Dmitry Bortniansky, Alcide (1778)

Well, the Ukrainian Opera Marathon continues, sort of.  According to Wikipedia, Bortniansky is "claimed" by both Ukraine and Russia.  I cannot adjudicate this.  Let's just call him Ukrainian, eh?  There are already enough prominent Russian composers.

So, as you would probably have guessed, this isn't in Ukrainian; it has an Italian libretto--by Metastasio, no less.  It's a one-act festival opera, written for a royal wedding; hence, it's not in his typical opera seria format.  Do you know the story of Hercules at the Crossroads, sometimes known as The Choice of Hercules?  Handel wrote an oratorio of that name, not to be confused with his plain ol' Hercules.  Alcide is another name for Hercules.  What's the difference between "Alcide" and "Ercole?"  I truly could not say.  Anyway, whatever his name is, it takes place before his labor and all that razzmatazz.  He has to decide how his life is going to go; whether he wants to live an easy life of pleasure or a virtuous path of valor.  He meets Edonide and Aretea, respective goddesses of these two things, listens to them, and ultimately chooses the latter, but Edonide reforms herself and comes along with him, the message being that pleasure isn't a bad thing when it's regulated by virtue.  So there you have it.

I really liked this.  Some very nice baroque music, and it's really interesting that Edonide has actual character development, which is not something you expect from allegorical figures.  There are actually a few productions online, but I chose this one, and it's really good.  A charming maestra conducts, and the countertenor in the title role, Viktor Andriichenko, has a very interesting, distinctive voice.  Is there anything about the piece that would make me say, "that sounds characteristically Ukrainian?"  Obviously not, but what could you possibly have been expecting?  Check it out.

Mykola Lysenko, Natalka Poltavka (1889)

Hey look, after everything I've watched, here we have my first nineteenth-century Ukrainian opera!  Go.  Figure.  Almost every opera with a woman's first and last name for a title is a tragedy.  The only exceptions I can think of are obscure-ish contemporary operas: Harriet Tubman and Dolores Claiborne.  But: Adriana Lecouvreur, Anna Bolena, Anna Nicole, Beatrice Cenci, Francesca da Rimini, Kátja Kabanová, Lucrezia Borgia, Luisa Miller, and Manon Lescaut, in terms of things I've seen.  There is a clear pattern!  Let's see where this one falls.

Well, it's again a peasant thing.  Natalka is in love with Petro, but she's sad because he's been working abroad these five years.  A rich bum named Vozniy comes and asks for her hand, but she refuses.  The village elder Viborniy turns up and Vozniy asks him to intercede on his behalf.  Which he does.  Natalka's mother Terpilikha is annoyed because they're poor and their problems would be solved if her dang daughter would just go with Vozniy.  So for her mother's sake, she agrees, sadly.  But then, Petro shows up.  Natalka declares that she loves him and she is NOT marrying Vozniy.  But seeing  Terpilikha's outrage, Petro decides to nobly(?) give up his claim.  Vozniy is touched by this and decides to let him have her anyway.  All right.  That's it.

So...simple plot.  Not a tragedy, obviously.  Actually, what might not be so obvious, it's an operetta.  Lots of spoken dialogue, which isn't great for me--as you know, I'm kind of lukewarm on spoken text in any event, and if I can't even understand it, it becomes REALLY pointless.  I dunno, though--I'm not really convinced I'd be very impressed by this in any event.  The music I found pretty thin, the same as Tarus Bulba--it's possible that, like Massenet, Lysenko is shaking out to be a composer that I don't like that much for reasons I can't quite understand (I did like Koza-dereza, his short children's opera, however).  Of course, I can't say much for the story here either: in particular, Petro is pretty darned weak as a romantic hero.  He doesn't even appear until the third act, and then, this idea of him just giving up Natalka?  I mean, it would be one thing if she had fallen out of love with you; that would suck, but you would probably just have to accept it, lest you become an MRA/"nice guy" type.  But when she's explicitly telling you she only wants to be with you?  Well, I kind of get the impression you wanted out of this relationship in any case.  At least I hope so, because if you're really folding because you don't want to upset her mother, let's face it, you're too much of a chickenshit to deserve her.

In fairness, there may be intricacies to this that, for obvious reasons, I'm not getting.  I don't know, though.  I doubt there are any circumstances under which I'd love it.  Which is too bad, because it marks the end of the Ukrainian Opera Marathon, the reason being: I've seen every Ukrainian opera I can find.  Counting the three I'd previously seen, that's ten total.  I searched as thoroughly as I could, but I'm coming up empty at this point.  It's entirely possible--probably, I would almost say--that there's more that I just haven't found because it's obscure enough that there's no information on it available outside the Ukrainian or Russian internet.  If so, please let me know.  If not, that is that.

I know, I know, it doesn't really mean anything.  Me watching Ukrainian operas helps the Ukrainian people in no way.  Still, nothing wrong with highlighting the artistry of a culture currently under attack.  I wish I had something pithy to say in closing.

Yuliy Meitus, Stolen Happiness (1960)

Here's another opera based on the work of Ivan Franko.  Is he the Ukrainian Pushkin?

So we are among peasants.  Anna is married to Mykola.  She carries a torch for a guy named Mykhailo, but he has disappeared in some unspecified way, and apparently her brothers tricked her in to marrying Mykola (the nature of this trickery never being specified).  But whaddaya know: Mykhailo reappears.  And Mykola is arrested for murder.  A year passes, and rumors are flying that Anna is involved with Mykhailo (given the shape of the opera, I don't think this is meant to be the case at the time--at least not physically).  They're dancing and having a good time when Mykola is released from prison, the real killers having been found.  A week passes, and now Anna is totally inflamed for Mykhailo.  He barges into their house, and after a confrontation, Mykola goes to a tavern to drink away his troubles.  When he comes back, he and Mykhailo (who has been drinking too) have a fight, and the latter is killed, and now Mykola himself is going to die, his happiness having been stolen.  God knows what's going to happen to Anna, but probably not anything too good.

This was a very fine opera, I thought.  I got really caught up in the story, simple though it is.  In contrast to The Reluctant Matchmaker, I was able to follow the action here well enough, but I really found myself longing for subtitles so I could get a clearer idea of the precise ins and outs of it all.  The Lviv Opera website says that it's considered very subtle and psychologically probing, which is certainly believable, but naturally, my understanding is limited.

Great music, too.  There are a few really infectious folk dances, and the scene where Anna and Mykola give in to their passion is very dramatic.  One touch that worked really well in this production is that, for the first and only time in the piece, Anna removes her headscarf, an obvious but still clever metaphor for her releasing her true feelings.

Yeah, man.  There are a lot of great operas that you'll never know about unless you specifically seek them out.  More like this, please.

Vitaliy Hubarenko, The Reluctant Matchmaker (1985)

Okay, so this is a thing: usually when I watch an opera with only a summary I can nonetheless basically make sense of what's going on.  Not so much in this case.  I spent a lot of time and effort looking for information about this, but there ain't much online--and that includes the Ukrainian- and Russian-language internets.  Finally, I sort of figured it out: the video as it appears on operaonvideo is from mail.ru, and there's no summary.  But there IS a version of the same video on youtube that includes a summary in the description; the reason I didn't find it initially is because, while you can easily search for it on youtube, if you just do a google search and click on "videos," you only get the first version.  But even with that description...I had a hell of a time making head or tail of this.  It has a standard opera buffa plot: Pazinka's parents want her to marry a rich guy, but she's in love with a soldier, Skvortsov, and it's up to his clever batman Shelmenko to carry off the match.  But it took me almost the whole runtime for me to even figure out who was who, let alone the intricacies of the plot, which apparently involve mistaken identity stuff.

Well, for the record, in case anyone wants to watch it: the woman in the yellow dress is Pazinka, obviously.  The bearded and beardless soldiers are Skvortsov and Shelmenko respectively.  I don't know who the gray-haired guy who looks vaguely like Henry Winkler is, so don't ask.   Pazinka's father?  Possibly.  The woman in the red dress who punctuates her dialogue with words and short phrases in French is, I think, her sister.  The older blonde is, naturally, their mother.  And the Willy-Wonka/Mad-Hatter-looking dude in orange is Pazinka's family's preferred suitor.  I think.

Well, I definitely think a better understanding of what the heck was going on would've helped, but still, it's not bad.  Quite varied music, with some of it harkening back to the nineteenth century with elements of romanticism (also, a few patter songs), but also some more modern material with very mild elements of serialism.  Some of it just faded into the background, but overall, it's a pretty okay piece of work.  Still, without subtitles, I don't know that I'm capable of providing a really fair review, so we'll leave it at that.

Ivan Nebesnyy, Fox Mykyta (2020)

Okay, here is this, based on a series of Ukrainian folk stories as retold/collected by Ivan Franko, who also wrote the poem that Skoryk's Moses is based on.  In preparation for seeing this, I read this English version of it.  I wasn't what you'd call impressed, but let's see how the opera's gonna handle it.

The story follow very closely with the original work: this here Fox is called in by King Lion to be punished for playing mean tricks on everyone, but he manages to wriggle out of it, murders a handful of other animals, and then, for extremely unclear reasons, is lauded by everyone.  WOW did I ever not like this story.

Still, I'll give the opera credit: I liked it more than that book.  There's some pretty darned fun music here, especially at, like, the climax of tricks where it gets all carnival-sounding.  There's also a strong folk element, and the use of traditional Ukrainian instruments.  It makes for an interesting sound.  Fox is still unlikeable; I hope this isn't sexist, but I think it might've been a good idea to make it a trouser role; it seems like a woman might have a bit better luck at making the character even marginally charming or appealing.  I'm sort of on the fence about whether subtitles--me being able to understand specifically what they're saying as opposed to just generally--would've made him more likable or less, and I'm kinda guessing yes.  He is most unpleasant.

Well, what else can I say?  As contemporary operas go, it's not terrible, but I do think it's held back by the unpromising source material.  Dangit, I obviously didn't mean to end up in a place of slagging off Ukrainian culture when I started this, but this story, man.  It's not good.  I would love--and I mean this sincerely, I want to learn--to talk to a Ukrainian person and learn why they like it so much.

Mykola Lysenko, Koza-dereza (1890)

Man, imagine if Lysenkoism referred not to Soviet pseudoscience but to a compositional style based on the music of Mykola Lysenko.  That would be way better.

Anyway, here's one of two children's operas that Lysenko wrote.  When I heard "children's opera," I wasn't sure whether it was meant for children to watch or to sing, but based on this evidence, it is the latter.  That video is less than twenty minutes long.  Does that mean it's abridged?  Well...maybe, but maybe not, if it was written for kids to be equal to.

The problem is...I have no idea what this is about.  I can't find any plot information anywhere.  I initially thought it was just going to be based on "The Three Billygoats Gruff," which would be easy enough to follow, but it's really not.  There's a goat who, it appears, is extremely naughty.  All the other characters are animals, most prominently a fox, but also a dog, bear, &c.  In the end, they chase the goat off.  That's about all that I gathered about THIS story!

The music is very nice, though.  Simple, catchy stuff that, indeed, children can sing.  This is a school production.  So obviously none of the performers are professionals, but if I compare this to school plays I acted (well, "acted") in back in the day, I have to conclude that these kid are mind-bogglingly talented.  Imagine unironically watching a school play where you have no connection to any of the kids for pleasure.  THAT is not something I thought would ever happen, but now it has.

...and if it's hard with adult singers, it is absolutely fucking unbearable to watch these sweet children performing and think of them having the horrors of war shoved in their faces.  Murderous rage is the only justifiable response.

Myroslav Skoryk, Moses (2001)

This is based on a 1905 poem by Ivan Franko, which was meant to be an allegory for Ukraine: the country has great potential marred by political disunity, although I...don't think that's the main problem right now.  Franko, wikipedia tells us, is also "the author of the first detective novels in the Ukrainian language."  Dude, I want to read an early Ukrainian detective novel.

Alas, I don't think any of them have been translated to English.  But here we have an opera based on one of his works!  Which...also hasn't been translated to English, so I don't know what my point is.  Anyway, this is about Moses' tribulations.  As you'd expect, wandering around in the desert.  

You know, I have to admit, I am not super Biblically-literate, so when I saw this in the wikipedia entry about Moses, I raised an eyebrow: "Moses told the Israelites that they were not worthy to inherit the land, and would wander the wilderness for forty years until the generation who had refused to enter Canaan had died, so that it would be their children who would possess the land."  The classic image I feel like is of them wandering around looking for the promised land, but nope, it turns out that Moses was just taking passive-aggressive dickishness to new levels.  Well done, Mo.  But anyway, here--in this opera, and also the Bible--we also have some rebels, Aviron and Datan, and the people are divided.  Moses goes off into the desert and contemplates what he's doing and this and that.  A demon, Azazel, appears and tries to sew doubt.  So does the ghost of his mother, which confused me: since when was she supposed to be an antagonist?  I don't think there's any Biblical basis for that.  Unless she's meant to be another demon?  Unclear.  But anyway, Moses' doubt causes God to punish him by declaring that he'll die without setting foot in the Holy Land.  Boy, turns out they're both pretty darned dickish in this story.  But anyway, he dies, but the people are hopeful about getting where they're going, and Aviron and Datan will be executed, so...huzzah.

Another pretty good opera!  There's a heavy choral element here, and lots of arias--though one does feel, more than in many operas, that being able to follow along with the text would have been useful.  A lot of long monologuing that would be nice to be able to follow!  Oh well.  The music is romantic stuff with strong elements of what I don't know what to call but "Orientalism," an interesting choice for the milieu.  There's a really awesome ballet sequence at the end of the first act where people are worshipping the Golden Calf.

I actually didn't realize some of the emotional resonance that would come from watching Ukrainian operas at a time like this.  You look at the performers and you think, what are they experiencing right now?  Have any of them lost loved ones or been forced to go into exile?  There is no hell hot enough for anyone who initiates or supports a war of choice.  I would like it if this were a universal lesson we could learn, but I am not holding my breath.

Heorhiy Maiboroda, Yaroslav the Wise (1975)

The Ukrainian Opera Marathon starts here, with THIS.

Now pay attention, because I'm only going to say this once: it's Kiev in the eleventh century.  Mykyta is the son of Kosnyatyn, governor of Novgorod.  He's disguised as a monk, and he wants to kill the Prince of Kiev, Yaroslav, for having imprisoned his dad.  But when Yaroslav's daughter Elizaveta appears, he becomes infatuated and stays his hand.  A Norwegian knight, Harald, appears and likewise falls fro Elizaveta and she for him.  He wants to marry her, but Yaroslav says he has to prove himself first.  Next, a stonemason named Zhureyko appears.  He's pissed off because another Norwegian (why are there so many Norwegians hereabouts?), Turvald, tried to rape his fiancée Mylusha and killed her brother when he tried to stop him.  Yaroslav orders him killed, but Elizaveta, for unclear reasons, pleads on his behalf, and Yaroslav frees him after he pays a ransom.  He immediately goes after Mylusha again, so Zhureyko kills him and flees.  Learning that Kosnyatyn was panning some sort of conspiracy, he decides to have him executed.  Harald reappears having become King of Norway (as you do), and he and Elizaveta are married.  Some fellow Novgorodians appear and tell Mykyta that it's time for revenge, but he hesitates, knowing how important it is that Yaroslav build a unified state.  But then he hears that his dad has been killed and decides, yeah, let's do it.  This girl, Djemma, appears and declares her love for him.  Meanwhile, Zhureyko is back in town, in spite of having a death sentence on his head (would any court REALLY convict him, given the circumstances?).  Before he is reunited with Mylusha, he hears Yaroslav's wife Ingigerda and her co-conspirator Ulf talking about their plans to take out Yaroslav so she can rule.  Zhureyko wants to warn him, but Ulf realizes he's been overheard and captures him.  When Mylusha shouts for help, he kills her.  But a bunch of people hear what happened and the plot is undone, Ingigerda is sent to a convent, and Ulf taken away, presumably to be killed.  Zhureyko is forgiven and given a place in Yaroslav's court.  A few years later, Yaroslav is still doing ruler things, but he's sad because Elizaveta died in Norway, as Mykyta explains to him (why was he in Norway, and what is his relationship with Yaroslav at this point supposed to be?  Utterly unclear).  But now, the dastardly Pechenegs are attacking!  Oh no!  Zhureyko mustered some troops in Novgorod to fight, and this renews Mykyta's anger at his dad having been executed, so he reproaches Yaroslav, who wants to kill him, but Djemma, who I assume is supposed to be his wife at this point, intercedes for him.  Anyway, time to fight.  Mykyta dies in the battle, but the Pechenegs are repulsed.  Everyone sings about how great Yaroslav is.  The end.  Did you get all that?  There WILL be a test.

Okay, the libretto has its issues.  It's very twisty, it's hard to tell who we're really supposed to care about, and ol' Yaroslav demonstrates very little wisdom.  If it's supposed to be praising him, it does a bad job of it.  Of course, I was just following along with a summary, but I think there would've been problems even if there were English subtitles.  The wikipedia entry says that it "contains a number of perplexing coincidences and bewildering changes of character by the leading roles, and scarcely testifies overall to the hero's wisdom," which seems extremely fair.

Nevertheless, I actually liked this opera quite a bit.  In this instance, the music redeems the libretto.  There is nothing here that would make you think you weren't listening to a nineteenth-century opera.  Maybe it's partially because I haven't really watched much in that vein lately, but it has strong operatic values that a lot of contemporary or near-contemporary opera lack.  Passion!  Duets!  Arias!  And there's a symphonic break for the climactic battle that rules the flippin' roost.  Also, this is a very handsome period production.  We're rockin' in Kiev tonight, I tell you.  Does this sound like I'm trivializing the current situation?  I hope not.  That is emphatically not the goal.

Henry Mollicone, Five Operas

Who is Henry Mollicone?  Well...he's a guy who's written five operas, obviously.  More than five, actually; these are just the ones I could find video of.  I don't remember how I even heard about him, but I just decided for no reason to see as much of his operatic oeuvre as was available.  It wasn't THAT much of a commitment; four out of the five are one-act pieces.  Anyway, let's go through them in chronological order.

The Face on the Barroom Floor (1978)

This is based on a poem about a guy who, upon losing his amour, turned to drink; he visits this bar and offers to draw a picture of his lost love on the floor but dies before finishing.  That's it.  It's a weird poem with no apparent point and serious scansion issues.  The opera is an extremely free adaptation, as it would almost have to be, even at only twenty-five minutes.  Here we have two pals, Larry and Isabel, who in the present-day visit a bar, and ask the bartender about the face on the floor.  So he tells them: in the past, there was a bartender, Matt, (played by the present bartender) who was in love with a barmaid, Madeleine (played by Isabel).  A traveler (played by Larry) arrives and tells about his lost love, only when he goes to draw her face, it turns out it's Madeleine, so--naturally--the men fight and Madeleine gets shot.  A WHOLE BUNCH OF TIMES in this production--it's a bit silly.  Then we're back in the present and it turns out that the bartender was previously in love with Isabel and once again she is fatally shot.  Jeez, people.

It's all right, actually, in spite of this production being less than ideal.  It's a college production, so you can't complain too much, but boy: all the characters are just dressed in black tights and baggy t-shirts.  Also, Matt/Larry is a trouser role, and giving the singer no signifiers of masculinity lead to needless confusion.  IN SPITE OF WHICH, I want to chastise the Brown University student body for turning out to support their opera company in such pathetic numbers--granted, I wouldn't have either at that age unless I'd had a crush on one of the singers, but THAT IS NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.  Anyway, the piece itself, as far as I can judge, is pretty solid, with some cool sort of movie-Western-ish music.  It was commissioned by Central City Opera in Colorado (who also commissioned The Ballad of Baby Doe--it all comes together!), and per Mollicone's website, they've performed it every year since its debut.  You'd think there'd be a better video out there.  Oh well!  Not a terrible place to start!

Starbird (1980)

This is a children's opera.  Or so I am told.  Children like super-weird stuff, is apparently the premise.  There are a dog, a cat, and a donkey who, due to mechanization, have lost their jobs (the donkey was previously the Democratic Party's mascot--okay).  So when a spaceship lands, they decide to go to space, in spite of this...starbird who tells them its a bad idea.  But some robots emerge from the ship and try to MAKE them go.  Oh no!  But the animals use their qualities to escape.  The starbird wants to live on Earth, but she is built such that she can't survive here and has to go back to space.  Who is she?  What relationship does she have with the aliens?  What is HAPPENING here?

Seriously, I found this pretty inscrutable.  I don't know what to say about the music; I saw it a week ago, and it seems to have escaped from my mind.  Kids might like it, but I found it a bit dull.

Emperor Norton (1981)

You know Emperor Norton, that guy in nineteenth-century San Francisco who declared himself Emperor of the United States and issued his own currency and everyone was charmed by him.  You have to admit, it's a good story.  This opera starts in the present, where actors are auditioning for a play about Norton.  But then some dude--who may or may not be Norton himself; it's kind of intentionally ambiguous--who complains that the play isn't accurate and that it treats Norton as just an eccentric rather than the noble figure he was (sort of like the arguments about Don Quixote).  Then we see a few--very few--episodes from Norton's life: his death and then, moving backwards, the episode that allegedly made him go crazy, where he cornered the market on rice only to have it fall out from under him.

The thing is, I find the libretto here ineffably dumb.  We're clearly meant to come down on the "what a noble guy this was!" side, but to me either extreme is reductive and silly, and in any case, we see so little of Norton's life that it would be impossible to judge just based on the evidence of our eyes.  I dunno...also, in spite of all these reviews talking about how dang tuneful it is, I didn't find that to be the case at all.  It may be that it requires time to grow on one, or it may be that the instrumentation here wasn't that great, but either way, I found this forgettable at best.

Hotel Eden (1989)

Hey, can we get some positivity going here?  Okay, here is the best of the five by an extremely wide margin--and also the only multi-act piece, so that works out.  We have three vignettes, each of which takes place at the titular hotel at twenty-year intervals (1930, 50, and 70), and each riffing on a story from Genesis, featuring the hotel staff as angels.  In the first act, it's Adam and Eve, all lovey-dovey until Lilith shows up and causes chaos.  Eve gets mad and is going to leave, but the staff intervene, leading to an ambiguous but hopeful ending.  Next, it's a middle-aged couple, Noah and his wife, Mrs. Noah.  They're at the hotel for a vacation, but there is friction: Noah is a retired sailor and alcoholic who misses the sea.  His wife is sick of being called "Mrs. Noah" all the time, and cuts loose with the staff.  A disaster is averted, and they seem to have fixed things up.  Finally, it's Abraham and Sara, an older couple, sad that they never had a child together--there's just Abraham's son with Hagar, Ishmael.  But then some stuff happens, and Isaac is born and everyone's happy.  Apparently.

The big problem with this is that I found the final act substantially less interesting than the other two, while also being as long as the both of them put together.  Look, I know I'm not shocking anyone by suggesting that Bible stories are often kind of fucked up, but the whole Abraham/Sara/Hagar triangle is kind of fucked up, only the libretto is unwilling to really deal with that, so we just have this weird...thing.  First two acts are great, though, especially the second.  There's a lot of musical variety that I really appreciated; along with traditional romantic music, some kind of music-hall material and even disco--for the first time, Mollicone really comes alive for me, and I would gladly watch this again.

Lady Bird: First Lady of the Land (2016)

Only now is the foolishness of having decided to write about these in chronological order impressed upon me, because now I can't end on a positive note.  And it's all the libretto's fault, because actually, the music here is really good, with some great gospel and bluesy elements.  But my god, where to start with the text.  This may actually be the elusive "so bad it's good" opera I've been looking for, but I'm not quite willing to call something this dumb "good" in any sense.  

During LBJ's 1964 campaign, his wife went on a speaking tour.  That's more or less what this is about, I suppose, although that takes up less than half the run-time.  Basically, she goes to racist towns in the South and quotes "all men are created equal at them," a phrase which is well known for making racists immediately stop being racist.  Nice.  There's also a lot with LBJ himself, and deciding whether he should run for President.  Mollicone or his librettist absolutely worship the man to an embarrassing extent, and it feels pretty fundamentally dishonest to do that without even mentioning Vietnam.

However, I think that description does not give you an adequate idea of how godawful ungainly and amateurish the libretto really is.

Truly cringe-inducing stuff.  How did this happen?

Sorry!  Sorry for ending that way!  Mollicone definitely has talent, but on the evidence here presented, he's a pretty terrible judge of text.