Vincenzo Bellini, La sonnambula (1831)

I needed something light after Parsifal, so I hit on this, Bellini's opera with the goofy-as-hell-sounding plot: Amina and Elvino are going to be married and they're rapturously in love, but SCANDAL! Amina is found sleeping in the bed of Count Rodolfo, who was staying at a local inn! Now Elvino won't marry her and they are sad. Oh, wait, turns out she was only there because she had been sleepwalking. Never mind.

A few surprises watching this: first, I'd kind of assumed it was going to be a zany, Donizetti-esque comedy, but it's really not that. It's a romance with a happy ending, but there's a fair bit of pathos and little overt humor. Second, it's actually not as goofy as all that. Sure, the sleepwalking business is a little silly, but it's pretty easy, I found, to get past that, and it doesn't make the whole thing seem excessively silly. I feel like people at the time were just learning about the concept of sleepwalking and being taken with the novelty. There's a scene here where the Count is explaining the concept to the townspeople and they're all "you're shitting us; that's not a real thing." You may know a rather famous nineteenth-century novel the denouement of which revolves around it. But anyway, the whole thing was okay by me, and the music is spectacular, so what more do you want?

Well, funny you should ask...this performance features Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez being effortlessly charming, so that's all right. But it's a meta-production. It's set in a rehearsal space as singers are preparing to perform this very opera (better not think too hard about that). I get the unavoidable impression that the producers thought that the opera was too silly, and that therefore they needed to add this layer of postmodern ironic distance, but it's just incoherent, and seriously, the opera is not that silly, dammit. The most I can say for it is that at a certain point I got into it sufficiently that I was mostly able to see through all this to the story underneath, but boywould I ever have preferred something more traditional. I mean, you could probably find a way to poke a little fun at the story (which would only be fair) without going to these extremes.

Richard Wagner, Parsifal (1882)

Don't look now, but it's my one hundredth opera, so I wanted to choose something that would seem appropriately momentous. So, I watched this. And I didn't feel as though I'd really grasped it, so I watched this. And as a result...I still don't feel like I've really grasped it, but man alive have I ever seen a shit-ton of Parsifal.

So there are these grail knights. The main one that we see is Gurnemanz. They're keeping the Holy Grail; they're supposed to also be keeping the holy spear that pierced Christ's side, but unforunately, it has been stolen by the evil sorcerer Klingsor, who also used it to stab the boss of the knights, Amfortas, who is now plagued by a wound that will never heal unless the spear can be recovered. There's also Kundry, a mysterious woman who sort of comes and goes and tries to help and is enigmatic and maybe bad. Parsifal "the pure fool made wise by compassion" (and if nothing else that is a beautiful turn of phrase) appears, having shot a swan, to everyone's consternation. He doesn't know who he is or anything about himself or anything, and Gurnemanz thinks he's hopeless. That's the first act. Then, we're in Klingsor's den, and we see that Kundry is under his power. Parsifal appears and these flower maidens try to seduce him but fail and then Kundry, at Klingsor's behest, does the same, but fails (and yup, the sex=sin theme is strong here), and then he defeats Klingsor and recovers the spear. That's the second act. Then we're back at the grail knight place on Good Friday. Parsifal reappears with the spear. Amfortas is going to die but then doesn't 'cause of spear power. Kundry dies for no reason. And that, my friends, is about that.

Let's start by comparing these two versions. It was pretty inevitable that, if choose just one, I was going to go with the new version, because, you know, Jonas Kaufmann. It's not that Siegfried Jerusalem is bad in the role, far from it, but I have to admit, the aesthetics of some of these older recordings (not that 1992 is particularly old!) just don't do it for me. Still, if I have to choose, I do think the new cast is stronger: I might prefer Waltraud Meier in the old version as Kundry, but the new one has not only Kaufmann but also René Pape as Gurnemanz and an unnervingly intense Evgeny Nikitin as Klingsor.

Productionwise, the situation is a little murkier. The recent production takes place in a non-specific but vaguely post-apocalyptic wasteland (with big pools of blood in Klingsor's lair!). It looks cool, and it's nothing inappropriate, I certainly wouldn't call it Eurotrash, but it is a bit jarring, given how often characters comment on the beauty of the nature all around them, for them to actually surrounded by nothing but bare, cracked earth. The older one is by Otto Schenk, and as with his Ring production, it's a bit kitschy/amateurish-looking, but possibly a better fit with the piece. Overall, though, I'd still go with the new one, given the choice.

Well, you know. Wagner wrote some sublime music for this, if less iconic or instantly attention-grabbing than some of his previous. And there are some great bits here and there, especially in the second act, which, after all, features an evil sorcerer. But you know...I feel like a bit of a philistine saying this, but screw you, I've watched a hundred operas (actually a hundred one; I saw Attila after my first viewing of this), I can say what I want: more often than not, good god this is boring. I was unable to watch it in its entirety in one sitting either time, because my eyes just kept glazing over (hey, I thought it would get better the second time! I'm not a nut!  You're the nut!).

On the wikipedia page, Mark Twain is cited as saying "in Parsifal there is a hermit named Gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then another of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to die." That's not really an accurate summation, but somehow it feels right, at least emotionally. Truthy, if you will. And it made me laugh, so let's go with it. The spirituality doesn't do much for me, and as much as I love the phrase "made wise by compassion," this plays out, I would say, pretty thinly. Also--I know this is a weirdly specific thing to mention, in the context--there's this one line that struck me as bizarrely mean and juvenile both watchings: Gurnemanz is questioning Parsifal about his identity and not getting anything, at which he concludes "a duller wit I've never met, except Kundry." Da hell, dude? She's right there! And it's not like the opera's done anything to make her seemespecially dumb, so...? I will say, though, that I do not detect anything that looks like anti-Semitism here (people suggest that Klingsor is meant to be a Jewish caricature, but I don't see that at all). As far as I'm concerned, Mime is the only questionable element in any of his music.

I dunno. Now I've seen eleven out of thirteen Wagner operas (Die Feen doesn't seem to be available except in an attenuated children's version; I could get a dvd of Rienzi, but I'm not sure I care enough), and my feelings are definitely mixed; his talent is impossible to deny, but OOF. For the non-obsessive, I might recommend just Rheingold, Walküre,Meistersinger, and probably Tristan.

But anyway, here's to a hundred more operas, assuming I don't abruptly get bored with the form for no particular reason.

Guiseppe Verdi, Attila (1846)

Right, so it's about Attila. Of course. Sometimes known as The Hun. Certainly a Hun. The story is that the Huns have been sorta ruining people's cities and stuff, and they have a female prisoner, Odabella, whose father they'd killed, and there's also Foresto, her lover, another survivor of this violence, and there's also Ezio, an ambassador of Rome. And long story short, some stuff happens, then there's some violence, the end.

Well, that summary could've gone better, obviously. But you must forgive me, because--sorry to say it--this is not a good opera, and that's largely because of the plot. I mean, the music's okay, it's Verdi, though not his all-time greatest, but I don't think I can adequately express just how choppy and non-productive the story is. It's like when you're watching a dog who just keeps turning in circles trying to find the optimal way to lie down. Why are you doing this? What is this accomplishing? Ezio wants to join Attila but oh no he's actually pro-Rome no he's not yes he is Foresto is angry at Odabella because he thinks she's betrayed him no he's not yes he is they're going to kill Attila no they're not yes they are there's a love triangle no there's really not oh look Attila's being haunted by spirits but only in one scene and FOR GOD'S SAKE SOMEONE JUST STAB SOMEONE ALREADY. But alas, they don't until literally the last minute.

It's not just because this is early Verdi; it post-dates Nabucco, which I thought was great, and comes just before Macbeth which likewise. A better libretto might have saved it, but as it is, I'm sorry to say that it's pretty definitively the worst Verdi opera I've seen. At least it LOOKS good in this production, as Mariinsky Theatre pieces seem to reliably do. The whole cast is game, but I don't know, man. Even the great ones stumble occasionally.

Giuseppe Verdi, Stiffelio (1850)

This is an interesting one: Verdi, as was often the case, ran afoul of the censors, even more than usual with this one. This may perhaps have been inevitable given the subject matter--it's about a minister and his unfaithful wife--but good lord, people. To contemporary eyes, the idea that there could even theoretically have been anything offensive about this is just baffling. It's a story about sin and redemption. Isn't that what your religion is all about? Crikey. But in any event, he was so irritated by all this idiocy that he ended up withdrawing it from circulation, replacing it with Aroldo,a substantially reworked version in a different milieu that apparently was considered less offensive. The original Stiffelio was thought to be lost until it was rediscovered in the Verdi estate's archives in the 1960s. So here it is! How do you like that?

Well, actually, not all that much. I'm glad it was recovered and all, and the censorship is super-idiotic, but I still think the plot is a bit thin. I mean, I basically summed it up above. Stiffelio's wife Lina is having an affair with some guy named Raffaele. When this finally comes out (after a needlessly convoluted process), he's angry and jealous, and Lina's father Count Stankar isn't so happy about it either. Stiffelio is going to nobly relinquish his wife to her lover, but it turns out he's actually a Bad Seducer, and she still loves her husband. Nonetheless, they get divorced, and Raffaele is killed off-stage. Stiffelio has to give a sermon with his ex-wife in the audience, and he preaches about the woman taken in adultery, indicating that he's forgiven her. The end. In Aroldo, (wikipedia tells me) the two get back together, making it one of Verdi's least-tragic operas, but I don't think that'll happen here. Well, it might. It really would depend on how you choose to stage it.

You know, I really like this in theory. It could be a really powerful story about love and betrayal and forgiveness. And yet, as noted above, in fact I was kind of underwhelmed. The music...I don't know; it just didn't strike me as among Verdi's best or most memorable, and the characters and their relationships never came to life, for me, to the extent that I actually cared much about them. This production, I thought, was actually really good. Plácido Domingo is really excellent in the title role, and everyone else is at least fine, although through no fault of his own, Peter Riberi as Raffaele kind of looks like Walton Goggins, which is pretty distracting, although it's an extremely half-baked role anyway, so maybe that's not the main problem. I don't know. Not much else to say, really. Certainly not among my favorite from Verdi.

Vincenzo Bellini, I puritani (1835)

Bellini is the third big Bel Canto name, along with Donizetti and Rossini. I'd never seen anything of his before, so I decided to start here with his last (and therefore best?) opera before his early death at the age of thirty-three.

When Americans think about Puritans, we mainly think about witch trials, Hester Prynne, and funny hats. Maybe if we expand that to include "Pilgrims," a few more things, but we don't usually learn about British history in school, so I don't think most of us are really clear about what they were doing before some of them came to the Americas. I'm certainly not, so a little bit of wikipedia-ing was necessary to understand the context here.

So it's the English Civil War and the Puritans are on the verge of victory against the Royalists. The heroine is Elvira. Her hand was promised to Riccardo, one of the Puritan higher-ups, but she's in love with this Arturo guy, so she's sad. But she's able to marry Arturo instead, thanks to the intercession of her uncle Giorgio. So she's happy! And so is he! But there's a mysterious woman there who turns out to be the widow of the recently-executed Charles I; Arturo learns who she is and agrees to help her escape so she won't share his fate. Elvira is extremely sad about this and therefore goes insane, as one does. Arturo is now a fugitive, and it transpires that there's a death sentence on his head for having helped the Queen escape. Giorgio prevails upon Riccardo's better nature to plead on his behalf, but they both agree that if he's actually fighting with the Royalists, they will fuck his shit up. He appears, and Elvira sees him and stops being insane, although you do have to wonder about the overall mental state of someone who can flip between sane and crazy so quickly and easily. Everyone calls for Arturo to be executed for having helped the Royalists, but then word comes that they've won and Oliver Cromwell is pardoning everyone, so HURRAH. I suspect that the idea that Cromwell was this super-swell guy would be subject to a certain amount of, hmm, disagreement. But really, I don't think there's any interest in ideology here; the milieu was just a convenient backdrop for Bellini to use. Anyway, that's your opera.

I must say, I found the question of what Arturo's deal is very confusing. Is he a genuine Royalist sympathizer, or does he just save the Queen out of general compassion? He refers to her as "My Queen" when he learns her identity, suggesting the former, but later he justifies himself by saying that if he hadn't helped her, she'd've had a terrible death, suggesting more the latter. Also, everyone wants him to be executed, but then the pardon comes and now everyone's happy hurrah? What exactly is their attitude going to be towards him going forward? It's all very perplexing.

Well, questionable plot aside, I liked this. I mean, liked. Not loved; it didn't blow me away as much as I had hoped. Elvira's much-feted mad scene is good, but I couldn't help thinking that there really wasn't enough impetus for her to have gone mad. The title character in Lucia di Lammermoorhad a much better excuse. This production is fine, although it sort of bends a little under the weight of its extremely traditional production. Everybody talks about Anna Netrebko as Elvira of course, and she's good, there's no doubt, although actually, my favorite performance was John Relyea as the compassionate Giorgio. My favorite part of the opera was the patriotic duet between him and Franco Vassallo (a duet between a bass and a baritone--interesting) at the end of Act II.

I mean, really, it was fine. I must see more of Bellini to get a better idea of what he's about.

Fromental Halévy, La Juive (1835)

So here's this. In some unspecified city, there are constant threats, tamped down to a greater or lesser degree, of anti-Jewish violence. There's a Jewish goldsmith, Éléazar, living with his daughter, Rachel, la Juive herself. In the past, his sons were burned as heretics by the local cardinal, Brogni. Rachel is being courted by "Samuel," a young Jew who happens to actually be Prince Léopold in disguise. Even beyond the fact that he's married, their differing religious affiliations would subject them to execution if known, but she doesn't know any of this. She goes to try to get a job as a maid for the Princess, sees Léopold and realizes his duplicity, and is PISSED OFF. She publicly accuses him of seducing her, and the two of them, along with Éléazar (who is just collateral damage, I guess) are arrested. She later withdraws her allegations to spare Léopold (so why are the two of THEM still in trouble? Just generalized anti-Semitism, pretty clearly). Éléazar, likewise PISSED OFF, tells Brogni that his infant daughter from before he was a priest? The one he thought was dead? Well, some Jew saved him, but he'll never tell. Alas for Brogni, he is unaware that he is a character in an opera, or he'd immediately leap to the right conclusion. But he's not, so he's tormented. It dawns on Éléazar that his intransigence is likewise condemning Rachel, so he decides to tell the truth, but his resolution is hardened when he hears a mob going by baying for Jewish blood. So...what you'd think would happen pretty much happens. Yikes.

So yeah, look, you would be forgiven for thinking that an opera from 1835 entitled "the Jewess" might be pretty unsavory, even if you knew the composer himself was Jewish, but let's be clear: no, La Juive is not anti-Semitic, and it's not even a tiny bit ambiguous. True, Éléazar does bear animosity for Christians, which leads to the final tragedy, but it is made extremely clear that this is because of their overwhelming persecution of him and his people. Frankly, it's kind of amazing to me that such a full-throated condemnation of Christian bigotry could be a hit at the time. You know, Wagner did indeed say some pretty unforgivably anti-Semitic stuff, but people are nothing if not complicated, and the fact that he championed Halévy in general and this opera in particular is certainly a point in his favor.

But don't take my word for it! Here is the actual factual first comment that appeared on the youtube video: "'Jews' HATE Christians! They've been killing them by the millions, especially since 1773! What a pointless plot!" Kid tested, neo-Nazi disapproved. What more do you need to know? Why is "Jews" in quotes you wonder? Well, because of a shaky understanding of English punctuation standards, obviously, but this undermining of the writer's own point amuses me nonetheless. And why 1773? Extremely difficult to say. A google search for "what do anti-Semites think happened in 1773?" turns up nothing. Probably best not to think too hard about it.

Okay, so that's all well and good, but how is the actual opera, regardless of cultural issues? Well, it's pretty damned great. I can see why it was a hit. The music (including the exquisite aria "Rachel, quand du Seigneur") is fantastic, and--even though I knew where it was heading--the climax is still shattering. I kind of wanted to cry.

However. However however however...I think probably the greatest single bit of praise I can give this is that it's still mostly able to work in spite of the production. I put off watching this for a long time just because I was a bit skeptical about it, and it turns out I was right to be. The cast is game--particularly Corinne Winters as Rachel, Roy Cornelius Smith as Éléazar, and Riccardo Zanellato as Brogni, but this production is baaaaaad. Really really fucking bad. The producer, Peter Konwitschny, is not a good producer (and he also has a history of abusing musicians, so COOL). I went through my list of operas seen, and the results are clear: this is the worst production I've seen, and it's not particularly close.

I don't mind that it's in modern dress. That's not an issue. But the first thing you'll notice is that the central...metaphor?...of the production is that Christians' hands are painted blue and Jews' yellow. Okay. This is strange and contributes nothing to the story and results in bits where characters have to hide their hands from one another because they're not meant to know others' religions. But I guess I could live with that, if it were all. But it's not: the whole thing is very abstract in an unappealing way, feeling almost theatre-of-alienation-esque. There are parts where characters sing while wandering through the audience, for no reason I could discern.

And then there's Act III. OH BOY is there ever Act III. So in this act, Rachel is wearing a long trenchcoat, and when she sees that her supposed boyfriend was actually the Prince, in her rage she opens it up, and she's wearing a suicide vest. Is she metaphorically blowing up the action of the opera? Is this meant to be some kind of half-baked commentary on Israel? It's juvenile and awful, whatever it is. Oh and you thought that was all? No. Because in the climax to the act, where Rachel, Éléazar, and Leopold are being condemned, suddenly this assembly line appears for no reason and the cardinal and Éléazar and the whole chorus--some of whom are now wearing green, red, and purple gloves for no stated reason--are building bombs. I can only assume this is supposed to be some sort of general commentary on religious intolerance? But there's just one problem with it: it fucking sucks. Jeez. This is the worst part; it gets slightly more normal after. But I also love this: in Act V, just before the fatal climax, a voice from off-stage shouts--in English--"kill the dirty fucking Jews!" So...yeah, earlier we were doing this abstruse, would-be-artsy bullshit, but now we're so unsubtle that we have to underline the not-notably-subtext? Gawd. What a mess.

So anyway! Great opera! I can only imagine how great it could be if done by someone who cared about the plot and characters!

Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1925)

So Georg Büchner's original play only existed in fragmentary form on his death in 1837, and it wasn't published until years later. Due to Büchner's bad handwriting, the editors chose "Wozzeck" as their best guess for the character's name, not knowing that it was loosely based on the life of an actual guy, Woyzeck. So Woyzeck is now recognized as the play's name, but this opera, written before that realization, remains Wozzeck. And that is that story.

As I believe I said when writing about Lulu, I really like Werner Herzog's film of Woyzeck. I believe I've seen it three times. So I had a pretty clear idea of what to expect from this, plotwise. And, indeed: the title character, whatever his name is, is a soldier being pushed around by superior officers and doctors, whose prostitute common-law wife Marie with whom he has a son is cheating on him, and who is clearly mentally ill and subject to apocalyptic visions. There's a scene in the original although not here in which he and Marie go to a carnival and see a trained monkey, and...yup. Finally, he snaps and stabs her to death and then drowns in a lake. The end.

I had a kind of unusual reaction to this. Because here's the thing: I liked it, basically. And yet, I still am, at best, indifferent to Berg's music. I liked it for the story, and that's just not something that happens: it's one thing to like an opera for the music while thinking the libretto's a bit naff, but the opposite? Not really a thing. Except, apparently, when it is. I mean, no arguments with the singing itself, so that helps.

I think this is the character that Klaus Kinski (in the Herzog version) was born to play. Sure, Aguirre's more iconic, but his kind of tortured countenance seems perfect for a character trapped in a hell that he can't even begin to fathom. I feel like you definitely need an awkward actor who looks like he's not comfortable in his own skin. Franz Grundheber here is certainly more, uh, normal-looking than Kinski, but I think he does a good job. He looks like he never quite knows what to do with his arms, which is appropriate. No one else really has a super-important role, but Hildegard Behrens--last seem as Brünnhilde--is of course fine as Marie.

So yeah. I liked this, basically, but I still don't know what makes Berg so great, and since he doesn't have any more operas, I'm not sure how I'd find out. Maybe I could get the idea by watching some Schoenberg? I don't know. We'll see.