Here's this. It's an opera (what?!?). Hearing the description, you think, man, couldn't they have released it a bit earlier for Halloween? But actually, I think it's all right this way. It's in part a ghost story of sorts, but I don't know that it's exactly seasonal. Whatever!
The Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, Arizona is a historical establishment patronized by miners, and also, it's HAUNTED! Allegedly. By the ghost of Julia Lowell, a prostitute who is supposed to have killed herself after a romantic disappointment. I'm not sure to what extent this is real. Certainly, it's embellished for operatic purposes.
So here, we have a present-day narrative: a woman named Addison, traumatized by the death of her beloved grandmother, has decided to stay in the allegedly-haunted room (the logic of this is eventually explained), looking to see the ghost in spite of the manager's skepticism. But the bulk of it does indeed take place in the...1920s? I'm guessing? It's hard to find hard dates. At any rate, Julia is an in-demand prostitute, doing okay (as far as that goes), aside from her violent pimp, who wants her to make enough money to pay off some ill-defined debt.
(Side note: is there such thing as a kind, supportive pimp? I feel like there's no profession more universally reviled in cultural depictions; the only neutral version is the cartoon with a huge fur coat and peacock-feather hat. Well, I don't suppose it would naturally attract a better kind of dude.)
So this is going until she has the misfortune to fall in love with a client, Theodore. They're planning on running off together, but...well, I won't spoil it, but nor is it particularly surprising. It is a VERY operatic sort of plot.
So okay, two things: on the one hand, this is great. Julia's story, as noted, has traditional operatic values (which I kind of think are...slightly different than the "traditional values" that fundamentalists like to babble about). There's some really extravagantly romantic music during the love scenes, and it's great! Back to basics! Also, some piano that evokes the proper Old-West atmosphere.
On the other hand, the present-day stuff just...doesn't work. Addison is a very murkily-drawn character; there's the vague suggestion that she's suffered romantic disappointments of some kind, but she's basically nothing, and the denouement with her and the ghost (spoiler, I guess) is unsatisfying. I appreciate what I take to be the motivation for the opera--to restore Julia's humanity from the kind of gross roadside-attraction that she's become--but I don't feel that the frame really does that. Honestly, you wouldn't lose much by just getting rid of it altogether and letting the Puccini-esque story stand on its own.
Still well worth watching, though, whatever criticisms I may have.
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