Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Çetin Işıközlü, The Legend of Mount Ararat (1971)

I am not one to rest on my laurels. Have you seen me rest on a SINGLE laurel? I think not. So here we have a Turkish opera. The only one I was able to find both a video and a synopsis of. BAM.

It is based on a novel that has nothing to do with Noah's Ark, which I'm pretty sure is the main thing people associate with Ararat. But the actual story is still pretty weird: so apparently there's some tradition where if you find a horse, you should let it go three times, and then if it comes back to you, it's yours no matter what. You get to keep it. Does this seem like a sensical custom? I would say not, but there you go! So Ahmet has this happen to him, but unfortunately, it turns out to be the khan's horse, which causes no end of trouble. He gets himself locked up, but the khan's daughter Gulbahar is in love with him and wants to get him out. The jailer Melo is in love with her, and she offers him anything if he'll help, but nobly, he contents himself with just taking a lock of her hair. Is not raping someone "noble?" Seems like it's one of those "literally the least you can do" things. Oh well). Ahmet escapes, but the khan cooks up a new plan to get rid of him: promises that if he goes up Mount Ararat and lights a flame, he will be pardoned and allowed to marry Gulbahar. Yeah, so he goes, and succeeds, but then he's jealous when he hears she had promised Gulbahar "anything" and she kinda goes mad with grief and stabs him and then hops in a lake. So it turns out that all along, the real villain was Toxic Masculinity! How come we keep failing to see these things coming?

The guy on that "Nation of Turks" site linked above declares that "it was the most memorable opera that I had seen in my life," but that's a hypernationalistic site ("TURKS - The Most Civilized People On Earth," goes their motto) and they're also Armenian Genocide deniers, so take that for what it's worth. Me? I was mostly unimpressed, I've gotta admit. There ARE a few nice arias, but the music to me was pretty dull, subdued stabs at romanticism--although, of course, I have to admit that subtitles might have added to the drama of the whole affair, although from what I could gather, Ahmet doesn't seem like much of a hero. At any rate, I kind of don't think it's a towering masterpiece regardless.

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