Car[men]talk

 So: I watched Carmen for the seven hundredth time last night. Okay okay, let's not go nuts; realistically, I believe it was the fourth time I'd seen it start to finish. I realize that this is not exactly an outré opinion, but I think this is my single favorite opera. There's just something about it that really feels like it embodies the form, at least as far as tragedy goes. More than any other opera I've seen, maybe, the protagonists just feel like they're locked by virtue of their unchangeable natures into this ineluctably grim drama. Great music is aided by a great libretto in making something...great. Okay.

Most recently I saw this version:

It's probably my favorite thusfar.  It was the first time I'd seen the original Opéra-Comique version with spoken dialogue, so I thought it might play significantly differently, but nah. There's actually very little chatting; even as a general non-fan of talking in operas, both versions are similar enough that it makes essentially no difference. I'm just going to go through it and talk about the characters a little, if you don't mind or even if you do.

Carmen (Anna Caterina Antonacci)

When you think about operatic heroines, and you think about the ideal casting from a physical perspective, you'd probably mostly tend to think, well, they should be as attractive as possible. But that's not really the case for Carmen. It's not good enough, and it might even be counterproductive: the whole thing about her (or at least one thing about her) is rejecting conventional societal ideas, and that includes standards of beauty. What she really needs to be is magnetic; to have this dangerously alien, seductive feel, along with the kind of fatal charm that would lead a dopey schmuck like José to murder, and Antonacci has that down, I can tell you.

What's interesting is that, as operas go, even the big parts here aren't that big, comparatively speaking. I think it's because the music is really spread out among even minor characters. But of course Carmen remains the biggest, and a great role. I think we sometimes take "L'amour est un oiseau rebel" for granted, just because it's so familiar, but goddamn is that an absolutely perfect aria, even if "perfect" is impossible to define in the situation and probably meaningless. It's just so sinuous, the music perfectly complementing the lyrics. And really, after hearing it, dumb ol' José has no one to blame but himself. Can't say she didn't warn him.

Don José (Jonas Kaufmann)

José is really the viewpoint character of the opera. Carmen herself is too closed-off and in many ways unknowable to serve that function. Still, I would like to hear a female perspective. 'Cause I'm not gonna lie: I was in a situation once where I felt like Don José, or would have had I been into opera at the time, though I should emphasize that this never led to murder or violence of any kind (and seriously, if he'd just given himself a day or so to cool off, he probably would've realized that not worrying about this woman was actually a huge relief, and everything would've been fine). And yet, that might be a situation that half of the population cannot identify with. I don't know!

But to me, anyway, he's very effective as a protagonist. You can feel his anguish, for sure. But the weird thing is, his actual dang music is way less interesting than any other significant character in the opera. Sure, you have "La fleur que tu m'avais jetée" (the "Flower Song"), and sure the final scene is, like, climactic, but what else? Not that much else, I feel! I get that a tenor would see this role as desirable, in that it's the male lead of one of the biggest operas ever, but is it really that terrific? It feels like putting a star of Jonas Kaufmann's caliber in the part is sort of like machine-gunning a mosquito.

Escamillo (Ildebrando D'Arcangelo)

Another role I kind of wonder about. Sure, swaggering about is fun, and you do have your big hit aria, but you really don't have much else. His knife-fight duet with José is all right, and then there's a short love duet with Carmen and that's it. And the character, of course, is incredibly shallow; there's not a lot you can really do to deepen him.

Still, D'Arcangelo does a great job with him; the best I've seen. I know him for playing Dulcamara in several productions of L'Elisir, but he neatly slots into this very different role. I feel like a lot of the time the baritone playing him just characterizes him as a cocky douchebag; D'Arcangelo doesn't play it against the grain or anything, but he makes him legit charming and suave in a way where you can see how Carmen would be into him. But ultimately, when it comes to Escamillo, all you really need is a confident motherfucker who can belt out "Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre," and we dang well get that here.

Micaëla (Norah Amsellem)

A lot of people don't like Micaëla, seeing her as the conventional "good girl" in contrast to the more colorful Carmen, which I guess she is, but guess what? I like her anyway! I wish she didn't just disappear, but aside from that!

(And, side note, but the one slightly off thing in the libretto is the way José goes off with her at the end of the third act to see his dying mother and then just reappears in the fourth, never mentioning it and seemingly having been wholly unaffected by it. Also, imagine the two of them having to be in close proximity for however many days it took to get there. Did they make small talk? Aaaaawkwaaaard!)

I just feel bad for her, being abandoned by her fiancé for a woman for whose murder he'd later be hanged. That's rough. And yet, I feel like she's gonna get through it. Her entire role but especially her great aria "Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante" make me think that she's really quite mentally strong. I'm rooting for her, and Norah Amsellem is quite good. For this role, you'd want a conventionally attractive woman to contrast with Carmen, and dammit, I think there are sexist elements in this article. So it goes.

Frasquita and Mercédès (Elena Xanthoudakis and Viktoria Vizin)

How 'bout these two, eh? They're Carmen's friends, whose names you probably wouldn't know without looking them up. But they actually get a lot to do, notably sing in the operetta-ish quintet "Nous avons en tête une affaire;" "Melons! Coupons!" (the "Card Trio"), in which they're goofing around using the cards to make up fantasy futures (Mercédès is the one who wants to be a rich widow) until Carmen comes in and predicts only the ineluctability of her own death (possibly my favorite number in the opera); and the further trio "Quant au douanier c'est notre affaire," where they try to shake off her black thoughts by singing about how they're going to flirt their way past the customs officers. I think you could argue that considered as one character, they're as important musically as Escamillo or Micaëla.

The point is, I like them, and it seems like it would be a good sneaky opportunity for a low-profile singer to get a good bit of exposure, since the roles are considered small but you're still doing quite a bit. And the singers I've seen in the roles all really seem to get that and dig into them with relish, Xanthoudakis and Vizin being no exceptions.

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Of course, there's still the question of why Carmen lets herself be killed. You can--and a lot of people do!--say that it's just her defiant attitude and refusal to give in, which I suppose is a conventionally feminist reading but one that really fails to consider her morbid obsession with the inevitability of her own death. I don't know if there's a good answer or if there needs to be. But one thing's for sure: we ought to be able to judge for ourselves! And on that note, check this out:

So it's "Si tu m'aimes, Carmen," the duet between her and Escamillo. And she declares her deep love for him. But what exactly does she say? Well, in this production, per the subtitle, it's "I've never loved anyone as much as you." But that sort of took me aback, because I distinctly remember that the last Met in HD version I saw had it "I'll love you 'til the day I die." In most cases this wouldn't be super-important, but dammit, there's a mystery here, and you're not helping by obscuring the text and changing what it says! Whichever one of you is wrong here really botched it.

So naturally, I went to the libretto, and, whoops! the direct English translation is actually "may I die if I've ever loved anyone as much as you." For fuck's sake, people! You both managed to screw up, only in slightly different ways! What an idiotic display! Do better.

There's one more thing I want to say, that isn't really related to the opera itself and which nobody really has any reason to care about. But! Here it is anyway! There are three Live in HD performances of Carmen available, from 2010, 2014, and 2018. They're all the same production (a very sturdy one, set in Fascist Spain), so they're all basically the same, but there are a few differences! The most prominent one being this: in both the 2010 and 2018 performances, in the final act José stabs Carmen and then supports her as she slumps to the ground so that she dies in his arms. Okay, that works. But in the 2014 one (with Anita Rachvelishvili), he stabs her and then stands back, while she sways there for a few moments and then just pitches over on her face. I suppose it's more athletically impressive than the other way, but it seems to lend a possibly-undesirable air of bathos to the proceedings. Weird choice.

Richard Strauss, Feuersnot (1901)

Regardless of anything else about this opera, it has to be said: it has "snot" in the title.  This is a grave flaw.  I suppose Deutschephones would argue that that's not the piece's fault, and indeed that it's only my provincial narrow-mindedness that's causing me to make a big deal about it, but I disagree.  Change it at once.

It takes place at a solstice festival.  There's this sorceror called Kunrad who comes to town and causes a commotion.  He inappropriately kisses Diemut, the mayor's daughter, so she plays a trick on him where he's stuck in the air in a basket.  So he summons, like, a big ol' curse, and the festival fires are all out, and the only way to bring them back is through, um, a virgin.  So all the townspeople sing a chorus where they insist that Diemut should go and take one for the team, to which she finally accedes.  This is presented as a triumphant moment, to be clear.  And that is that.

So yeah!  That ending!  It's kind of shockingly unacceptable on any level, innit?  Well, okay, not "any level"--I'm fully aware that an apologist would point out that contemporary sexual ethics are very much not the point of the piece; the characters are just playing a part in ancient fertility rituals.  But dude.  Seriously.  Come on.  How can you possibly expect that to play to a modern-day audience or--I would have hoped--even one in 1901?  Shit, dude.  You could probably make this seem a bit less repellent through the production, but this one, alas, does not.  In fact, I'd say they kind of do the opposite: look, I am not impugning Dietrich Henschel as a person, but his Kunrad is extremely smug and douchey-looking, which just makes things worse.

As for the production, it's pretty jumbled--a sort-of modern-day thing but sort of not, with a lot of abstraction and irritating background people making exaggerated, cartoony gestures, which in no case worked well.  Still, I do have to admit, the part at the end where all the people are waving ribbons to simulate the bonfire was cool.  Never let it be said that ol' GeoX refused to admit that a cool thing was cool.

It's interesting musically, though, I'll give it that.  I mean, not great, but also not like any Strauss opera I've seen before.  Broadly romantic, but you certainly wouldn't confuse it with later Strauss music.  Because it's not as good?  Well...that's certainly an aspect of it, but still!  It's not too bad!  Probably worth seeing!  On the whole, though, this is certainly the least essential Strauss I've seen, and certainly not a vital part of anyone's operatic education.

Rolf Liebermann, Leonore 40/45 (1952)

Well...it's my first opera with a slash in the title, I'll tell you that much.  This is a rare one, which possibly hadn't been performed since the fifties; the page is a bit cagey about that.  But now we can see it because of Theater Bonn and Operavision. Hurray!

So as you might guess, this takes place during World War II.  It's sung in a mixture of German and French.  Albert is a music student; he and his father are listening to Fidelio on the radio (hence the title), when word comes down that everyone's being enlisted, so he reluctantly joins up.  In occupied France, he meets Yvette, a French woman working with the Resistance.  They fall in love, obviously, but then Albert is forced to leave with his regiment and they loose contact.  Oh, did I mention the angel?  There's this guardian angel, Emile, who introduces the opera and at several points intervenes to make things turn out better.  In the second part, the War's just ended, and Albert and Yvette are looking for each other.  She learns from Emile that he's working at a music store, and so she goes to apply for a job there (it's extremely unclear what the whole job thing has to do with anything; it feels like she's engaging in this really pointless subterfuge).  At any rate, the two of them are reunited; a tribunal doesn't want them to get married because France and Germany are still considered enemies, I guess, which I don't totally understand: if the War's over it's over, innit?  You can't maintain enmity indefinitely.  Regardless, Emile tells everyone to knock it off, and the marriage can proceed.

It's not entirely clear what the message is here.  It feels like there's supposed to be some sort of darker subtext, but it doesn't come across.  The final chorus involves everyone singing about "the best of all worlds," making you expect some kind of Panglossian irony, but...who can say.  At the end of this production, a Nazi flag appears out of nowhere, which is obviously a message (and an extremely relevant one these days), but that must've just been a production decision, so who knows.

Regardless, I liked this quite a lot.  The operavision page says that it's "rooted in the 12-tone tradition of Schoenberg and Berg" (there's a part in the opera where characters are arguing about twelve-tone music), but it sounds nothing like Moses und Aron or Wozzeck.  That style may have some influence on it, but I honestly wouldn't have gone there had it not been spelled out.  It's mostly pretty melodic, I tell you.  Not my all-time favorite thing, but perfectly pleasant with some memorable moments.  

Also, the production is absolutely fantastic.  It's this sort of expressionistic thing with really cool George-Grosz-looking art and animation mixed in.  A lot of the stuff on Operavision is, sad to say, Regietheater, which is especially frustrating when you're talking about a little-seen work, but this knocks it out of the park and makes up for any deficiencies in the source material.  Theater Bonn?  More like Theater Bomb-Ass!

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Dienstag aus Licht (1993)

You don't even know how my heart sank when I checked Opera on Video and saw that another Licht opera was available to watch.  Nonetheless, I did my sacred duty and watched it!  I should get hazard pay here.

I realize the above suggests a jaundiced attitude.  But I did my best here, I can tell you!  This is at least a bit plot-heavier than Samstag...okay, that's probably not the best way to put it.  There's more borderline comprehensible action, let's say.  First, there's a little introduction which is a confrontation between Michael and his angels and Lucifer and his demons.  Eve tries to mediate between them.  Then, in the first act, the two fo them are having a competition, where Lucifer tries to stop the flow of time, visualized as group of dancers, and Michael tries to keep it going.  It's touch and go for a while, but Michael prevails, Lucifer congratulating him but warning that shit's gonna get real.  The second act is a war-war, with lots of video of planes and things.  That goes on interminably, and then at the end we have a weird creature called "Synthi-Fou" playing synthesizer music.  I don't fucking know.  But that's it.

You know, I don't actually dislike the music here, aside from some of the weird, stylized yelping that characters do.  It's ambient sort of stuff that would be perfectly fine as a videogame soundtrack.  But here, when combined with the total lack of drama, the whole thing gets excruciatingly boring, which is really the only way I can describe the piece as a whole.  I've already rehearsed my uncertainty here: am I missing something, or does this just suck?  I mean, if it does, it certainly doesn't suck in a slapdash, tossed-off way; there is clearly a great deal of artistry and consideration behind its suckiness.  But it's just very, very difficult for me to watch this and not think, GOOD GOD WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO WATCH THIS?!?  I must leave the possibility open that it's better in person, and maybe a fan would be able to convince me of its merit.  But come on, man.  I must be permitted to have my own opinions, and my main one right now is that I never want to see another Licht opera, although I definitely will if more become available 'cause that's how I roll.  Masochistically, apparently.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, The Maid of Orleans (1881)

Little Catholic girl who's fallen in love...right, so Joan of Arc, or whatever you want to call her: that's what this opera is about, by way of the Schiller tragedy.  It seems to basically follow the story, albeit with a romance added to make things more opera-y.  Joan is a peasant girl who's having visions, which historically had to have been some undiagnosed and at the time undiagnosable mental illness.  Well anyway, she volunteers her military services; the idea that these were accepted is kind of unbelievable, but...well, it's what happened.  The opera also has some stuff with the French nobility which feels a bit superfluous.  Anyway, Joan has some military victories, and she meets this knight called Lionel, who was apparently a traitor to the French cause, it's not totally clear, but he and Joan fall in love kind of instantly and now he's a good guy again.  I guess.  But her dad thinks all of what she's doing comes from Satan (where did THAT come from?), and wants to stop her; also, the angels having stipulated that she can have military victory at the price of never getting laid (doesn't seem fair, but what can you do?), so they're super pissed off that she's now with this dude; it's really not made entirely clear, but the impression I got was that her ultimate burning at the state is some sort of divine punishment?  Who can say?

So yeah, the libretto is a bit questionable.  But fuckin' eh man, it's Tchaikovsky, one of my favorite composers, and he comes through as always.  This one came right after Eugene Onegin, so why wouldn't it?  There's really no good reason that this shouldn't be more performed.  The production here is very much on the chintzy side, including one very dubious moment with plastic angels descending from the "heaven."  But that's okay!  You can still enjoy it, and I'm not sure if even the worst production would be able to fuck up the power of the climactic public burning.  Please don't take that as a challenge, regietheater directors.  

Heinrich Marschner, Hans Heiling (1833)

Marschner was the most important German opera composer between Weber and Wagner, or so wikipedia asserts (though he overlapped substantially with both of them).  His work doesn't seem to have endured very well, though.  Actually, one of his other operas, Der Vampyr, currently has a production on operavision, but looking at the description and the youtube comments, it's clear that it's gonna be a tremendously irritating Regietheater thing.  Look, if you HAVE to inflict your vision on operas like that, you could at least have the courtesy to restrict it to well-known pieces, where people have other options.  I may see it eventually, but I am resigned to the fact that I'll be experiencing the opera itself through a glass darkly.

Well, I did see this, his most successful work.  Ol' Heiling (never referred to as "Hans" in the libretto, that I remember) is a prince in the Underworld, but he's in love with a human woman, Anna, so he departs, in spite of his mother the queen's protests.  He brings a magic book to let him keep his power.  Little skip forward in time, and Heiling is an established rich guy and engaged to Anna--although she's kind of ambivalent about the whole thing, especially due to his violent, childish jealousy.  He is particularly jealous of Konrad, Anna's long-time suitor.  Bad times.  Anna is alone walking home through the forest at night, knowing she loves Konrad rather than Heiling, when the spirits of the underworld appear to tell her that Heiling is not a human.  Anna freaks out and faints, but Konrad finds her and brings her home.  Heiling appears, and there is a confrontation.  He stabs Konrad and leaves, but then learns that, doh, he didn't actually kill him--the wound was superficial.  And now he's going to marry Anna.  Doggonit.  The marriage ceremony happens and everyone's happy, until Heiling appears for his revenge.  Things look bleak until the queen appears and begs her son to back down.  So she does, and they return to the underworld.

It does not get more German-romantic than this, I will tell you that much.  The improbable happy ending strongly reminded me of Der Freischütz.  So you know the sort of thing to expect, and let me tell you, as an exemplar of that sort of thing, this is really, really good.  The first act does get off to a bit of a bumpy start, not really making clear what the characters are supposed to be and what their motivations are.  Things pick up a lot thereafter, however, and there's a lot of hella dramatic music here, including a really eerie child chorus of underworld spirits.  As far as the cast goes, I especially liked Cornelia Wulkopf as Anna's mother.  A contralto, no less!  Well, wikipedia calls her a "mezzo-soprano and contralto;" I'm not sure what that means.  Is it someone whose voice moves from one type to another as they age, or someone who can just switch at will?  I didn't know that was legal.  But AT ANY RATE, a big-ish contralto role!  Yeah!  She has a really great, spooky scene at home worrying about her daughter's non-appearance.

It's true that I'm not quite watching operas at the furious rate I once did; the state of this blog is an accurate indication of that.  But!  That doesn't mean I'm not into them anymore, and an opera like this is enough to stir up the blood and remind you how much you like the genre.

Georg Frideric Handel, Jephtha (1751)

So, Jephtha: he was an Old-Testament guy who was banished by his family on account of being illegitimate.  But when they need someone to help them defeat the Ammonites, they bring him back and agree to make him their king.  

So he goes, but before that, he makes the great decision to promise that if he's able to win, he'll murder the first person he meets, as tribute to God.  Um.  But then he sees his daughter, doh!  He's not happy with it, but he goes ahead and murders her 'cause whatteryagonnado? 

Here's my question: what if it HADN'T been his daughter?  What if it had just been some stranger?  Would his reaction have been to cheerfully go, welp, better slaughter this person because I told God I would!"  That kind of behavior nets you multiple life sentences in this day and age.  To be fair, unlike with Abraham and Isaac, there's no actual indication that God really wants him to be doing this--it's just his own personal madness.  But if God objects to this, he's sure quiet about it.

I mean, I know pointing out how fucked up some Bible stories are is kind of hacky, but it's hard not to when faced with this.  But it's still a problem: they may be interesting illustrations of primitive religion, but when you're asked to take the drama seriously--well, it's hard.

So people have long been uncomfortable with this story, it seems.  If you look at the text, it seems pretty clear.  Some have argued that, no, she was just, like, secluded and dedicated to God for the rest of her life, but I really feel like you'd have to have a vested interest in the story being other than what it is to make that argument.  Not that this really makes it that much better.  But it IS what this oratorio does.  God sends an angel to tell them, no no.  Sure, better than dying, but damn, man--she has a fiance!  She's looking forward to getting married!  And now, all of a sudden, sorry, nope, we're completely derailing your entire life because of this incomprehensible cosmic wheeling and dealing that's going on around us.  They both seem quite chirpy about it--at least in this production--but you know they are just SEETHING inside.  My head-canon is that they emark on a long, secret affair, in defiance of all this arbitrary theological gibberish.

In any case, either way, it's just this cruel, ridiculous story, and you sort of wish Handel could've found a better libretto.  AND YET!  Well, it is Handel, and this is his final oratorio, meaning his final dramatic work of any kind.  I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm enough of a Handel expert that I can distinguish between his early and late work, so I can't say "ah ha, you can see how ideas he had been working on for many years finally come to fruition here."  But GODDAMN this is great music.  What's more, lot of the arias work dramatically in and of themselves, as long as you don't think about the larger context, and I'll go even further than that: there are parts where you're so carried away that you don't care about the dubiousness of the story; you're so swept up that you have to just go with it.  And that is my ultimate piece of praise for this piece (wha?!?).