So we're doing more of these, from Minnesota Opera (you can also still watch the original quartet if you want to). I quite liked the first ones, so let's see what these are like. By the way, if you were wondering, which you definitely weren't, I'm not counting these four as another opera for my list--we're just taking it for granted that these slot in with the first four under the "Mniatures" name.
Mitchell Bercier, Sapphica
Well, most of this seems to take place at some kind of rave, with a masked DJ and a few dancers. It sometimes cuts to an outside view of a few women, one of whom presumably is meant to be Sappho, although I would've had zero idea that this was supposed to be about the poet if the title and description did not tell me so. The lyrics are all--I can only assume--Sappho lyrics, sung in Ancient Greek without subtitles (there is an auto-translate CC option for, of all things Vietnamese, which apparently some algorithm decided it sounded most like). So that's not super-rewarding, and although I can't call the EDM-sounding music bad, exactly, it's definitely not my thing. I can't say I really cared for this.
Christian Bardin, Yr God My God
This one is about being queer/non-binary and growing up in a fundamentalist church, and shifting perspectives from childhood and looking back from the vantage of adulthood. Well...that's the theory, anyway. It's a good idea, but even at sixteen minutes--rather long for this sort of thing--I don't feel like there's really time to develop the concept adequately. I do enjoy moments where the child protagonist is duetting with their adult self, but there's actually much less than you'd expect from the adult perspective, and honestly, the piece as a whole doesn't make much impression on me. Sad to say.
The third and forth pieces are paired together as something called Semblance. Both of them are about people who have or feel like they have dual identities. They don't share characters or plot or anything. Anyway, keep it in mind! Or don't. That would be just as good.
Stephanie Henry, Leigh Opulent
This is about a drag queen, inspired by Paris Is Burning, the documentary about African American drag ballroom culture in New York--a film I have seen. It's very good. And tragic. The description alleges that "Leigh Opulent is coming to terms with the fact that his successful ballroom career never translated to real life," but his "real life" is never touched on in the actual piece. He gets a call from someone telling him he's been made den mother, to his delight. "All this really makes me reflect on my journey," he remarks, and it's hard not to laugh at such a clumsily on-the-nose, high-school-ish line. But reflect he does, to an extent, as the action cuts back and forth between him sitting in his room and doing a drag act. I actually kind of liked this, though at five minutes it's not really enough to get into the subject matter in any beyond a superficial way.
Leyna Marika Papach, Mina at Night
So Mina wants to be a musician, but as a single mother she feels her potential career has been derailed. So she goes on about that for a while. Eventually other random people show up in her room and sing about her son and her nascent career and hey, maybe she can still have something? Who knows. Once again, I didn't find this very interesting.
So...unfortunately not as good as the first set. And yet I have a soft spot for these operatic shorts, even if the finished product is only sporadically what I might wish. They seem a good way for musicians to be creative and develop. And you know what else? I'm feeling a weird nostalgia for those #OperaHarmony shorts and the way they evoke in my head pre-vaccine pandemic times, which I'm aware is a perverse thing to be nostalgic for, but that's the way the dumb ol' human mind works, I think. Maybe I'll revisit them.
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