Domenico Cimarosa, Il matrimonio segreto (1792)

From an opera buffa throwback to the real thing. This was apparently a big hit back in the day, and it's certainly the only Cimarosa opera you're likely to see these days. Well, maybe "likely" is pushing it. Whatevz.

The idea is that Carolina, daughter of A Rich Guy, has secretly married a household secretary, Paolino, and they don't dare tell him. But the good news is that now Carolina's older sister, Elisetta, is going to be married to a count, and they hope that that's going to make their marriage more acceptable to him. But then, A TWIST!: it turns out that this putative engagement has Complications! And also, Rich Guy's widowed sister Fidalma is secretly in love with Paolino, not knowing that he's already married! It would be useless to say more than this.

The only negative thing I will say is that the ending is entirely too pat for its own good and, let's face it, kind of insulting to Elisetta. And is the Count supposed to be undergoing, like, character development? Because it kind of seems like he is, and yet it just never goes anywhere or is convincing or amounts to anything, so I don't know.

WHATEVER, dude. In spite of whatever quibbles one might have, I've got to say, this kinda fucking owns. Is it Mozart? Not exactly, but you can definitely see the resemblance, and it's bright and spritely and fun. It may not quite have the depth or range of Figaro or Giovanni or even Cosi, but if you like those, you're pretty much definitely going to like this.

Here is a very good, very traditional production from 1986, filled with singers I'd never heard of who do a great job. Amazing how much talent there is out there.

Sergei Prokofiev, Betrothal in a Monastery (1946)

This is interesting, because it's clearly an intentional effort on Prokofiev's part to write in the classic opera buffa mode, like Mozart's Da Ponte collabs. The fact that it takes place in Seville (although it still feels distinctly Russian, at least in this production) seems to be a none-too-subtle nod in this direction.

As such, the plot is a very standard comic-opera thing: Louisa's father Don Jerome wants her to marry a goofy but rich fish merchant, but she's in love with the penniless but noble Don Antonio. Meanwhile her brother, Don Ferdinand, is in love with Clara, who is being kept as a virtual prisoner by her family. Can disguises and false identities save the day? Will everyone end up with the proper partner? And will there be drunken monks to remind you that in spite of its pedigree, this is still a Russian opera? That...you must find out for yourself!

Prokofiev's music is really fun and sometimes mesmerizing. The subject matter may tempt you to compare it to Mozart, which won't do it any favors, but it's still really good. The actual presentation of the material though...well, it's also not exactly Figaro level, which is a bit more a problem. Even in operatic terms, the characters are REALLY not well-delineated, and neither of the romances is convincing. Also, Clara? The woman allegedly being kept as a virtual prisoner? We never SEE her as a prisoner or learn anything about her family, so it's a bit of a fizzle. Don't get me wrong; I still enjoyed it overall. But you can see why it's not as famous as some of its inspirations.

It's a 1998 Mariinsky Theatre production, and as with Sadko, it was impressive. A lot of very extravagant costumes and pageantry that firmly situate it as a Russian thing in spite of the putative setting. The cast was also very good. The highlight for me was Nikolai Gassiev as Don Jerome, making the most of a somewhat limited comic role. Everyone was fine, though, including--a bit of a surprise--a young, pre-international-fame Anna Netrebko as Louisa. I also want to give a shout-out to Vladimir Vaneev as the head monk--not that it's a particularly meaty role, but I was really impressed with him as the father-in-law from Hell in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,so I was just glad to see him again.  There was really only one problem here, which wasn't with the production: on that youtube version, after about forty minutes or so, the subtitles become out-of-sync with the audio, appearing too early.  You can still follow it, but it's more annoying than you might think.  It's particularly bad in the last scene; it's no biggie because you certainly know what's happening, but matching specific lines to specific people becomes kind of impossible.  OH WELL.

Anyway, pretty okay. I'll probably watch more Prokofiev.

Carlisle Floyd, Susannah (1955)

Speaking of American operas...well, here's one. One of the most famous, I'd say. It's loosely based on an apocryphal Bible story, transplanted to small-town Appalachia, but that's very loosely. The story goes and turns out entirely differently.

Susannah is the subject of jealousy by the town's wives and lust by the husbands, but she stays kind of apart from them, living with her brother Sam. They'll grab onto any opportunity to ostracize and shame her, until she's raped by the new preacher, Reverend Blitch (whose self-serving remorse afterwards is somewhat stomach-turning); Sam kills the preacher, but a mob comes for her, and although she chases them off with a shotgun, she's obviously completely cut herself off from the community--which, given this community in particular, does not seem like such a bad thing. And that is that, though her sharp rejection of her admirer Little Bat(?) seems needlessly cruel.

Short but potent, and the extremely American folk- and gospel-inflected music is great. I am seriously obsessed with Susannah's aria "The trees on the mountains are cold and bare," which could easily be performed as a regular folk song. The story did seem perhaps a little abbreviated to me. I wondered, in particular: are we supposed to sympathize with Blitch? I really didn't (the main thing that seems to upset him about what he'd done is that Susannah was a virgin--ugh), but I can't help feeling that more drama could be wrung from this than was. Floyd is still around in his nineties, and he's written a dozen operas, but this seems to be the only one anyone thinks about.

I watched this production from Undercroft Opera, which is (was? it's not clear to me whether they still exist) an amateur company meant to give opportunities to people who wouldn't otherwise have them. It's pretty okay. The singers are, basically, amateurs, but perfectly reasonable amateurs. The tenor who plays Sam and the baritone who plays Blitch (the recording does not include credits that would let me identify them by name) are notably better than most, but the real obvious stand-out is Susannah herself. Someone identifies her in the comments section, so I know that the singer's name is Lara Lynn McGill, and she is on a completely different level from the rest of the cast. I'm not saying she'd stand out on the Met stage, but she sounds like a professional in a way that no one else here does. And indeed,she seems to be making a reasonable living from music, as well she should be.

More than anything, though, this sorta whets my appetite to see a REAL performance. This makes you appreciate the way big opera houses are able to cast great singers even in tiny roles.

John Adams, Doctor Atomic (2005)

BOY it's hard to know what to make of this one. I don't think I've ever seen an opera of which it was so hard to know what to make. It takes place in Los Alamos in the days leading up to the Trinity atomic bomb test, mainly centering around J Robert Oppenheimer. The libretto consists mainly, or possibly entirely, of found texts: communiques among scientists, declassified documents, and bits of poetry.

So the score is great, tense and lush. Adams is a very good composer, and if I ever meet him I will shake his hand and tell him so. And yet, I have a lot of the same issues with this that I did with Nixon in China,accentuated. I'd say this first: I'm just not convinced that you can put relentlessly banal text to music and have it really work. It just sounds odd, and this is sort of complicated by me wondering: does opera always sound like this if you know the language? Well, I didn't have the problem with Dido and Aeneas, so maybe it's just when it's this casual, contemporary(ish) stuff. I understand that it's meant to create a cumulative effect, but I'm not sure it does. In addition to the "normal" dialogue, there's a lot of fairly opaque poetry, which honestly doesn't really work any better, albeit in different ways. Some of it comes from Oppenheimer's wife Kitty, and some from a Native American woman who is there for unclear reasons (don't get me wrong; it make sense to include the perspective of someone with long roots in the area, but hmmm). In any case, the singing is not, to my mind, particularly memorable. Nixon in China at least had "The people are the heroes now" and "I speak according to the book;" the only thing here that can approach them is the apocalyptic choral number "At the sight of this"--definitely worth hearing, but enough to carry the whole thing? I don't know.

It seems like it would be difficult to write a text about the development of the atomic bomb without presenting some sort of opinion on the matter, but this sure does the best it's able. Certain doubts are raised by the young physicist Robert Wilson, but mostly the text is just a blank. I think the worst of it is that Oppenheimer himself is just such a moral void. If I complained about the portrayal of Nixon, this is a lot worse. A cursory look at his wikipedia page suggests that the man did in fact feel conflicted about his work, but you sure wouldn't know that from this. He just doesn't seem to have an opinion about the ethical issues here. The opera tries to humanize him through his relationship with Kitty, but in the absence of anything else, that doesn't really contribute much. So he loves his wife. Hurrah. What does he think about this other...stuff? He has a big climactic aria at the end of Act I, "Batter my heart three person'd God," a musical setting of a John Donne sonnet (apparently the real Oppenheimer turned to poetry to deal with the stress). You'd think this would be a big moment to shed light on the character, but it's just...nothing. Or so I felt. God knows Gerald Finley (who created the role) does the best he can in it, but I'm not sure anyone could have done that much.

What I mainly felt watching this was dispirited, not because of the opera itself so much as because it made me think about what it all means: whether Oppenheimer or Edward Teller or anyone else involved was actually a genius per se, there was certainly a collectivegenius here, in the bomb's creation. We, humans, are capable of unbelievable achievements: we're penetrating the very fundamental essence of the universe! That's amazing! And yet...we're only doing it to help us slaughter one another more efficiently. Counterpoint: opera. Sure, but I think these two things are in different categories. But boy, if only people, whenever they're about to go do a shitty thing to other people, would just think, hey, you know, let's just watch some Verdi instead, we'd all be SO much better off. Of course, if that attitude were prevalent, Verdi wouldn't have been inspired to write a lot or all of what he did. So...let's not push this hypothetical too hard. But damn. I feel like my hippie-ish tendencies are becoming more pronounced lately. This government'll do that to you.

Anyway. I realize that this doesn't make it sound as though I liked Doctor Atomic very much, and maybe I didn't. It did get a lot of rapturous reviews, however, so I am reserving final judgment and accepting that it is entirely possible that I am missing something.

Georges Bizet, Les pêcheurs de perles (1863)

Bizet may be the sixth-most-performed opera composer, but that's almost exclusively on the basis of Carmen. Per that list, that's what eighty-six percent of the Bizet performances in 2017-18 were. But probably eighty-six percent of the others were this, with his other seven making up the balance. Anyway, the Met did a production, their first in a century, in 2016.

It's an Orientalist sort of thing taking place in Sri Lanka, Ceylon at the time. There are two men, Nadir and Zurga, the latter now the village chief, friends, who were previously in love with the same woman, Leïla, but swore her off for the sake of their friendship, and where is she now? Well, she's not there, but whoops! She's actually the priestess who's just shown up to protect the village, and Nadir pretty much instantly forsakes this vow to be with her (and she hers--she's not supposed to be having romances), to Zurga's anger and jealousy. What happens next...I won't say here. Although I'm pretty sure it'll come up later on in this review.

Apparently, nobody at the time felt satisfied with the libretto. One of its writers, Eugène Cormon, is quoted on the wikipedia page as saying that if they'd known how good Bizet was, they would've tried harder. I'm not sure that's the sort of thing you'd want to admit as a libretticist, but there you are. I do see their point: the friendship between Nadir and Zurga really needs to be A LOT more developed for the whole thing to work, and in general, the characters aren't really much of anything. Furthermore, the denouement--in which Zurga, having condemned Nadir and Leïla to death, saves them because he realizes that she had saved him when he was younger--would be a lot more dramatically effective if he saved them because of a natural change of heart, rather than this kind of quid pro quo. I mean, and the coincidence is pretty dubious in any case.

Just the same, I liked this. Is it as good as Carmen? Well...no, and there's nothing as instantly iconic as the Habanera and Toreador songs (though Nadir and Zurga's "Au fond du temple saint" duet is justifiably oft-performed), but Bizet was a very good composer and this was a very good score. Furthermore, even if the story doesn't work quite as well as it could have, it still cooks pretty well, particularly in the third act, and particularly particularly in the long confrontation duet between Zurga and Leïla.

Our pechêurs are Matthew Polenzani (HE'S EVERYWHERE!) as Nadir and Mariusz Kwiecien as Zurga, previously seen together in Don Pasquale (well, so we are told, although no actual pearl fishing occurs). They're good; if I like Kwiecien better, it's very likely because he has the only at all dynamic role in the opera. Diana Damrau is Leïla. Now...I've had issues with Damrau in the past. In both Rigolettoand Traviata, I just could not deal with what I perceived as her acting. In situations where she was supposed to be expressing the sublimity of her love, she always looked like she was just simpering to me. Now, I think that might have been a little unfair; the effect she creates on me is what it is, but I may be reacting more to something about her physiognomy than the performance itself per se. Anyway, I liked her better here. She can, at any rate, project defiance well.

This production is a modern-day kind of thing, and it's very well-done. It takes place on a waterfront shantytown, and the people are wearing a mixture of traditional and contemporary clothing that really seems authentic. I've never been to Sri Lanka, but it certainly comports with my experience in Indonesia. There's one scene that takes place in Zurga's office, and there's a campaign poster with his face and text in Tamil script, which I really wanted to know the meaning of. Regardless, it's a great touch, and presumably also a great souvenir for Kwiecien after the run's over. There are also really good water effects here; I know--because there was a little featurette--how they did the opening thing of pearl divers diving deep under, but it's totally seamless looking; you cannot see the wires. How they managed the water effects that appear throughout, though, is less clear to me, and damn, there's a REALLY impressive tidal wave effect that ends Act II. OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE.

So, yeah. It has problems but I was basically satisfied and now this review is over.

Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868)

Any five-hour opera is gonna be a bit of a hard-sell, but making your comedy that long? That takes...well, it takes Richard Wagner, obviously. I really didn't know what to expect from this going in. Wagner has never struck me as a particularly jocose guy, so, I mean, is this going to work? At all?

It's all about sixteenth-century Meistersingers, who had a guild and did events and things. There's a knight named Walther von Stolzing. He's recently met Eve, the daughter of one of these guys, and they fell in love at first sight. But! There's a problem! Which is that her hand in marriage is going to be the prize in a song contest the next day! It's slightly less patriarchal than it sounds, since she's allowed to refuse anyone she doesn't want, but she can't marry outside the guild. So, six of one half dozen of the other. Also, most of them are already married, so they're excluded from the contest. I'm not sure how well-thought-out this idea was. But anyway, Walther, who is a talented musician but untrained, wants to join the guild quick so that he can compete and win Eve. But it's not so easy to get everyone's approval, and also there's an unlikeable Meistersinger, Beckmesser, who wants to woo Eve, though given that she has agency here, this clearly isn't much of a threat. Anyway, Walther wins everyone over in the end and there is general rejoicing, and this synopsis doesn't even mention who's really the main character, Hans Sachs, a real guy,a cobbler and the wisest Meistersinger, who helps to make sure everything works out for everyone. I'm sure I'm the five billionth person to note this, but this is kind of a comic inversion of Tannhäuser: in that, the hero has different sensibilities than the Meistersingers' and therefore is destroyed, but here, the outsider wins out. More evidence for the idea that Wagner himself was divided over this issue.

Well, anyway, no need to worry: he really did have it in him, and this is pretty great. Hard to imagine a five-hour opera feeling fleeter. Very appealing characters, great music, and the whole thing is just really lovable, which is something I never thought I'd say about anything by Wagner. I think what most people would consider the centerpiece is the absolutely great last scene of Act II, in which Beckmesser's efforts to serenade Eve outside her window at night are thwarted by Hans loudly singing while also loudly hammering the soles onto shoes he's making. It doesn't sound that funny when I described it, but I authentically el oh elled several times. Great stuff.

I chose this performance because I wanted to see James Morris as Hans, and I think I made an excellent choice. He gives the character the perfect mix of avuncular affability and wisdom, and he's always a great singer. I listened to an interview with him on the Met podcast, and he said it's his favorite character to play. You can see why. Ben Heppner (last and first seen by me in Fidelio) is very solid as Walther, and as for Karita Mattila as Eve, my initial kneejerk reaction--she's too old to be playing this character!--was quickly obviated by the force of her performance. Thomas Allen is effective as the hapless Beckmesser (I've heard people suggest that he's meant to be an anti-Semitic caricature, but boy do I not see that. It's not at all like Mime in Siegfried, and to make that come across, I feel like you'd have to make a conscious effort). We also have later Met in HD mainstays Matthew Polenzani and René Pape in small roles as Hans' apprentice, David; and Eve's father, Pogner, respectively (although can I just take the opportunity to say that maybe the one thing I didn't like about the opera was David's complaints about Hans inflicting physical violence on him when he screws up. It's meant to be comical, but to me it didn't fit the character and took away a bit from the story. Not a big bit, but a bit). It is a shame that Wagner didn't do more comedy; it seems to have fit him, and it's not so ponderous as some of his other operas.

Anyway, I didn't say this in the last paragraph because it would've kinda sucked the air out of the room, but another thing Morris says in the aforementioned podcast is that he first performed the opera in San Francisco, so he had to fly out from New Jersey. SOP for singers under new contracts was to leave the day before and start rehearsing the next day, but he was new to the role, so he asked if he could come a few weeks early to have more time to prepare. So everyone agreed and he did and...is it at this point super-obvious what the punchline of this seemingly pointless anecdote is? Well, if not: had he gone when he was supposed to have gone, he and his wife and children would have flown on United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11. So his performance here (in December 2001) is even more a blessing.

Giacomo Puccini, La Rondine (1917)

Here is a Puccini opera that you never hear about. That's my impression, at any rate, and one piece of evidence is that this 2008 production was the first time it was done at the Met since 1936. That's nuts. This isn't some sort of dubious bit of juvenilia; this is mature Puccini. It comes immediately after La fanciulla del West and before Il trittico,which means that in addition to whatever else, it's also Puccini's last completed multi-act opera. That's...something, isn't it? So let's have a look.

Puccini was commissioned to compose an operetta. He wasn't a big fan of the form, but after ascertaining that he didn't need to include spoken dialogue and could basically just write a regular opera, he agreed. But then the War broke out and things were difficult, such that it took a while to produce and wasn't a big success. So there you go.

The story is that there's a high-class courtesan, Magda, who's kept by a rich, older man. Ruggero is a young man from the sticks in Paris for the first time for...reasons. It's not entirely clear. But he meets Magda and when she goes out for a clandestine night on the town, they meet again and fall in love. They go away...somewhere, for some reason, to be together, but when he wants to marry her, she feels constrained by her past and leaves him to go back to her old life, much to his chagrin. Finis.

Okay, so I absolutely loved the first two acts here, in Magda's salon and then in a nightclub. They were sparkling and sophisticated and romantic and fun in every way. Of course, you can't object to Puccini's music either, and this nineteen-twenties production seems to perfectly complement the action. But the third act was...a bit of a mess.  It's a rather violent tonal shift from the first two, and  I have so many questions: why did they feel the need to run off? Where are they, exactly? Why is there a butler? How is it that the "poet" from the first two acts (who at first seemed comic and fun, but is revealed as kind of a douchebag) and his lover, Magda's former maid, show up? What are they there for? And why doesn't Magda evince any surprise to see them? These are questions, and they made the whole thing a bit disorienting. But they're not my main annoyance.

No, the fact is, I just can't deal with this "oh, she can never escape her past" thing. The conceit just strikes me as incredibly sexist, obviously written by a man; maybe she would feel so constrained because of ideals driven into her by the ever-present patriarchy, but I don't think that's the point, and I think that even if we're not supposed to agree with her decision, we're supposed to sort of sympathize with it, and I just can't: maybe I'm guilty of refusing to take the text on its own terms, but given that everything's fine, his family would be happy to see her, and that he's made it totally clear that knowing about her past is not going to bother him, it just annoyed me. I wanted to be swept away by his heartbreak and the general melancholy, but I just kept...not being able to. Unfortunately.

God knows it's still Puccini, and clearly worth seeing, but somehow it was not the unalloyed classic I was hoping for.