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.
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