Ruggero Leoncavallo, Zazà (1900)

Which is better, Cav or Pag? is a question that has presumably been endlessly hashed out, although I personally have never been involved in the debate.  And I don't think I'd be very useful, either; I really, really just can't decide.  It could easily go either way.  They're both great.  

But what I DO know is that, even though they were both one-hit wonders, Mascagni had a much more successful composing career than Leoncavallo.  Even if they didn't have lasting success, the former's operas were consistently popular in their time, and some of them are still performed semi-regularly today.  More than we can say for Leoncavallo.  I suppose his other stage works are probably done somewhere sometimes maybe, but sure as heck not often.  I'm pretty sure this is the first of his non-Pag works to ever appear on video.  Nuts!

It's a kind of standard opera plot, and you certainly would recognize Leoncavallo as a contemporary of Puccini:  Zazà is a star singer; she was raised from poverty by Cascart, another singer and her lover as we open.  But that doesn't last; she's kind of had enough of him, and she's in love with another dude, Dufresne.  So they become lovers--Cascart, atypically, more or less accepts this, in spite of issuing dire warnings about Dufresne's character--but he's always having to go off to Paris, and this is because he has a wife and daughter.  So Zazà breaks up with him even though it breaks her heart, and that's that.  Nobody dies here, which is of course quite unusual in this sort of thing, but apart from that...yeah, you've seen it before.  The obvious parallel is to Madama Butterfly, except for the lack of pregnancy or death.  Honestly, in the long run, it's not going to be that big a deal.  I briefly entertained fantasies that she was going to realize how much better off she is without these destructive attachments and just start living her own best life, but that might be a bit much to hope for.

It's really good, though.  There are parts that drag a bit, but there's also a lot of real passion, and even if  Zazà's attachment to Dufresne is unconvincing at first, the narrative makes it work by sheer persistence.  There's also a lot of stuff with secondary characters, other performers, flitting about, creating a believable backstage world.  I was a bit wary of what the production would be like, because it's by Christof Loy, who also did that Les vêpres siciliennes which made some good but also quite a lot of bad choices.  What to expect?  Well, credit where due: he's on his best behavior.  There is nothing Eurotrashy or Regietheatrical here.  Apart from somewhat modernized costumes, this very faithfully follows the libretto, and its world of backstages and dressing rooms is very well-done.  Also, huge credit to Svetlana Aksenova in the title role.  She puts on a hell of a performance, both acting- and singing-wise.  It was quite unexpected to see her here; I've seen her as the lead in two Rimsky-Korsakov operas (Tsar Saltan and The Invisible City), but I didn't know she had an international presence.  Good!  We've also got Christopher Maltman as Cascart, his voice as booming as ever, though I have to say, his character is kind of an unlikeably smug douchebag.  Nikolai Schukoff is appropriately Pinkertonian as Dufresne. 

Honestly, I'd easily say this is, at any rate, better than any of the post-Cav Mascagni operas I've seen.  I really want to see Leoncavallo's La bohème.  It could happen.  It's not inconceivable.  But the reason we don't must at least partially be the same reason we never see any of the dozens of other clemenzas di Tito.  The better-known composer has sucked the air out of the room, and some portion of the audience would probably end up confused and annoyed that it's not the more famous work.  But do it anyway!  I really want you to!

Joel Thompson, The Snowy Day (2021)

Houston Grand Opera kept telling me about this premiere they were going to do, and I really wanted to check it out, but would it be streamed?  Well, obviously it was (free to watch with a free registration).  So I saw it!  It's based on the classic children's book, that I do indeed vaguely remember from when I was small.  It is, we are told, the first "mainstream" children's book with a black protagonist, though I have to admit, I absolutely did not remember that he was black.  Looking back, it's unambiguous; I think possibly ethnicity just wasn't a detail that my brain registered at a young age, particularly if it weren't the point of the story.  

As for that story, it's obviously been expanded A LOT.  The book doesn't really feature any characters aside from the main one, Peter.  He goes out and plays in the snow and then comes back in and is sad because the snowball he saved melted, but then the next day there's more snow so he's over the moon again.  That's it.  The only other people who appear, sort of, are the big kids having a snowball fight, his mom, and his friend, but they each appear in one drawing without much detail and never say or do anything.

So clearly some improvisation was necessary.  First, we see a lot more from Peter's parents, including a few arias from mom's perspective.  Then, the "big kids" are presented in much more detail: mean bullies (well, "bullies" might be pushing it: they're just rowdy), except that one of them, Tim, does a face turn and joins Peter.  He, Peter, also makes friends with a girl, Amy, who is--I gather--the daughter of hispanic immigrants or something of the sort.  She sings a number of lines in Spanish.

Yeah, man.  This is a real charmer of an opera--short and sweet at just over seventy minutes.  The music is sparkly and befitting of so snow-oriented a story, and the characters are all likable.  I'm sort of on the fence about how convincing Raven McMillon is as a boy.  She IS very short, I'll give her that much, but maybe still a bit overly feminine-looking?  Well, now I'm just doing dumb nitpicking.  Regardless of any of that, she's very good in the role.  It's all fun.  Definitely a nice piece for the holidays, so see it...or don't!

Matthew Aucoin, Eurydice (2020)

I think the first question we have to ask is, just what the HELL is going on with her face in that picture?  She appears to be cross-eyed with a giant, cartoon nose.  Please rest assured that that is never the case in the actual opera, at least as here produced.

This is actually kind of historical: with this, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and the upcoming Hamlet, this year's Met on Demand series features three contemporary operas, a first.  Only one previous season has even included two (in 2011-12 they did Satyagraha and The Enchanted Island, if you even want to count the latter baroque pastiche as a contemporary piece).  This is really cool, and it's definitely due to the influence of Yannick Nézet-Séguin who, as I understand, is known for championing new operas.  An excellent trend.  He's an improvement on every possible level over Levine.  I mean, assuming he doesn't have deep dark secret of his own.  Don't break my heart,  Nézet-Séguin!

Well, this is more or less the normal Orpheus story, albeit--obviously--from Eurydice's perspective, more or less.  She's getting married to Orpheus; at the same time, her dad in Hades--who still remembers her on account of not being exposed to too much Lethe water--is writing her a letter.  On the day of her wedding, she meets a sleazy dude, who turns out to be Hades, who lures her to his apartment by saying he has this letter (which he does) and then trying to seduce her.  But she falls and dies somehow; don't worry about it.  Orpheus goes after her and blah blah; ultimately, of course, he looks and she has to go back, only her dad--who had urged her to go--apparently couldn't take her being gone and bathed himself in Lethe water.  So she follows suit and no one remembers anything and when Orpheus comes he's, like, sad.  Okay.

One interesting thing the opera does is give Orpheus a "shadow double" meant to represent his music.  Since he also sings himself, I'm not sure how this works conceptually, but it's interesting to hear the baritone and countertenor harmonizing.  The music in general is pretty good; the most obvious touchstone seems to be Wagner.  There's a bit of playing around with serialism.  It's pretty much fine.

But I don't know...the reason I took so long to write this after seeing the opera was on accouna not being altogether sure what to think, and the more I DO think about this, the less impressed I am.  The libretto sometimes seems a bit too cutely self-aware for my tastes, and some of it seems kind of ungainly, like it wasn't really altered sufficiently from the original non-musical play.  I don't regret seeing it (I don't think I've ever "regretted" seeing an opera, even the few I've hated, so what does THAT mean?), but I sure don't think I'll ever feel the urge to revisit it.  If Fire Shut Up in My Bones felt like it was for the ages, this one feels eminently disposable, with no disrespect to Aucoin intended.  But I still really, really want to see Jacopo Peri's Euridice.  Why did we all collectively decide to pretend that Monteverdi's Orfeo is the oldest surviving opera?  I don't get it!

I also want to note that, as the host, Renée Fleming egregiously mispronounces "Eurydice" in a way that's not only unlike the English pronunciation used in this opera, but really unlike any language I've heard.  Walk away Renée!