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.
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