember it.  I don't think there was the suggestion that he would be <i>actually</i> living forever.

Hmm.  Be that as it may, I am very impressed by Ginastera's music, which is a largely serialist kind of thing that nonetheless really doesn't recall Berg of Schoenberg.  There are some really mesmerizing rhythms here, some spooky supernatural stuff, combined with a bit of early-music flair appropriate to the setting.  I'd say it's one of the more distinctive contemporary or near-contemporary operas I've seen.  

But I'm just not sure about that libretto, whoever wrote it.  It feels very detached to me, without providing much in the way of character interest.  There aren't any sympathetic characters of anything nuts like that.  I will say, however, that this movie version is rather a cool thing.  It was filmed in 2007 to commemorate the opera's fortieth anniversary, in the city of Bomarzo itself, including parts in the actual Gardens, and it does this thing where the action switches between period costumes and settings and present-day stuff.  That might seems a little arbitrary if you only know the opera, but I think it's an effective way of at least gesturing in the direction of the book's temporal disjunction.  The only problem here is that there's some really annoying sonic feedback when the music gets too intense.

But anyway, for reasons that only barely make sense, this had been one of those hard-to-find operas that I really, really wanted to see, so I feel quite fulfilled right now.  

Boris Blacher, Romeo und Julia (1947)

Here comes ol' Boris Blacher.  Good ol' Boris Blacher...yes, sir!  Good ol' Boris Blacher...How I hate him.  

No I don't.  But even though two of his operas are on DVD, which puts him ahead of a lot of people, I couldn't help feeling surprised that he's well enough known for this to appear on Operavision.  But it did!  Clearly.

So what this is is a weird exercise in alienation that I certainly wasn't expecting based on 200 000 Taler and Preußisches Märchen.  We all know what Romeo and Juliet is, of course, but this is the least Romeo and Juliet-y version you can imagine.  All of the dialogue is Shakespearean (if the subtitles are to be believed), but somehow that just makes it seem more alien.  The characters are just sort of staggering around in this contextless void, with various Montagues and Capulets appearing to holler things and then disappearing; the title characters do sing at each other a few times, but there's no sense of them actually, like, being really in love.  It's all very detached, like the characters are aware they're in a story.  To be clear, I don't think this is the production's fault; I think it was always meant to be a Brechtian theater-of-alienation kind of thing.  

Well, it's certainly a different take!  There is no chance that you will think it's just mimicking Gounod or Bellini.  It definitely works in terms of what it's trying to do, but what it's trying to do is, by design, pretty distancing.  The music is...sort of romantic, not atonal, but more minimalist than you'd find in Puccini.  It fits the action well, which means, again, impressive in its way, but perhaps hard to exactly fall in love with.  Still, at just seventy minutes, it's an unusual experience you can have in not that much time, so I say go for it.

Eino Tamberg, Cyrano de Bergerac (1976)

You know, when I see my first opera in given language, I kind of like it to be something that reflects on the culture in question, whether musically, plotwise, or both.  That was not an option in this case, however.  Is it weird that the most popular Estonian opera is a Cyrano adaptation from the seventies?  Seems like it's a little weird.  Video here; libretto here, in Estonian, French, and English.  I wish more record labels would stick their libretti online like that, even if the English text is slightly mangled in places.  No biggie.

Well, I already wrote about the Alfano version, and I what I said there about the plot mostly still obtains here, except that these days I'm feeling significantly more judgey about it.  Using your writing skills to let some other guy get the girl so you can vicariously experience it through him?  That is fuuuuu-uuucked, like something out of a Tanizaki novel only unintentionally so.  I just can't feel any sympathy for this idiot.  I know tragic heroes have to be taken down by their own flaws, but is "being a dumbass" really the sort of thing that works in that context?  I have my doubts.

Yes, well, there's always the music, yeah?  Which is better, this or the Alfano?  Well...that is very hard for me to really judge; I saw the latter so long ago, and it hasn't stuck in my mind particularly.  I can say that this is fairly straightforward neo-romantic fare.  There are indeed some pretty good arias, but...you know how I said, re Fierrabras, that a weak libretto can be saved by the music?  I mean, not that the libretto here is weak for what it is--it's a straightforward version of the Cyrano story--but the point is, my antipathy towards it leads me to not appreciate the music as much as I otherwise might have, I think.

Humph! said the camel.

Armen Tigranian, Anoush (1912)

Our tour of former Soviet Republics now takes us to Armenia for this, which is considered--or so I am told--if not the first Armenian opera, at least the first one that really reveals the Armenian character.  I will leave that for the experts to decide.

So we're in an Armenian village.  Anoush and a shepherd named Saro are in love.  She's momentarily freaked out by a prediction that her lover will be shot and killed, but ha ha, that won't happen.  At a wedding party, the village elder insists that Saro and his friend (and Anoush's brother) Mossy (Mossy?) wrestle.  They don't want to, but he insists.  Now, there's something you should know about this village: they have a rule, or maybe more a guideline, that you're not allowed to win at wrestling.  It sounds weird when I put it like that, but I'm not sure there would be any way to make it sound not-weird.  So they're just funnin' around, but then Saro sees Anoush in the crowd, wants to impress her, and impulsively pins Mossy (Mossy?).  This is taken as the blackest of insults, and now Mossy (Mossy?) is his implacable enemy forever.  Anoush and Saro try to run away, but Mossy (Mossy?) finds Saro and shoots him dead.  After a mad scene, Anoush jumps in a precipice.  What happens to Mossy (Mossy?)?  We may never know.  Personally, I was waiting for the scene where Saro, driven made by grief and hatred, transforms into the monstrous Necrosaro and terrorizes the world, but that scene must've been cut from the version I saw.

I mean, it would definitely have been a cool visual.

Anyway, there's definitely something to be said for this: I won't say the music knocked my socks off, but the Armenian folk stuff was fun.  It reminded me a little of the music in Leyli and Majnun, but closer to the more usual operatic tradition.  Furthermore, some of the scenes--of the girls telling each other fortunes, of the wedding party--seemed to do a good job of depicting this culture.  And yet...BOY is it hard to get over the absurdity of the central conflict.  I know that overreaction is more common in opera than the reverse, but even so, embarking on this huge, fatal vendetta over a friendly wrestling match seems excessive.  You can say, well, you just don't understand how vital the idea of "honor" was in cultures like this, and that may be true, but...well, it's hard to imagine much of anyone really feeling this.  And beyond that, even by operatic standards, the relationship between Anoush and Saro is not well-developed.

There's a video of a film version from 1983  online, but I wasn't sure how well it was actually following the plot, and there was sententious narration in Armenian from Some Guy, which I didn't care for.  So I got the DVD.  It lacks subtitles, which is lame but which I anticipated; there's an English-language libretto here.  What's more relevant is that the video quality is just okay, and that there's a box in the bottom right that says "PARSEGHIAN VIDEO" onscreen at all times, which is a real amateur move.

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Il segreto di Susanna (1909)

Wolf-Ferrari is name-checked in Pynchon's Against the Day--twice, in fact: "The orchestra was back to Victor Herbert and WolfFerrari" (627); "A heavy interior susurrance, inflected by ancient stone, issuing out onto the rio along with a small string orchestra playing arrangements of Strauss Jr., Luigi Denza, and hometown luminary Ermanno WolfFerrari" (913).  Pynchon is Wolf-Ferrari crazy!  Is this just because he has a funny name?  Almost certainly.  In which case, it's too bad he wasn't able to work Galuppi in there somewhere. But regardless, respect.

Wolf-Ferrari has been characterized to me as being a kind of throwback composer, and that's certainly the case here: this is a comic one-act intermezzo with a man, a woman, and a silent servant.  This may be goofier than any of the intentionally goofy intermezzi of the baroque and early classical eras I have seen, however.  So Susanna, the countess, is married to Gil, the count.  Gil comes home one evening and smells tobacco, which he dislikes and which makes him think his wife may be having an affair.  Blah blah, eventually Susanna's Secret comes out: she's a smoker!  OMG!  Once he finds out, she agrees to stop for the sake of his love, but instead, they smoke together.  Um.

Yeah...I mean, it's not that smoking is a moral flaw or anything, but it still feels very weird to have it presented like this; it somehow feels more dated than works that were written long before.  On the whole, I find it alienating and unappealing: even beyond the smoking thing, Gil is a control freak who forbids his wife to go outside alone, and their relationship seems unappealing and probably doomed to fail.  And the music's just okay, sort of hinting at classical themes but largely falling flat, with no particularly memorable moments.  This production seems like it may have been surreptitiously filmed by a bootlegger (are there opera bootleggers?); at first the stage is at a notable slant, and though that eventually clears up, there are no zooms or anything dynamic like that.

I dunno; if this is worth it at all, it's for the weird novelty.  But it certainly doesn't make me desperate to see more Wolf-Ferrari.  Although that is a solid name: a wolf in a Ferrari?!?  What a nutty notion!

Antonio Lotti, Polidoro (1714)

Man, remember when I was so naive that I thought I'd potentially be able to watch every opera available in video form?  Whereas these days I discover something new almost every day, I feel like.  Such as this, which just appeared on OperaonVideo (although it was uploaded in 2019).  An opera by a largely unknown baroque composer, which is always of interest to me.  Found the libretto (it's not hard to find; it's linked in the video description), stuck it in google translate, and watched it.  BAM.

So Polidoro (or Polydoros) was Priam's youngest son.  In the Iliad, he's killed by Achilles, but this seems to be based (more or less; as always there is artistic license) on the account in Hyginus' Fabulae, in which he's spirited away and raised by his sister Illona and her husband Polymestor (here called Polynestore), the king of Thrace.  But there's a twist: Illona knows that the Greeks want to stamp out all trace of the Trojans (which seems to represent substantial mission creep from the original purpose of the War), so to keep him safe, she raises him as her son while pretending that her actual son with Polynestore, Deifilo, is Polidoro.  I don't understand how that would be remotely feasible, but that's what they say.  If you're keeping track, that makes Polynestore Polidoro's brother-in-law and Deifilo his nephew.  So here (at this point I'm just talking about the events of the opera), Achilles' son Pyrrhus (Pirro) comes along; he wants the Thracians to give him Polidoro so the Greeks can murder him.  Also, he wants Andromache, Hector's widow, who is the lover of Deifilo, whom everyone (including both him and Polidoro) think is Polidoro.  Polynestore is weak and venal, so he's willing to give him up for cash.  When Polidoro (who thinks he's Deifilo) learns about this, he gets super-pissed-off, and comes up with the idea that he should pretend to be Polidoro (whom he actually is) and Deifilo should pretend to be Deifilo (whom he he actually is) so he can sacrifice himself in the place of his friend.  Well, that's the plan, but it doesn't happen, and Deifilo is killed (off-stage), though his ghost makes a brief singing appearance.  So in revenge, they take off Polynestore, presumably to be murdered, and Pirro leaves amidst threats that the Achaeans are going to murder the Thracians.  The end.

Sort of a dark plot for a baroque opera, and if you think all that stuff about Polidoro's and Deifilo's identities sounds confusing...well, you ain't wrong.  I'm somehow put in mind of one guard who always lies and one who always tells the truth.  Also, the whole thing raises thorny philosophical questions: if you've gone your whole life thinking you're a certain person, and being treated by everyone else like that person...how are you not that person?  Seems Highly Questionable.

This is the first time the opera's been done in modern times.  It has a rather minimalistic production, with the characters in frilly eighteenth-century period costume with no props or anything on stage--just a minimal vaguely classical backdrop.  I rather fancy it might be closer to how the piece was originally performed.  Polidoro and Deifilo are sung by countertenors; Pirro by a mezzo.

So wot's it like?  Well, it's all right.  If you're looking for Vivaldi-esque pyrotechnics, you will come up blank.  Lotti (1667-1740) may have lived most of his life (let alone his adult life) in the eighteenth century, but to my ear he sounds much more like a seventeenth-century composer.  There are a fair few of what the libretto refers to as arias, but they strike me as much more arioso-type things--very light, wispy sorts of tunes.  Hey, I'm not complaining; I like seventeenth-century opera more than most people (I think that statement is both true and an extremely easy thing for anyone to do, if they want to).  Still, Lotti is no Cavalli; I found this basically pleasant, and interestingly unusual in its tone, but that's about as far as it goes.

Federico Moreno Torroba, Luisa Fernanda (1932)

Let it be known throughout the realm: zarzuela is just Spanish opera with spoken dialogue.  That's it.  It's perfectly reasonable as a subcategory, but it would be silly to pretend it's something somehow outside the larger operatic tradition.  Did you know that there was such a thing as baroque zarzuela starting in the mid-seventeenth century?  According to this, it's traditionally pinpointed as having been born in 1657, which would mean it even predates French opera (whoa!), and does leave open the question of why Spanish is so marginalized in our general understanding of operatic history.

Okay, so it's 1868 and revolution is in the air (there seems to be no presaging of the upcoming Spanish Civil War here).  Luisa is a young woman in love with Javier, a revolutionary colonel, but he's been away for a long time, and their future seems in doubt.  There's also a rich guy, Vidal, who's trying to find himself a wife, meets her, and falls head over heels.  Politically, he's willing to go either way, according to what she wants--to be a monarchist or a revolutionary (there's no real political valence to any of this maneuvering; it's all in service to the romantic drama).  He ends up fighting for the rebels, and is wounded, and Luisa agrees to marry him.  Javier realizes he still loves her; she likewise still loves him, but she's gonna marry Vidal anyway.  But then, realizing the situation, Vidal nobly gives her up to be with Javier.  Then, he is sad.

So what do we think of this?  Well...'sallright.  The music has that Spanish flavor which I can't quite characterize and which I feel vaguely racist even mentioning in those terms.  What's it even MEAN?  Apart from that, it's kind of normal romantic fare.  The ratio of music to speech is high, which I find pleasing.  As you can see from the cover there, we've got ol' Domingo as Vidal; probably a bit too old for it (I can't quite figure out when this was staged), but find, sure, why not.  Nancy Herrera--I'd swear I've seen her before, but I can't recall where--is a fiery Luisa.  I don't know.  What can I say?  It probably sounds like I was underwhelmed by this, but I think it's fairer to say that I was moderately whelmed; it just didn't make my head explode with excitement.

Franz Schubert, Fierrabras (1823)

Schubert was hugely prolific in his sadly abbreviated life, but his operas really get short shrift. He wrote quite a few of them, but they aren't much performed nowadays--in fairness, a lot of them are incomplete and/or partially lost. But here's this, the last one that he completed. It's kind of a bullshit story: he and Carl Maria von Weber were both commissioned by a theater to write operas so as to increase the German repertoire. Schubert wrote this and Weber Euryanthe. But the public just wanted Rossini, so Euryanthe was a failure, and Schubert's work wasn't staged until after his death; he never even got paid for it. Screw that crud!  Shouldn't he have been able to sue someone?

Right, so it's Charlemagne (or Karl, as the German has it) Times. Christians vs Moors. Fierrabras is the son of Boland, the Moorish king. He's currently a prisoner of the Christians, but he's allowed his freedom in that context, what with them being so chivalrous and whatnot. He's secretly in love with Charlemagne's daughter Emma, but that's not going anywhere because she and one of the local knights, Eginhard, are already in love--but there are problems because Charlemagne doesn't want his daughter marrying a lame regular knight. He mistakenly believes that Fierrabras was seducing his daughter and has him locked up; meanwhile, his troops are going over to fight the Moors, Eginhard filled with guilt at Fierrabras having been so treated. They're captured by the Moors, but another complication: another of Charlemagne's knights, Roland, and Boland's daughter, Florinda, are also in love. She helps them escape; they're recaptured, but Eginhard gets away and goes back to give the bad news. The confusion about Fierrabras is cleared up, and he's freed. All the Christian knights are going to be executed, but Charlemagne & co save the day. Boland is last-minute reconciled with the Christians (a very baroque-opera resolution, I feel), and the two couples can get married. Whoo!

If you're keeping score, there's actually not a whole lot of difference, morally, between the depiction of Christians and Saracens here. Both kings are more than willing to disown their daughters over their romantic choices. I suppose Boland is a little more savage in that he appears willing to have Florinda killed as well (although ultimately it's never put to the test). Well, there's not much in the way of genuine religious content to be found here.

People talk about the weakness of the libretto here, and admittedly it has its issues. Some of the stakes really aren't well-delineated, and there are a few goofy moments: like where the Christian knights are locked in a tower and one of them remarks "if only we had weapons!" and then Florinda's immediately like, hey, I just remembered that there are some weapons buried under this exact room! Handy. And then she gives a sort of play-by-play of the off-stage escape effort, which is a bit comical. And SERIOUSLY, Roland and Boland? Like Mario and Wario? What are you playing at here?

But you know, there are bad libretti and bad libretti. Sometimes they can cripple an opera, but sometimes they're such that the drama can still be successful, thanks to great music, and that's definitely the case here. I love this early German romanticism. Would I actually be able to distinguish between it and Italian music of the time? Well...since there's no way you can really prove I wouldn't, I'm just going to go ahead and say: yes.  But whatever it is, it rules. Good production, too. There's another one that feature Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, which seems tempting, but then you realize it's a gimmicky performance featuring Schubert on-stage composing the opera in real-time. That's the sort of thing that sounds like it wouldn't be fatal to one's enjoyment, but would definitely undermine it. The only thing I don't like about the one I saw is that the Moors have been made up in unobtrusive yet still obvious brownface. Look, I realize that that seems fairly harmless in the context, but just in general, DON'T DO THAT. If we lived in a world without racism, that sort of thing would be unobjectionable, but we don't and we never will, so...cut it out.

Semen Hulak-Artemovsky, A Cossack Beyond the Danube (1863)

Actually, it turns out that if you want to watch a Ukrainian opera, there's a much easier option: there's a 1939 film (retitled Cossacks in Exile, which you must admit is snappier, at least in English).  It was made for a Ukrainian-American audience, apparently (filmed in beautiful New Jersey!), but there are subtitles as a concession to non-Ukrainians.  Unsurprisingly, the picture and sound of this print aren't the best, but the film itself is interesting as a historical artifact.

So the story is, these Cossacks are driven out of their homeland by the Russian army and are forced to take refuge in the Ottoman Empire (which the subtitles refer to as "Turkey," which I think is anachronistic--while the name did exist at the time, I don't think it would have been in wide use).  They're doing all right there: the biggest thing that happens (to the extent that anything big happens; this is a rather drowsily-plotted piece) is that this older and goofier Cossack named Ivan Karas meets the Sultan without knowing it's him.  Hmm...that doesn't sound like much of anything when I put it like that, but there you are.  There's also a romance between his niece Oxana and some guy named Andriy, although that REALLY isn't anything.

There are parts of this that are perplexing: there's this other dude who's in love with Oxana, and you'd think this would be some sort of conflict, but it's not much of anything.  There's a scene where--apparently--he shoots a dude in a boat, and then (I...guess because they've been framed?) Oxana and Andriy are going to be executed.  But then they aren't.  And then the Sultan's like, hurray, you can return to your homeland if you want!  Were they supposed to be prisoners?  I thought they couldn't return because their homeland was overrun by hostile Russians?

It definitely doesn't help that the subtitles here are partial--you can follow the story, but the fact that so many musical numbers are ubsubbed means that you don't get as much of a grasp of the characters as you might--although I persist in thinking that Karas is really the only character who's going to make any impression anyway (also, I note that he has a long Hulk-Hogan-like mustache, as did the title character in Taras Bulba--must be the Ukrainian style).  But the point is, whether it's this particular movie or the opera itself, this isn't as coherent as you might hope.

One thing I liked and found interesting was the super-chill way Islam is depicted: when Karas first meets the Sultan, he's like, okay, I'll get us a drink...wait a minute, your religion says you can't drink, doesn't it?  With which the Sultan agrees, but then his, I dunno, vizier, later decides, ah, let's bend the rules a bit, and knocks a few down.  Then later we have Karas visiting the Sultan, and his first request is, can I see the harem?  Nope, he replies, that's illegal.  Please? Karas persists, and the Sultan decides, oh, what the hell, why not?  The depiction of Islam in opera would be a GREAT subject for a doctoral dissertation.

As for the music...well, it's okay.  There are some energetic folk dances.  But I wasn't overly blown away.  I do think the lack of subtitles in many of what seem like key arias is a significant problem, but I don't know that I'd've loved it in any case.  Still, as I said an interesting cultural artifact.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ascanio in Alba (1771)

And now, we see what fifteen-year-old Mozart can do.  Spoiler: quite a bit.

The story here...well, calling it a "story" might be a stretch.  Ascanio is Aeneas' son with Venus (which is confusing, because in the Aeneid and everywhere else I know, Aeneas is actually Venus' son).  He is destined to marry a woman named Silvia.  They've never met, but she has dreamed of him and fallen in love that way, we are told.  So, great!  But not so fast: for Reasons, Venus doesn't want Ascanio to reveal himself to Silvia, so the characters sort of bumble around for two acts, and then finally she says, okay, now you can do it, and he does.  And everyone's happy.  Whoo!

Well, the plot doesn't really matter.  The point is that Mozart was a killer composer even at this age.  I say that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between Mozart and his peers, and why he's necessarily supposed to be better, but here's one concrete reason: I'm pretty sure none of them were doing anything like this at such a young age.

The production here...well, it doesn't exactly capture the pastoral spirit of the opera particularly; everyone decked out in wigs and things, and the stage being overwhelmingly blue for most of it.  Still, it's fine, and the other production available on disc sounds, by all accounts, like absolutely horrid Eurotrash.  Also, it features Diane Damrau.  Eek!  I mean, just LOOK at this:

Egads!  Of course, it also features Sonia Prina, whom I like a lot.  But still.  Then again, it's obvious why Damrau was cast: she plays the shepherd Fauno, who has one aria in particular with some truly vertiginous high notes.  I'm sure Damrau kills it, but I'm also a big fan of Desirée Rancatore in the role: one could argue that she's not quite comfortable hitting one particular high note, but she's nonetheless very impressive and--I think on the strength of just this one aria--gets the biggest round of applause.  I'd never seen her before, I don't think, but I want to again.

So yeah.  Discount Mozart's early work at your peril!

Antonín Dvořák, The Devil and Kate (1899)

It's always a good day when you get to watch a Dvořák opera, and here's my proof: have you ever heard someone say "man, what a terrible day: I had to watch a Dvořák opera?"  I submit that you have not.  Well...maybe you have.  I don't know what kind of people you hang out with.  But I would confidently assert that it's at least relatively uncommon!  Right, where were we?

I know this is available on DVD, but...it's in English, which I'm not super-down with.  It may be an irrational prejudice of mine, but I want to see an opera in its original language.  Besides, I don't know how to classify them if I don't: should I say that I saw this in English, thereby skewing the statistics?  That would be madness!  Well, as it happens, I saw this production, in the original language.  There's a libretto here, which google will gladly translate into questionable English for you, and combined with the wikipedia entry, comprehension is no problem.

Right, so there's a party.  Jirka, a shepherd, is drunk but has to go back to work for the oppressive steward.  That jerk!  Kate, a peasant girl, appears.  She wants to go dancing, even though her mother disapproves.  A mysterious guy appears and asks her to dance.  She agrees, but it turns out this is a devil, and he tempts her to go off to Hell with him.  Jirka, in trouble with his boss, decides, whatever, might as well go after her.  The devil, whose name is Marbuel, takes Kate to Hell.  His mission, it turns out, was to bring the princess and her steward, who are big-time sinner, to hell, but he just has Kate.  The devils want to get rid of her because she's being ornery, but she has a crucifix that prevents them from interfering with her.  When Jirka appears, they beg him to take her away, which he does.  Back on Earth, the princess is feeling remorseful about living a dissolute lifestyle while the people suffer.  Jirka appears, and she begs him to save her, but he says, no no, you're just too darn sinful.  He suggests that first, she should abolish the serfdom to prove her goodness, which she does.  Google translate distractingly translates "serfdom" as "robot"--I knew that the word came from Czech for "worker" or something along those lines, but still.  Anyway, then Jirka agrees to help her, with Kate's help--when Marbuel appears, she can get her revenge on him.  He does appear, but freaks out when he sees her and flees back to Hell.  The princess is saved, and declares that she will change her ways.  She appoints Jirka her counselor and gives Kate a sweet house and a bunch of cash.  Kate declares that what she really wants is a husband, but that since now she's rich, she'll have the pick of the pack.  The end!!!

One thing that stands out here is that, unlike most comic operas, there's absolutely no romance.  Not that I mind romance, but it's still a pleasant change.  Kate is a really fun character, certainly one of the better female roles I've seen, kicking ass and taking names.  The music...well, it's Dvořák, so you're gonna have a good time.  In particular, there's a really rad-ass ballet scene in Hell near the end of the second act.  Don't miss it!  I guess it's the first real comedy I've seen by Dvořák, if you agree that The Jacobin is more of a romance.  So that's cool, but really, the more the merrier.  He's so damn good that it's baffling to me that no one wants to perform anything beyond Rusalka.

Henry Purcell, King Arthur (1691)

Well, here is this, from the same people who did that Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse.  There are a number of productions of this, but none that play it straight.  It seems that everybody like Purcell and nobody like John Dryden.  I must admit, I've never read him; I just have an irrational prejudice against him because he has "dry" in his name.  He must be hella boring!  Or not.  Hard to say.

Well, the music, we are told, is unrelated to the spoken text, as was the case with these things.  And the new version...still isn't any kind of coherent story, really.  The imagery is obviously Monty-Python-inspired--is there any way that a contemporary staging of this wouldn't be?  The character of King Arthur actually sings, which is not how it originally would have been.  The action, such as it is, moves from haunted forest to ice field to royal court.  There's also a big thing where ol' Dino--of Shirley and--plays a stagehand trying to set things up and making noise and getting in the way.  There are a few vaudeville-ish musical bits unrelated to Purcell.  As in Don Quichotte, conductor Hervé Niquet talks to the audience a bunch and even sings (he's not trying to be operatic or particularly amazing or anything, but he got his start as a tenor with Les Arts florissants back in the day, so presumably he could if he wanted to).  Probably the best way to characterize this would be as an Entertainment.

You've gotta love Purcell's inventive music; that goes without saying.  Or maybe it doesn't.  But whatever the case, I thought it was stronger than The Indian Queen, musically.  The non-musical aspects...well, I thought they were mostly fine.  They did occasionally go on a bit; I would not have objected to the whole thing maybe twenty minutes shorter.  But hey, mostly it's harmless fun.  Am I a vile hypocrite for objecting to the way Peter Sellars dealt with The Indian Queen while liking this?  Am I really going to say, oh, this one is okay because it's not trying to make a point; it's just goofing around?  Isn't that like the South Park ethos that I so deplore, where the ultimate sin is, like, caring too much about stuff?  Look.  I have no answers for you.  But if consistency means I have to condemn this, I am content to be inconsistent.  The.  End. 

Mykola Lysenko, Taras Bulba (1924)

Time to drop over to Ukraine for an opera based on Gogol's novel.  This was written in the 1880s, but not performed in his lifetime because he refused to let it be translated into Russian (or any other language).  Way to stick to your guns, I guess.  Supposedly, Lysenko played the score for Tchaikovsky, who enthusiastically approved.  And how unfair is it that when you say "Lysenko," everyone just thinks of the pseudoscientist?  Make Lysenkoism Great Again!  By having it refer to the composer.  You know.

So it's the seventeenth century, and Poland is trying to extend its territory to this particular area of Ukraine.  But are the Ukrainians having with that?  They are not!  Taras and his sons, Ostap and Andriy, go to take the city of Dubno back from the Poles.  But it happens that Andriy and Maryltsya, daughter of the Polish governor, are in love.  Andriy is prevailed upon to help the beleaguered Poles, providing them with supplies.   Maryltsya's father agrees to let them get married and make Andriy an officer in the Polish army.  When Taras learns of this, he murders his son for being a traitor, and he and Ostap (and others, one presumes) successfully take back the city.  In the novel they're captured and executed, but that does not happen here.

Well, that's how wikipedia describes it, but this production certainly seems to depart from that, which I feel is cheating.  I'm sort of lost, really: it certainly doesn't appear that Andriy is killed, Ostap certainly doesn't sing a lament for him, and we don't see them taking the city.  Instead, we just have Taras standing there on the side of the stage singing about something or other and then standing there silently and then it's over.  It's a little baffling. Sure, I was at a disadvantage not being able to understand it, but it's hard to imagine the context in which this would be a good way for any opera to end.

Now granted, this may in part be the production, and in part the lack of subtitles or libretto, but I have to say: based on what I saw, I don't think this is an overly distinguished piece of work.  Musically, there was just very little that stood out.  There doesn't seem to be much drama, and there were a few efforts at ballets that seemed to be over almost before they began.  I would revisit it if conditions were better, but as it stands, eh.  Ya gotta do better, Ukraine!

Joseph Bologne, L'Amant anonyme (1780)

A black composer!  That's cool, although it's a huge bummer that any black person at the time with any kind of social standing was inevitably going to be the child of a powerful white man and a slave; ie, a child of rape.  Urgh.

Well, leave that aside, and you've got this here opera!  The idea is that there's this dude Valcour who's in love with Léontine, anonymously because he's convinced she does not want to love again, having been betrayed by her late husband.  He has a friend Ophémon and she has a friend Dorothée, and some stuff happens...well, not that much, but then it turns out--what a twist!--that Léontine is in love with Valcour also, so everyone is happy.  Also, in this production, Ophémon looks like Michel Foucault, so that's fun.

To modern sensibilities, Valcour could come off as a bit stalker-y.  It's a bit dubious, but as I think about it, I realize that I'm not at all sure it's helpful to view this through a modern lens.  It's possible that the social norms and expectations of the time would've been so different that a comparison is just misleading.  Anyway, the libretto does make it clear that his behavior is at least a little weird.

Really, there's no telling why this isn't performed more, because the music is just plain terrif.  You think I have time to write "ic?"  Think again!  I'd say "racism," but there are a lot of white composers in the same boat, so that seems like a stretch.  This LA Opera production is creatively performed in a socially-distanced way, with characters singing over colored backgrounds, and people wearing masks whenever they're in the same room.  It's attractive and fun.  The spoken dialogue is in English, which I did not expect.  I suppose I don't exactly mind, but it does emphasize the division between the spoken and sung text.

I'd love to see more of Bologne's operas...but this is the only one that's extant.  Yeah.  Bummer, that.  So I guess I'll just content myself with saying that I hope some of them--hell, all of them--are rediscovered.

Tim Benjamin, The Fire of Olympus; or, On Sticking it to the Man (2019)

"Zeus is the all-powerful President of Olympus, undermined by activists led by the prankster Prometheus," explains Marquee, and based on that and the title, at first I thought it might turn out to be one of those obnoxiously smug, self-aware "deconstructions" of well-known stories à la Shrek.  It's nothing like that, though.  It's really much more interesting.

So yeah, Zeus is some kind of dictator or quasi-dictator, assisted by his personal assistant Pandora and his torturer/secret police chief Hephaestus (done up in a VERY nazi-esque costume here).  Pro- and Epimetheus are raiding Olympus headquarters, and they stumbled onto this fire thing.  Epimetheus escapes with it while his brother is captured.

Probably no need to spoil it beyond that.  You can't really make one-on-one parallels between this and current events, but it would be naive to imagine that it wasn't at least inspired by the terrible political goings on in much of the world today.  There aren't many specifics as to what Zeus' tyrannical rule means (although he does declare "Olympus for Olympians" at one point), but you can't expect an opera to be super-detailed meditation on oppression.  Still, it does an okay job of depicting power and the resistance thereto.  It's certainly intriguing.

But maybe more interesting than the specifics of the story is the music, which I must call neobaroque.  It's clearly going for that Handelian feel.  And it doesn't do a half-bad job at that; if it's not quite on the level of Handel himself, well, that's no shame.  It's fun, and there are some good arias, which I appreciate, these being so often absent from contemporary operas.  It's just too bad that he didn't go so far as to include any castrato/countertenor roles (though both Methei are sung by women).  

You do have to wonder what story purpose this serves, though: we're clearly meant to think of baroque depictions of Greek gods (Semele seems like the most obvious touchstone), but the story as presented here really does evoke such things.  Well, I suppose "it's fun" is really all the justification you need.

This sort of came out of nowhere, and then I enjoyed it a lot.  It's always fun when that happens. 

Zacharia Paliashvili, Abesalom da Eteri (1919)

And now: a Georgian opera.  Of course, there are two Georgias: one is a failed ethnostate with a record of serious human rights abuses and a hostility to democratic government.  The other, of course, is a former Soviet republic.  Man, that joke telegraphed itself so hard it should be paying three cents a word.  BUT SERIOUSLY, FOAX...

As I understand it, this is either the best-known Georgian opera or tied with another one by Paliashvili.  It may be impossibly obscure in most of the world, but it's performed all the dern time in its homeland.  And now, I have seen it.  BOOM.

Roughly, the plot concerns a peasant girl, Eteri, with whom the prince, Abesalom (how about that) falls in love.  But also in love with her is the prince's attendant, the villainous Murman.  Eteri and Abesalom get married, but Murman sabotages the proceedings by giving her a poisoned necklace (?), which only he can save her from.  Now she's dying, so Abesalom agrees to let her be taken into the country for her health--by Murman!  He does indeed heal her, and Abesalom wants to go see her.  Obviously.  Why is this controversial?  But she doesn't want to see him, 'cause she's annoyed that he sent her away.  Finally she agrees, but he dies in her arms, as one does, and she stabs herself.  Stab stab stab.  

I keep thinking Murman is actually Mer-Man from Masters of the Universe.  That'd be a twist, wunnit?

I say "roughly" because my entire understanding of the plot is based on the somewhat skeletal synopsis on wikipedia. For that reason, it's a little hard for me to assess the story's dramatic structure or anything like that. And yet, it's well worth seeing in spite of that, because really, you only need ears to realize that this is a magnificent opera. Seriously. Out of all the obscurities I've seen--which is a lot--this may well be the crown jewel. Unlike those Hajibeyov operas, there's nothing overly exotic-sounding about the music: it's romantic stuff with folk elements, the likes of which you may have heard before. But my GOODNESS is it ever powerful stuff. The music made me think of Tchaikovsky, but I'm not exactly sure if that's because of actual musical similarities or just because the level of passion seemed similar. One thing that does differentiate it from other similar operas is that there's not really anything in the way of recitative; it's more or less just one aria, duo, trio, quartet, or massive chorus after another. I loved it. I really, really did.

Here is the production I saw.  If nothing else, you should definitely click through and skip to about the 54:15 mark to listen to the climactic series of folk dances that end the second act.  THIS SHIT IS THE REAL DEAL.  

How do we get these things performed internationally?  The only Georgian opera singer I can name off the top of my head is Anita Rachvelishvili.  Has she ever sung this?  There are several mezzo roles.  Anyway, not that it's her duty or anything, but if she wanted to promote her national opera abroad...well, she probably could, is all I'm saying.