This may or may not be the first extant Spanish opera. You get all kinds of conflicting information about these things. It is, at any rate, older than El Prometeo, which I thought was such. It's good, I'd say, that, whether this is first or not, the first one isn't just Italian with Spanish libretto. I think not many people would guess that Spanish opera predated French, but here we are. Presumably. I was kind of surprised to find that there's a video of this online. The picture quality is fairly abominable (it was clearly ripped from a VHS recording), but the sound is adequate, at least to my non-audiophile ears. And you can get a bilingual libretto cheap. It's not a paperback, whatever the listing might say; it's a big ol' chunky hardback from 1981 that looks like someone's dissertation (though I don't think it is), and it includes a lot of useful background information.
This is sort of based on the story of Cephalus and Procris in Ovid, but certainly not that closely. Aura is one of Diana's nymphs, and she's fallen in love with a dude named Eróstrato, in contravention of Diana's regulations. Her co-nymph and alleged friend Pocris rats her out, and she's going to be put to death, which makes her mad, as you'd think, and she curses Pocris to fall in love herself. Another dude, Céfalo, appears to protect Aura In the confusion, Venus (who never appears) saves her by turning her into air. Meanwhile, Céfalo falls in love with Procris at first sight. Other stuff happens, and honestly it gets pretty darned confusing, even with the complete text, but ultimately, Pocris and Céfalo are married. Diana still wants her revenge, however, so she enlists the Furies to fuck with their shit. Pocris thinks Céfalo is seeing another woman, maybe, on his constant hunting trips, so she follows him. Céfalo is asking a nice breeze to come and cool him when he says "come, Aura, come," but Pocris assumes it means he's in love with Aura. Eróstrato, who is wandering around now in a mad state, appears, and Tisiphone makes everyone perceive him as a wild beast. Pocris doesn't want Céfalo to follow him, so she gets in his way, but he throws his spear at him and accidentally kills her, and then dies of grief (Eróstrato's fate is unknown, and what happened to Aura being in love with him, anyway?). Now that she's had her revenge, Aura takes pity and revises the two of them as a breeze and a star. And that's that, although I skipped over A LOT, mainly the comedy servant characters, notably Rústicano, who is cursed by Diana to appear as a different animal to anyone who sees him (he gets uncursed in the end, though). But that's basically it.
The title means "jealousy, even of the air, kills" (this phrase appears a number of times in the text). Because Aura, who had become, like, air, made Pocris jealous and led to the tragedy, you see. Only it really didn't if you think about it for three seconds. She was just there. Presumably she would've stood in Eróstrato's way in any case. You can make the argument that, oh, she wouldn't have been there at all if not for irrational jealousy, but that doesn't mean that the "Aura" confusion had anything to do with it. Hmph!
Well, the music is...fine, but not as interesting as I'd've hoped. The libretto involves a lot of really long holdings-forth by characters, and there are no arias or, really, even discernible arioso. It's more text-based than your average opera, which might, I suppose, make it more appealing to a Spanish-speaking audience. I must admit, however, I found it a little boring, though still of historical interest. One thing that's interesting is that, though none of the central cast was familiar to me, it does feature a young (23-24) Philippe Jaroussky in a very small role as Alecto. Even though the video quality isn't enough to afford a good look at him, it's recognizably his voice. See where it all began, more or less!
No comments:
Post a Comment