This one came out of nowhere. Somehow it had never occurred to me to wonder if there were Welsh-language operas, but now...well, now I know. This was the first and still, as far as I can tell, the only. But it is that thing! No question! This video is unsubtitled, which at first drove me nuts--YOU'RE PERFORMING IT IN FLIPPING BILLINGS MONTANA HOW MANY WELSH-SPEAKERS DO YOU THINK WILL BE IN THE AUDIENCE?--but then I realized that it's filmed at a fixed angle with the supertitle screen showing the English translation clearly visible. So that's all right.
So it's the fourteenth century, and Elen and Arthur, two nobles of some stripe, are going to be married and everyone's stoked. Blodwen shows up with her guardian, Hywel (her mother being dead and her father being MIA in battle) to congratulate them. But there are dark clouds on the horizon: a representative of the English King Henry comes to demand that they surrender the castle. They respond with stuff about the stoutness of Welsh hearts--you know the drill.
Well, it turns out that Hywel is in love with Blodwen, and she returns his affections, and yeah, it's kind of creepy, although you could at least minimize the creep factor by not having him be as visibly older than her as he is here. But there's no time for love, Sir Hywel--we got company. Specifically, the English are attacking, and the menfolk, including Arthur and Hywel, have to ride to the defense. Arthur is mortally wounded, and his death scene here is rendered unintentionally comedic by his insistence on making "blargh!" sounds. Things are going badly in general for the Welsh, with lots of them being killed or captured. But what has become of Hywel?!? Well, he's in the "captured" category. So Blodwen and some of the others go to visit him in prison (...you can just do that?). Farewell songs are sung etc. But then a mysterious stranger shows up to reveal that the English king is dead and that therefore all the Welsh people are being released. Also, said stranger is Blodwen's dad, who is also free. So now everyone is happy! The end.
You might say that this is so rarely performed because it's in Welsh, but I think it would be more accurate to say that the only reason it's ever performed is because it's in Welsh. That makes it stand out and gives it some cultural significance. Because I don't think this is a very good opera. The music struck me as pretty thin. You expect a lot of rousing patriotic choruses in this sort of piece, but they mostly seemed pretty limp--although in fairness, the performances here aren't very high-caliber. I can certainly appreciate the logistical difficulties of performing a Welsh opera in Montana (some of the cast are themselves from Wales; some not), but it is what it is. Maybe better singing would improve my opinion.
But I dunno; the libretto here leaves a lot to be desired, especially the denouement. This seems like the Welsh equivalent of those nationalistic Eastern European operas that are all about Hungarian or Croatian or Polish pride, which, okay, fine. But then in the end...what are we meant to take from it? The king dies and therefore England is just completely changing its colonialist policies with regard to Wales? What? In addition to making no sense, how is that meant to evoke Welsh pride? And if you think, well, it's supposed to be about reconciliation between the two countries, the opera does nothing to make that apparent. It's not like they sing a chorus of praise to English generosity at the end.
I dunno. I can't see this being done at the Met anytime in the near or far future.
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