Henry Purcell (more or less), Masque of Might (2023)

I simply MUST draw your attention to this awesome piece.

What I didn't know about Purcell, but now that I've examined his wikipedia page I do, is that the man was fantastically prolific in his short life.  But you don't necessarily hear a lot of his music, because a lot of it was written for miscellaneous celebrations or for semioperas that are never staged because they have no interest other than the music.  It's a sad state of affairs, so we have THIS, which highlights some lesser-known Purcell.

The idea is a little like the Met's Enchanted Island only Purcellsclusive, but with an important difference, also: The Enchanted Island used a completely new libretto, whereas this here uses the authentic seventeenth century texts, only slightly tweaking a few of them to match the plot better.

That story is an environmental fable about a dictator who comes to power who hates the environment and doesn't care about climate change and my god it is absolutely impossible to describe this without making it sound like the most dopey, heavy-handed thing imaginable.  I assure you, in practice it's much better than that.  Obviously, the words only sort of relate the putative story (there are also little pre-scene captions that help you follow along), but it's actually kind of amazing how much the story does, actually, work, albeit in a somewhat impressionistic way.  And no, really, I swear, it doesn't come across as overly dogmatic or heavy-handed.  All due credit to the creator, David Pountney.  You cannot deny the artistry.  Still not quite sure what the title means, though.

Is there any need to mention the music?  It's great, obvz.  I'm sure I've lamented his early death before, but man alive.  Since there's still a huge amount of rarely-performed Purcell out there, so if Pountney or someone else wanted to make a couple three more like this, well, I can't see myself objecting too strenuously.

Francesco Provenzale, La Stellidaura Vendicante (1674)

 

Steeeeelllaaaaa!

Right, now that we've gotten that out of our system...This one had been on my radar for a long time, but I just got to it.  The idea here is we've got this king, Orismondo, who's head over heels for Stellidaura, but she already has a lover, Armidoro--or Armadillo, as I preferred to think of him.  Orismondo is hella jealous, leading him to shoot and wound Armadillo, causing Stellidaura to vow revenge--there's a lot more of the heroine waving swords around than you usually see in these things.  There are misunderstandings caused by people getting the wrong letters and leaping to conclusions.  Armadillo protects Orismondo when Stellidaura, in disguise, is about to run him through ('cause he's just so gosh-darned chivalrous); she's sent to the dungeon, and Orismondo sends one of the comic-relief servants, Giampetro, to make her drink poison to kill her (still not knowing who she is).  Soon after, he learns who she is, but it's TOO LATE, she's already taken the poison...but since this is a baroque opera, it's NBD; it turns out Giampetro accidentally just gave her a sleeping potion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .  Finally, Orismondo reads in an, uh, book (visualized here as a letter in a bottle, which somehow makes even less sense) that Stellidaura is actually secretly his sister, so that...solves the problem?  I guess?  It seems like the sudden revelation that the person you really, really want to fuck is a blood relative would do odd things to your libido.  Or at the very least, make for a super-awkward time at family get-togethers.  Also, it's kind of surprising that there's not an alternate love interest for Orismondo.  But there you go.

I was a bit surprised by the voice types on display: only Armillo (the other servant) is sung by a countertenor; Orismondo and Armadillo are both tenors, which seems quite atypical--for all that the tenor eventually became the default hero role, it didn't play much of a part in Italian baroque opera (French is another story).  Still, there's quite a contrast between them, the one super-low and the other high, that it's easy to imagine that they were originally baritone and castrato roles, which would certainly have been more typical.  Still, it's fine.  Also, allegedly Giampetro is singing in dialect, which is supposed to be another innovation of the piece that, naturally, was lost on me.

I mean, this is a perfectly acceptable example of the thing that it is, so if you like that thing, as I do, you're sure to like it.  I have to admit, though, all the hype surrounding this, heralding it as a long-lost classic and all that, made me like it perhaps a bit less: because it's really not all that special.  The libretto is slight, and there are no musical moments that I found really transcendent.  Know what I'm sayin'?  

Still, I really want to see as many seventeenth-century operas as I can; according to my all-knowing list, I'm currently at an even forty, which seems like kind of a lot, and yet I still don't feel I really have a clear grasp of the development of opera in the seventeenth century, whereas I feel like I sort of do for the eighteenth and beyond.  It looks like I will have no choice but to watch more.  Darn!

Antonio Vivaldi, Il Giustino (1724)

A new-to-me Vivaldi opera!  Hooray!  

So here we have Anastasio, a Byzantine emperor, and Giustino, a peasant who became captain of the imperial guard and later an emperor in his own right (though not through murder, surprisingly--anyway, the opera doesn't get that far).  There's also the queen and a woman in love with Giustino and cross-dressing and romantic misunderstanding and an enemy king--all very typical opera seria stuff.

Musically, this is...well, it's not as though I have THAT clear a recollection of the specifics of the music in all the Vivaldi operas I've seen, but I had the subjective impression here that this may be the best.  It's just an absolute cavalcade of one musical delight after another.  It's staggering, really.  Great cast, as well; I was especially excited to see Raffaele Pe, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite countertenors, as Anastasio.

The production, however...hmm.  So it definitely looks like a very traditional thing, and in some ways it is.  But in some ways, it's not, and I think it mainly just makes a the plot harder to follow.  It's unclear to me how much of the confusion stems from the libretto itself and how much from how it's presented.  It is very strange to me how many of the insufferable traditionalists who moan about any opera being placed in a new setting are praising this to the stars for being, well, traditional.  Really?  So the baffling business where Anastasio is presented as an opera composer and several scenes are presented as being from his work and it's just generally kind of baffling and presents the emperor as an extremely modern, non-baroque sort of character?  Or the fact that it ends with a possible assassin or something pointing a gun at him?  I mean, DAMN, is your criticism of non-traditional productions REALLY so surface-level that nothing beyond the costuming even registers with you?  Sheesh.  And this is one instance where, if you DID criticize the production, I'd actually be on your side.  You've lost a powerful ally in me!

Well, never mind.  Still an incredible piece of work.  GOD, I love baroque opera.  Why isn't Vivaldi more commonly staged?  He's brilliant.