Alva Henderson, Nosferatu (2004)

Boo.  Boo, I say!  Be petrified, dangit!  Are there any spooky operas, really?  Bluebeard's Castle is unsettling, but I don't know that I'd use the word "spooky."  There's one I haven't seen based on The Shining.  Well, at any rate, this seems like a good seasonal choice.

I have actually seen FW Murnau's 1922 movie.  I have to admit, it didn't do much for me.  I have enjoyed some silent films, but they're a bit hit-or-miss for me; it didn't feel like it had aged well.  But hey, Werner Herzog considers it the greatest German movie of all time, so what do I know?  This is interesting: I had always heard--and took it for settled fact--that the movie changed the names of the characters from Dracula for copyright reasons, but according to wikipedia, it was most likely done just to make the story more immediate for German viewers.  Go figure!

Anyway, I'm certainly not an expert on this milieu--I've never read the novel--but this follows it with some distinctions (one thing to start with is just inexplicable to me: in Nosferatu the movie Jonathan Harker is named Thomas Hutter, but here it's been further changed to just "Eric."  Why?).  Eric goes to Hungary to buy a house in London for a mysterious count (here, the guy who sends him turns out to be Orlok's servant, which I don't think comes from any outside source).  There's quite a lot of ado about how he needs money and whether he can leave his ailing wife (Mina/Ellen), which I think is original to this version.  But off he goes, and while there, he unwisely shows a picture of Ellen to Orlok, who then establishes some kind of psychic link to her.  Thomas returns quite insane (another innovation), but Ellen, having learned from Orlok's servant (I'm not sure why he told her) that she can kill him by distracting him 'til dawn, so she does this, although he bites her first, and they both collapse.  Finis.

I actually liked this quite a lot.  Unlike so many contemporary operas, there are actual arias here, and quite good ones, musically and lyrically, with rhyming text (the librettist, Dana Gioia, is an established poet, and it shows).  There are just all kinds of really cool moments, perhaps the best of which is Ellen having apocalyptic visions while a chorus of plague victims chant in Latin.  Definitely a good choice for Halloween!  The music is all very traditionally tonal, with some good spooky gothic twists of a sort I have trouble describing.  But there's not much to not like here.  Also, the dark, subdued production does a good job of capturing the feel of an old silent movie.

Well...the one thing not to like is the dang lack of subtitles.  Especially given the quality of the libretto, you REALLY want to hear what's happening, but sometimes you just...can't, and it does detract somewhat from the experience.  Still, the opera on the whole is a triumph, and it deserves more attention.

William Grant Still, Highway 1, USA (1962)

I wanted to highlight this, as I'm thinking about operas by black composers lately.  Still was--per wikipedia--known as the "Dean of Afro-American Composers," so there you go.  This is rarely performed, but it was recently put on by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; it was streaming, but no longer, unfortunately.  I don't know what to tell you.

It's a short, hour-long piece; as here produced, it does have an all-black cast, but the story isn't specifically about the African American experience.  Bob and Mary are a couple.  They have worked hard and they own a service station, so they're doing okay.  But there's also Bob's brother Nate; they sacrificed to put him through college, Bob having promised their mother.  But now what?  They're trying to build a future together, but Nate's just hanging around, not doing anything, overeducated and ungrateful, just being a drain on everyone.  One day when he's alone with Mary, he tries to put the moves on her, and when she rejects him, he stabs her and KILLS her!  DEAD, I tell you!  Everyone comes back and is horrified by the killing, naturally.  Nate's going to be arrested, but Bob, still unable to defy his self-abnegating instincts, is going to let himself take the blame.  But then, wait, it turns out Mary's not dead after all.  And her injury is so totally superficial that it's extremely unclear how anyone could've thought she was.  So they decide, screw you, Nate, and let him be taken away.  And NOW the future's so bright they gotta wear shades, I tell you.

The music here is super-dang-gorgeous.  Nothing avant-garde here; just beautiful tonal music with light jazz overtones.  No complaints there.  The only problem is that the story is pretty anemic.  You think that there's going to be some sort of real family drama, with Bob and Nate hashing out their resentments in some way.  But no!  It's very anti-climactic: "what will we do about Nate?  Oh wait he tried to kill you?  Screw you, Nate!"  I mean...dang, man.  I'm certainly not saying Nate has to be psychologically complicated or sympathetic, but this really isn't interesting.

Still worth seeing, for sure.  I hope this performance becomes available in some format again; it would be a shame for it to be lost.  And I'd love to see more of Still's operas, though I don't think any of them are performed any more often than this is.

Peter Schickele, The Abduction of Figaro (1984)

Schickele is a composer and musical comedian, most famous for his jokey fictional composer "P.D.Q. Bach" (P.D.Q. allegedly stands for "pretty damn quick," but that seems to have lost whatever cultural cachet it had--I don't think I've ever heard it in any other context).  My dad actually took me to see him in concert when I was small (late eighties, probably).  The only thing I remember is that the second half was an opera-type thingie of some sort--a broad Wagner parody if I remember correctly, but it also featured Greek gods, so who knows.  Funny how memory works: I actually remember one line from one aria sung by...some dwarf or something: "Zeus has a knack for changing things, especially things I don't want changed."  Referring to women, although I don't think it was Zeus himself who typically changed them.  Weird, and I can't find the line online so I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.  If there's a recording of whatever that show was, I'd love to revisit it--see how it holds up.  I remember liking it at the time, though no doubt a lot of it was over my head.

Anyway, whatever that was, it definitely had nothing to do with this, which is--obviously--a Mozart parody, taking, as the title suggests, DNA from Figaro and Die Entführung, as well as Giovanni.  The plot is really too silly and flimsy to even try to go over, but basically, this pirate captures Figaro and sails off, and the other characters go after him.  The main thing about this is the humor, obviously.  Your mileage may vary, it's fair to say.  Characters' names have real Mad Magazine vibes to them: Giovanni and Leporello are "Donald Giovanni" and, er, "Schlepporello;" Susanna from Figaro is "Susanna Susannadanna," a reference to Roseanne Roseannadanna, Gilda Radner's recurring character from early Saturday Night Live, one of actually quite a number of things that very firmly date the show (there's also a reference to the weirdly-common-at-the-time practice of hijackers forcing planes to reroute to Cuba).  Hey, I'm not going to sit here and claim that there aren't a few smile-out-loud moments, but the Washington Post's verdict of "screamingly funny" seems excessive to me.

Let's not forget the music, unless we want to.  It's largely sort of vaguely classical-sounding (gotta give Schickele credit for trying, anyway--trying to match Mozart is a tall order), with numerous quotes from popular songs: public-domain stuff like "Found a Peanut" and "O Susanna," but also recent pop songs like "Macho Man" and "Stay (just a little bit longer)."  The incongruity of these is slightly funny for precisely two seconds each, and the original music...it's just not memorable.  Arias go on and on, and you frequently wonder, why?  Even if this is, on occasion, a little funny at first, does anyone think it benefits from being flogged thus?  Yeesh.  The singers are bona fide opera singers, and they do their best, but the music IS kinda fundamental to an opera, and there's not really anything to latch onto here.

I don't know; this certainly isn't a horribly unpleasant experience or anything like that, and it feels ungracious to be attacking such a harmless, good-natured piece of work.  But it's definitely a bit toothless, and I don't think it's going to enter the standard repertoire anytime soon.

Ernő Dohnányi, The Tower of Voyda (1922)

 I would like to talk to you today about Fire Shut Up in My Bones...but obviously, I'm not.  Because the goddamn movie theater fucked everything up: they apparently didn't have the right feed, so we kept getting these loud previews (there aren't supposed to be movie previews before Met in HD screenings), and while it did apparently start eventually, it cut out the first part, and there was just no currency in staying.  The mood was wrecked.  Some theaters do reshow these things as encores on Wednesdays, but none near where I am, so fuck me, I guess.  Barring unforeseen circumstances, now I won't be able to see it until it appears on Met on Demand in nine goddamn months or whatever.  This pisses me off so fucking much, and the frustrating thing is, there's not really anyone I can blame.  That's something we have a really, really strong impulse to do, don't we?  Even as I write this, I'm trying to convince myself that it's somehow plausible that it's the underpaid theater employees' fault, but it's obviously not.  I suppose there's someone at some level that pushed the wrong button or something, but that's at a level of abstraction that is not cathartic to me.  It's certainly the case that this impulse to find a scapegoat is the cause of a lot of the fucked up shit in human history.

Well, I saw this instead.  It was a wholly arbitrary decision, and no parallel should be drawn between it and Fire.  Some time ago I had stumbled upon it on Operaonvideo; I'd been seeing if there was anything else by Ferenc Erkel I could watch and came up with this, which isn't by Erkel, but which does feature a cast member named "Ferenc," so close enough, I guess.  Dohnanyi was, I don't know, just some guy.  He mainly worked using the Germanized name "Ernst von Dohnányi," but this opera is in Hungarian, so let's go with the original.  He was apparently instrumental in saving a lot of Jewish musicians during the Holocaust, so that's good.

So here's the story: the Szeklers (a Hungarian tribe) are trying to build a tower to repulse attacks from the Pechenegs (a Turkic tribe of some sort).  These include the chief, Orbók, and two warriors, Kund and Tarján. Unfortunately, their tower keeps falling over.  They hear a spirit (the "spirit of hiring," as the autotranslate would have it) who tells them that they need to make a sacrifice: the first woman who walks across the bridge will be sealed in the tower as a sacrifice.  They finally agree to this, swearing that they won't tell anyone so as not to influence chance.

There are two women, Emelka and Orbók's daughter Iva.  Iva and Tarján are married, much to the regret of Emelka, who's in love with him.  Instead, she was stuck marrying dumb ol' Kund, whom she emphatically does not see as an adequate consolation prize.  In spite of having sworn, Kund in a moment of weakness warns his wife not to cross the bridge.  Seeing her chance, she encourages Iva to go (because she had wanted to go fight side by side with her man as per tradition but had been denied).  She does, and Orbók, with great reluctance, is compelled to sacrifice her, which he does by walling her in as the two of them sing, "Cask of Amontillado"-style.  In fairness to him, at one point he does decided, fuck it, not doing this, but she insists.  There's a very macabre bit where she requests that there be holes in the wall so she can breastfeed her infant child one last time, but nothing ever comes of this--I feel like the librettist just sort of forgot.

At any rate, she is sacrificed.  Six months later, Tarján is still feeling bummed; the tower held, but they're still being beset by the Pechenegs, and in addition to the thing with his wife, Kund has been killed in battle.  Orbók decrees that he is going to be the new chief and tells him he should marry Emelka, which he agrees to extremely reluctantly.  And there's a little dance when they've decided to do this, which, per google translate, begins thus:

...excuse me, there's a what whose name is Emelka?

I actually checked, and the Hungarian word is "menyecske," and yes, if you type "milf" into google translate, that IS what you get.  But if you translate "menyecske" from Hungarian, you just get "bride," which somehow seems more apropos in the context.  Does the word really have those two disparate meanings?  Seems like it could result in some awkward situations.  Hungarian readers, let me know what's going on.  Also, could you please get rid of your white nationalist prime minister?  Thanks a million.

Anyway, the truth comes out about Emelka's role in Iva's death, and Tarján stabs her, as you do.  A spring of fresh water emerges from the the tower as a result of Iva's sacrifice, and we learn that the Hungarian reinforcements are on their way, so...the future looks bright, I guess.

So how'd I like this?  Well, 'sokay.  Fire Shut Up in My Bones is almost certainly better, but we take what we can get.  The music is, unsurprisingly, late-Romantic, Wagner-influenced stuff.  It's pleasant enough, but I didn't find it overly exciting.  I sort of got into the story as it progressed.  What else is there to say?  There are many operas that almost no one will ever see, and this is one such.  That's not a tragedy, but nor is this particular opera wholly devoid of interest.  One thing that's of interest to no one is that for a long time I was tied as far as Polish and Hungarian operas go with eight each; now, Hungarian pulls ahead with nine.  Woo.  Hoo.

Kamala Sankaram, Interstate (2021)

WARNING: Saturday is your last day to see this, from Minnesota Opera! I could've written this earlier so you'd have more time. But I didn't, so you don't. So it goes.

It's an opera film about two women, Diane and Olivia, who were friends with unstable childhoods, only now, Diane has achieved a steady middle-class existence, whereas Diane has been arrested for serial killing. That was a weird way to phrase that. The libretto basically consists of letters back and forth between them, talking about their pasts and trying to figure how things got so fucked. Extremely unsurprisingly, this involved sexual violence.

(Diane has a Bikini Kill poster in her cell. Do they sell those at the prison commissary?)

You look at a serial killer and you pretty much just perceive a deeply broken person, and that's fair enough; as an avocation, serial killing really is only available to the horrendously fucked up. And yet, that person is still a person, and I feel like this piece does a good job of conveying that. It's quite good, really, with a few very memorable moments, as when Diane is trying to talk about what she did and all of a sudden she switches from the blank inmate look to the lurid hooker costume/make-up and sings a perversely jazzy little song about it. Also, the murder ballad "Banks of the Ohio" appears several times to rather spine-tingling effect.

Yeah man, pretty good stuff. I hope that it will be available in some form in the future rather than just disappearing into the ether. That's no good.

Franz Léhar, Der Zarewitsch (1927)

Okay, here's my question: at what point was the idea of giving operettas melancholy endings established?  Was it Léhar's doing?  In my experience, they're everywhere in his late work; I haven't seen them in any of his early works, but then, I may have seen too few to know for sure.  My other data point is Puccini's La rondine, from 1916, which was originally to be an operetta and which had an extremely similar sort of ending, but where did the inspiration for that come from?  I do not have any answers.

But anyway, this is one of those.  Obviously.  The Tsarevich (who is never otherwise named) is not interested in settling down, but then he meets a dancer, Sonia, and falls in love and they run away to Venice, but obviously, this idyll is not permitted to last.  Fairly normal stuff.  There's also a subplot which may be of interest, involving The Tsarevich's valet Ivan and his wife Mascha.  She is annoyed with him, as well one might, because after years, they've never consummated their marriage, and Ivan's obsessive loyalty to The Tsarevich and his general rejection of any female help gives it a very obvious gay subtext.  The resolution of their story is extremely dubious, though: also in Venice, a Venitian publican decides to help her by making her husband jealous, and this works super-well and suddenly he's super into her, which, even as operetta plot twists go, strains credulity a bit.

Well...regardless.  Great music!  If you think about who you'd consider the greatest opera composers of the twentieth century, you're probably going to come up with Puccini, Strauss, and Britten, maybe Henze, but I think Léhar's gotta be a dark horse candidate.  Also, random observation: not so much from super-up-close, but from a moderate distance, The Tsarevich and Sonia look remarkably like pre- and post-transition Philosophy Tube respectively.  Just thought I'd point that out for the benefit of no one.

Franz Lehár, Zigeunerliebe (1910)

Here's what I would call...an interesting one.  I didn't know anything about it before watching, but you have certain expectations of what you'll find in a Lehár operetta, and this defied those for me.

Right, so there's a woman, Zorika, who's engaged to a rich dude, Jonel, but then she meets this gypsy violinist, Józsi, and feels uncertain about her future and what she really wants.  There's this idea that you can see the future by taking a drink of water from the local river, so she does this, and it makes her decide to go off with Józsi.  But things are not as one might hope: Józsi isn't as charming as he initially seemed, and all the gypsies just seem greedy and cruel, and she's forced to degrade herself by begging for money and to tell people's fortunes.  Back home, her dad doesn't even recognize her, and refuses to be the father of a gypsy woman.  Józsi sings about how gypsies are never faithful, so she can't expect anything in that regard, and...does this seem like an operetta plot?  I feel like it doesn't.  How is this going to end happily or at least not horrendously tragically?  Well...then she wakes up.  Turns out she dreamed up the whole thing after drinking the river water.  It's the Super Mario Bros. 2 of operettas!  And how she's totes keen on marrying Jonel, so that's all right then!

It's an odd thing; it really is.  There's almost no humor here, or romance.  German operetta (and Léhar in particular) seem much more invested in having their operettas be romantic than the English or French are.  Well...I may be generalizing about those last two from too small a sample size, but regardless, it's notable.  There IS a secondary couple here that has such a tiny role it's easy to just forget about them; I suspect they might have a larger role in the original that was cut down for this film version.  Here, all we have is Zorika and Jonel, which is almost nothing; after she wakes up and he appears, Léhar certainly tries to play the ending as romantic, but it's hard not to feel that it's mostly just Zorika feeling relieved: phew, that scenario my subconscious cooked up never happened; compared to that, this dude seems pretty okay!  It's weird, for sure.

But the elephant in the room: racism.  Obviously.  Is this operetta racist against gypsies?  Well...yes.  But also, it's complicated.  A bit.  Maybe.  On the one hand, it fully buys into stereotypes, that's for sure, although on the other hand, one does have to admit at least a little nuance: Zorika's father is himself portrayed as pretty racist "gypsies need to be hit," he says repeatedly, and it's hard to see any situation where that would be seen as a positive.  And yet, on the third hand, their portrayal is what it is.  Still, on the fourth hand, it's worth noting that all of the negative stereotypes occur during Zorika's dream, which seems like it ought to mean something.  Unless, on the fifth hand, we're meant to assume that it's an actual magic vision, and not something that she just dreamed up.  We tend to assume the former, but does that accord with authorial intent?  I'm not sure.  But, on the sixth hand, even in that case, the fact remains, there's none of the bad stuff outside the vision (is the river meant to be racist?).  Then again, on the seventh hand, the piece is entitled "gypsy love," which would seem to be a strong indication that the message is meant to be "this is just what happens if you get involved with Those People."  It is murky and unclear and makes for somewhat uncomfortable viewing.  Also, I'm running out of hands.

Still, I'll tell you one thing: whatever Léhar thought of Romani culture, he was totally grooving on their music.  This brings in the gypsy folk in a big way, and it pretty much rocks.  There will be absolutely no complaining allowed on that score.  Also, as Józsi (a weird character--first seems to be the romantic hero, and he's definitely the largest male role, but then he's actually the villain...or is he?), Ion Buzea (or possible "Jon," but his website says "Ion") is very memorable--a big heldentenor voice that definitely makes you stand up and take notice.  He's had a huge and varied international career, so why hadn't I heard of him?  Well, there are lots of great singers I've never heard of.  The world, by some standards, is large.  

Modest Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov (original version) (1869)

Hey, Met in HD is finally back!  Whoo!  That was how I first got into opera, so it has a certain sentimental appeal to me.  Rather than just pushing back the previous season that never happened, they're moving forward.  That means we're left without HD performances of Il pirata, Die frau ohne Schatten, and Dead Man Walking, which is a shame (especially the latter--I really think they should reschedule it), but we also get some cool new stuff.  I'm most looking forward to the Met debuts of two contemporary operas, Fire Shut Up in My Bones (the first opera by a black composer they've ever done; it's been getting rave reviews and the preview they showed looked good) and Eurydice.  They're also doing Brett Dean's Hamlet, which is a great opera, but given that it's the same production as the ROH recording with most of the same cast, it seems like there won't be many surprises.  

Well...regardless!  I went to see Boris.  It's a wonder that our small-town theater gets these at all, so I wanted to show my support for the arts.  There were two other people in the theater.

There's a twist, which I noted in the title, so it shouldn't be a surprise at this point, but: this is the shorter, original version of the opera, which the tsarist censors didn't like apparently because it lacked a substantial female role.  I find it extremely weird that the censors would be in the business of enforcing gender inclusivity, but there you go.  I mean, you could say it was because they didn't think Russia was adequately represented without more femininity--a national pride thing--but considering that the character he added was Polish, I don't know about that.  But anyway, that's where Princess Marina comes from, along with the entire act set in Poland.  The original also lacks the coda in the more-performed version; it ends immediately after Boris' death.  That's another thing that makes it seem more Boris-centric.  And also--this is a small thing, but I noticed it--the later version includes a bit where his son Feodor sings a nonsense song to try to cheer up his sister Xenia.  I miss that; it was a really humanizing moment (also, here Feodor is a trouser role, whereas in the previous Met in HD performance, he was played by a boy soprano; I think that's just a contemporary casting decision, though).

Well, so how does it work?  Well, there are pluses and minuses to this version.  It feels much more small-scale, for one.  Also, the focus is more--although not entirely--on Boris himself, which is perhaps more what you'd expect from an opera of this title.  The Poland material can't help feeling a little tacked on.  On the other hand, it does add valuable context, and without it, all of the stuff with Grigoriy the Pretender feels kind of superfluous, and when we're told "oh no, he's attacking us with his army," you think, with his what not?  Where'd this army come from?  Weird!

This is basically quibbling, though; either way, it's still pretty great, and René Pape was born to be Boris.  Born to Be Boris--he should get a bumper sticker that says that.  His wrestling with his tortured conscience is powerful.  And again, I think the Holy Fool is a great and necessary role, though I can't say who played him here, since the credits don't appear to be online.

Jacques Offenbach, Un mari à la porte (1859)

This is a short, one-act (forty-five minutes) operetta.  I kind of want to know how these things worked.  This was popular in its time, per Wikipedia, but in what context would you perform a one-act operetta?  Was there other entertainment also?  Not that there's anything wrong with a short night out, but the evidence suggests that in general, people wanted something a little more substantial.  Also, on another note, it does feel a little cheep to release it on DVD, let along Blu-Ray, on its own.  Shoulda been a double feature.  OH.  WELL.

Very basic sort of plot where, through contrived circumstances, Forestan goes down a chimney and finds himself in a woman's boudoir.  It turns out she's Suzanne, a newlywed, and she shows up with her friend Rosita, and how are we going to get this dude out of here without him being seen?  Her husband shows up at the door (as per the title), further complicating things.

So there you go.  It's actually pretty impressive how it boils a standard opera bouffe plot down into a shorter piece of work without feeling too abbreviated.  Fun Offenbach music.  What else is there to say, really?

Emmerich Kálmán, Die Zirkusprinzessin (1926)

Here's an interestingly weird one.  The idea is that there's this Russian nobleman, Palinski, who was in the past in love with this princess, Palinska.  But his uncle was in love with her too, so he ended up disinherited, and went to join the circus, where he performs as an acrobat under the name "Mister X."  But when he sees the princess at the circus, his hopes are rekindled (apparently they'd never actually met before, as she never recognizes him from the past).  And there's a complicated plot where a spurned suitor of Palinska plots to get "Mister X" to marry her (not knowing who he really is) so that she'll be humiliated at having accidentally married a circus performer.  So this scheme works, and the two are parted.  Forever?  No indeed!  She comes to see him perform an even more death-defying stunt than usual, and they are reunited.  Oh, and also, as always, there's a secondary couple, yada yada.

So at first I was sort of confused: after it's revealed that Palinski is a circus performer, why doesn't he just immediately reveal who he really is and avoid all the further complication?  But then it became clear: it's supposed to be because he didn't want to be with someone who felt humiliated at the idea of marrying someone like that.  And that is an attitude that accords with our sensibilities--but it very much shouldn't accord with theirs!  People aren't supposed to marry outside their social classes!  They're just not!  What this seems to be saying is, sure, if you're a noble you have to marry another noble--but acknowledging this fact is kind of gauche.  An odd thing, for sure.

This is a 1970 German film version--not my ideal way to see it, and I'm sure Seefestspiele Mörbisch would've done a better job--but not too bad, in my view, and the film itself is kind of a historical artifact in its own right.  It's kind of cheap, some music has clearly been cut, and there are some pretty cheesy arrangements; also, Palinski in his Mister X costume looks like he's the hero of an old, zero-budget superhero movie.  But that's okay; I didn't not like it, and you may not not too.