I'm psyched, because I was finally able to find a Lithuanian opera to watch. It always felt unbalanced: I've got Estonia, Latvia, WHERE'S THE OTHER ONE? Well, here it is. Unsubtitled, of course, but sometimes you've just got to grit your teeth. I did have this extremely inadequate summary to sort of follow along with.
So it's Prussians versus Germans, which amounts to Christans versus Pagans, but here the Pagans are the good guys. Is there any reason to capitalize "Pagan?" Unclear. It takes place during the Great Prussian Uprising, which is probably something that relatively few of us are familiar with. The leader of the Prussians is Herkus Mantas, a figure whom Lithuania under Soviet rule used as a symbol for their own drive to freedom. That is an interesting fact that I didn't know 'til now! So that's nice. In the recent battle, some of the soldiers found a German woman who demands to see Mantas; this turns out to be Kristina, his fiancée, and the weirdest thing about this opera is that we get zero explanation of how it is that he's betrothed to a German woman. Both sides seem opposed to this, but I just don't get how it happened in the first place or what everyone else is supposed to know about it. It's possible that this is addressed in one of the many, many parts I wasn't able to follow, but I kind of doubt it. Anyway, they're going to attack the German headquarters, so they're feeling psyched about that. Unfortunately, there is a traitor in their ranks, Samilis. He goes to Sachse, the German leader, and tells him about the Prussian plans. Kristina is also there, and he's pissed off about her Prussian fiancé, and again, I have NO idea how this is meant to be working. Long story short, Mantas is captured but escaped, the Germans suspect Kristina of Paganism and kill her, and as the Germans close in, the Prussians sing about their woeful fate. Fates DO tend to be more woeful than not, when you think about it.
I should emphasize again just how much of this is not at all touched on in that summary. There are quite long scenes where I couldn't even begin to guess what was going on, so that may be partly to blame for any complaints I have about the drama. But the music, I thought was pretty darn good, actually. Would it be horrendously déclassé of me to compare it to videogame music? Like, a sixteen-bit Squaresoft RPG? Because that is what I thought about a lot of the time, somehow. That's meant as praise. Just THINK about all those great soundtracks.
Anyway, there you go. I liked this, but I definitely would've liked it more with subtitles. And my quest to see operas from every former Soviet state continues apace. Right now I'm looking for Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Also, maybe, Moldova, but that's a bit of an awkward and uncertain case. Moldovan is just another name for Romanian. I HAVE seen a Romanian opera, but obviously it would be cheating to count that as Moldovan. And yet, if I DO see an opera by a Moldovan composer, am I going to count it as being from a separate language? I doubt it. So maybe this quest was doomed from the beginning. So it goes.
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