Simon Boccanegra

[cahn]

Last night I did something fun -- I ditched the family and watched Vienna State Opera's "livestream" performance of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, the story of the first Doge of Genoa. (It's not truly a livestream because they're considerate enough to stagger the viewing times in a 72-hr period so they're convenient for people who don't live in Vienna.) The real draw was Thomas Hampson in the title role, of course, though all the singers were really quite good. (Though no one equaled his acting.) It was lovely to listen to and watch Hampson (and Simon's character has a lot of drama, including half of Act II and all of Act III being basically a long-drawn-out death scene (spoiler: he is a baritone), which we were prepared for by Paolo, the villain, warning us that he was giving Simon a slow-acting poison, but wow, that was a really slow-acting poison -- anyway, the point being that there was a lot of drama for Hampson to sink his teeth into).


The actual livestream experience was not bad except for the subtitles, which were highly irritating. Wiener Staatsoper has a very odd way of doing them, involving pairing up a mobile device to one's listening device, and it's apparently cued by hearing the actual opera, which has to be turned on high volume?? Anyway, I tried it out and it didn't work at all (it was also as far as I know impossible to test before the opera began). Fortunately I had been warned by online reviews about this, so I had a backup plan with a google translate version of the italian libretto and the Met on Demand player version, which does have good English subtitle support (though obviously not synced so I always had to be messing with it), but seriously, Wiener Staatsoper, I know you expect everyone to know Italian but this is not cool. I would not do this again for an opera where Thomas Hampson wasn't the lead I didn't have the libretto in front of me and/or know it well enough not to need one. (I am still totally planning on watching Keenlyside in La Traviata in September, though, for which I have the score, and embarrassingly enough I probably know all the bits with Germont in them well enough to follow the Italian.)

Simon Boccanegra itself... Thematically, it has all the things I love (and which I am convinced Verdi also loves, because he puts them in all his operas). Parental relationships! Conflict that isn't about romantic love! A noble baritone character! (Simon is really great, up there with Rodrigo in terms of awesomeness, although unlike Rodrigo the entire cast seems to want to kill him rather than bone him.) Characters who make the right choices because of HONOR! Awesome non-romantic duets and trios and scenes with trios singing against chorus! And Verdi has some really wonderful music here. Baritone-bass duet! I have realized I am a complete sucker for emotional baritone-bass duets, and apparently Verdi is too.

All this being said, the libretto is a hot mess for a first-time viewer like myself, and I totally see why it is performed relatively rarely. In Don Carlo, the plot (which in Schiller is quite a bit more complex) and character identifications are simplified down to where it's very easy to follow, but the libretto if anything strengthens the psychological portraits and character interactions and allows the music to further strengthen them. Simon... is exactly the opposite. I was never quite sure of what was going on and how the characters were identifying. For example, Jacopo Fiesco, Simon's lover's father who hates Simon because he is an ex-pirate and also got Fiesco's daughter pregnant (kind of a cool plot for opera, mind you; sort of reminiscent of Traviata, where the sex-judgmental father is clearly in the wrong), shows up as such in the Prologue. In Act 1 he is apparently now pretending to be a member of some other family entirely, the Grimaldis, to escape detection?? Which is to the best of my knowledge never stated, and I actually had no idea why he was randomly in Act I until consulting Wikipedia after the fact. (Fiesco in general is unfortunately treated by the libretto and/or my subtitles situation; I think pretty much every time he shows up after the first time I had no idea why he was there at all.)

The other big issue is that it's so episodic; I mean, now that I've had some time to think about it the forward narrative is more clear to me, but when I watched it, it definitely had this feeling of lurching from one event to the next. Simon's daughter Maria goes missing; we find her (as Amelia Grimaldi) in the next scene. Then Paolo says he will kidnap her! She escapes and arrives safely in the next scene, none the worse for wear. Then Amelia's fiance, Gabriel Adorno, is upset because he thinks Amelia and Simon are uncomfortably close! (He doesn't know that she's Simon's child, for reasons that make no sense.) Then he finds out the truth ten minutes later and is totally OK with it! I mean, I highly approve of jealousy arcs not taking more than ten minutes (Otello, though it has so many things about it I love, is proving a hard slog for me right now because I apparently have a squick for this), but it did mean it was hard on a first watch for me to get a real continuing connection to the characters or their relationships through any sort of arc. The exceptions are Fiesco being angry at Simon -- which means that their reconciliation scene in Act III was one of the most moving parts of the opera to me (see also: bass-baritone duet!) -- and Simon's death taking a whole hour (which is also, as I said before, kind of hilarious).

There are scenes of great power -- Simon and Amelia's reunion; the great council scene with Simon both merciful and terrible (Wikipedia tells me this is an interpolation by Boito to try to fix the original; not surprised); as I mentioned before, because I am a sucker for bass-baritone duets and reconciliation and HONOR my favorite was the Act III duet between Simon and Fiesco (in addition, Hampson's Simon's body language marks him as all but delirious with the poison at this point, and is leaning a lot on Belosselskiy's Fiesco by the end, which appeals to multiple of my tropey interests as well); and then of course Simon's deathbed blessing is spectacular and I expect there wasn't a dry eye in the house. (Mine were suspiciously wet, anyway.) (iberiandoctor: The role of Simon Boccanegra is... really, really darned close to Hampson playing Valjean, up to the having to make the choice to save his daughter's boyfriend part (though Amelia has more agency than Cosette) and deathbed blessing part (seriously, Amelia even says something like "Father, you're going to live, it's too soon, too soon to say goodbye because I love you!"), except he's an ex-pirate rather than an ex-convict, and no one really seems to care about that anyway except Javert Fiesco.)

You'll notice these are all scenes involving Simon. He's the heart of the opera, and Hampson was so enjoyable to watch in all of them. I will say that there were a handful of times, maybe three, that he went for a high note and made it, but it was noticeably ragged, not as beautiful as I've been conditioned to expect from him. His midrange is as beautiful as ever, to my ears. Also the others had great voices -- Marina Rebeka was excellent as Amelia, her voice started out a bit too bright for me but settled down, and she has a lot of filial chemistry with Hampson -- Francesco Meli, the tenor, has a voice that is a bit more bright than I personally like (Kaufmann has spoiled me!) but he was great too -- although I thought it was funny that Dmitry Belosselskiy, the Fiesco (whom I loved; he was my second favorite), was clearly a lot younger than Hampson, given that he's basically Simon's father-in-law, and he was definitely too young to have Rebeka as a granddaughter.

During the curtain call, the principal singers were all holding hands and as they were moving across the stage Hampson unintentionally totally stepped on Rebeka's dress; when he realized this, he grinned and turned it into a (sideways) hug instead. It was super cute. Hampson also remembered to give kudos to the orchestra, which is basically THE most quick way a singer can get to my heart :)

So, yeah, in retrospect I wish I had watched a vid of it beforehand and understood the story, which I think would have helped a lot (besides being busy with Don Carlo, I also had noticed I tend to imprint a bit on the first version I see, and thought perhaps I'd like to imprint on this version -- which did work, I think) but in general it was pretty great.

Comments

[cahn]

Ahhhh, thank you, all of that makes a lot more sense! (I found a libretto in Italian online but my Italian is not really good enough to figure out what's going on, even with google translate to help.) Yeah, I guess maybe Verdi's audience would have known intimately about all the Guelph/Ghibelline stuff, but I don't :)

Oh, right, I did see that about Amelia and didn't even think about how Simon would have possibly known that! Hee.

Yes, I thought it was kind of unbelievable that Simon managed to fight a whole battle while dying of poison! Though Hampson played Simon as clearly feeling (physically) awful by the end of the battle -- he really looked like he was about to collapse.

[zdenka]

By the way, if you ever want a bit of opera translated or summarized, feel free to ask! I translate opera sometimes just for fun, so it wouldn't be an imposition (and if I don't have time just then, I'll tell you). I can do Italian, French, and German in that order of ability. My grammar is a bit weak sometimes, but I can usually get the gist of it.

[cahn]

Oh lovely, thanks! My French is decent (at least decent enough to figure out opera, lol), but my Italian is not great -- good enough to figure out bits and pieces with the help of google translate, but not enough to decipher complicated plots :) And my German is nonexistent! (though at some point, maybe when I've finished Verdi, I will have to venture into German opera besides Zauberflote...)