This is actually my second Latvian opera. The first was this, which I somehow never wrote about. I think it was pretty good! So why didn't I write about my first opera in a language?!? It's a momentous occasion! Well, it happens. I didn't write either about my first Japanese opera, which was this, a goofy adaptation of the legend of Momotaro the Peach Boy. Never mind! The point is, now I've seen TWO Latvian operas! Double your pleasure! It's true that, as the box notes, its debut was in 2011, but it would have been in 1947 if not for political turmoil: Skulte fled to Germany towards the end of World War II (wait...what?) and then lived the rest of his life in exile in the US; he couldn't get it produced here, and his music was banned in Germany because of his strong Latvian nationalism. It wasn't until independence that anyone could think about putting it on. But they did, and I'm glad of it.
Right. Here's what it's about: Dievlodziņi is a...farm? small town? It's not entirely clear. But in any event, there's Raits, the eldest son of Dievlodziņš, the head of the farm or whatever, who's engaged to be married to Ieva, who turns out not to be a very nice person. We get some background: there's this other, richer estate called Vilkači that everyone hates for various more or less irrational reasons, and Dievlodziņš thought he'd be able to buy it cheap when the owner died without an heir. But...well, the title probably tells you the problem that comes up. The heiress is a young woman named Maruta, who shows up at Dievlodziņi (why? Not specified), and meets with a hostile reaction from everyone. But she's actually nice and also beautiful, and Raits ends up falling in love with her, Ieva's efforts to get him back via magic meeting with failure (but the spell the wise woman gives her is gruesome enough to be worth mentioning: at midnight, she has to get herself a live bad, plunge it into an anthill so the ants eat it alive, and then put its claws and bones in Raits' pocket. It is hard to see how this could fail, and yet somehow...). Some time passes, and Maruta ends up having a child with Raits, although he won't acknowledge that it's his. But eventually he does, and his dad dies of a heart attack or something of that nature. Then, both Dievlodziņi and Vilkači burn down. Everyone loses everything. The people blame Maruta and want to take revenge, but Raits points out that this is a dumb idea and that past enmities should be ended. The end.
It's good stuff. A lot of fun folk-sounding music. Rousing choruses. Sort of made me think of Rimsky-Korsakov. I hardly know what else to say at this point, but I definitely recommend it to the good people.
You know how I discovered this (and a few others, which I will get to some day)? I shall tell you: I simply typed the word "opera" into amazon. Naturally, this resulted in thousands of results, most of which were irrelevant or already familiar. But I went through all of them, and somehow, there were a few that had previously managed to avoid the search algorithms, so it was worth it. And really, it would have been worth it if this had been the only thing I'd found. Fun on a bun.
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