In which I continue to plow through opera
Jun. 13th, 2018 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn-L'Orfeo (Keenlyside) - Monteverdi (1998). Youtube link to the best seven minutes. Youtube link to the entire thing if you are crazy like me: (just be aware that the seven minutes in the first link are probably the best seven minutes). I found this AMAZING although I am not sure I can articulate why (and not sure anyone else will agree :) ). I am not a huge fan of Monteverdi (we even sang his Vespers in college and while I fell in love with everything else we did in choir, I didn't quite know how to deal with him) and this production merges the opera with dance and I'm not a huge fan of dance, and it's stylized abstract modern and I'm hit and miss with abstract opera -- but now, I now think that the ONLY way to do Monteverdi is in conjunction with abstract modern dance and I'm bound to be disappointed by any other rendition of this opera now. It was so compelling to me that I watched it as an abstract performance, not an opera, without the libretto, so I had no idea what was going on much of the time :) I will go back and watch it with the libretto, though... Keenlyside is absolutely wonderful (and so young! I mean, he must have been 40, but that's like baby-baritone) and I feel like he does super well with extremely detailed choreography instruction, which is what we get here -- he's practically a dancer himself, here -- I don't know any other male singer with as good a voice as Keenlyside who could do this at all. Juanita Lascarro (Euridice) is the same -- practically a dancer, but with a beautiful voice. (And with my usual complaint that Keenlyside has a wonderful operatic voice which isn't quite in my conception of oratorio or pre-Mozart music, which is terrible because he's clearly excellent at it, he is such an excellent singer -- and presumably enjoys it!)
-Billy Budd (CD, Langridge, Keenlyside, Tomlinson, Opie, Padmore, etc.) - I can't listen to Verdi any more at work because I get too distracted, but it turns out Britten is OK so I've been doing a bunch of that. And this recording... is like a who's who of great male voices. (The ones I've listed are the ones I had already known and loved for oratorio work or Opera in English work, but everyone is really good.) Keenlyside's voice is (again) a bit on the rich side compared to some of these guys -- Langridge and Padmore especially are spectacular tenors -- but Keenlyside, wow, I mean the man has so much control over tone, he can do so many different things, it's really amazing to listen to. Here's an example.
-Nabucco - DVD lent me by my RL opera friend :) Early Verdi, which I am pretty sure now that I do not like as much as mid-late Verdi, but, hey, still Verdi, so trios and lots of family FEELS and it was the same kind of thing where I went into it not convinced I would like it and by an hour in I was totally hooked. Mind you, I think this one must depend a lot on the Abigaille, who really sold this performance (Maria Guleghina, whom I am not otherwise familiar with) -- the thing I found most interesting is how from her acting alone, in a scene between Nabucco and Abigaille, it became a story of sibing rivalry and father-daughter tension, whereas in the libretto I don't think this was really there explicitly at all.
-Ernani - okay, so, this one (also early Verdi) I found totally hilarious. I watched the Met On Demand version, in which Hvorostovsky is playing the King of Spain (Don Carlos, the grandfather of Don Carlos from the eponymous opera I love so much) and one of the three people in love with Elvira (Angela Meade); the other two are the bandit Ernani (the tenor Marcello Giordani) and Silva (Ferruccio Furlanetto). Because this is early Verdi, the tenor is her True Love. Anyway, the hilarious part is that Hvorostovsky comes in with a fur cloak and a hat sort of shading one eye. When Silva comes in, Silva gets upset at him and Ernani for hitting on Elvira, and I'm thinking, "...you're getting upset at the king? Seems dangerous!" Then a squire comes in and announces that Hvorostovksy is the King! And Hvorostovsky tosses aside his hat and his cloak, which I had not realized until that very moment was supposed to be a disguise. It was also hilarious because Hvorostovsky can do disdain better than anyone (this is why I can't watch him as Germont), and he had this totally dismissive look on his face that I choose to interpret as, "That was such a terrible disguise and you couldn't even figure it out??" I had to actually turn off the opera for a couple minutes while I recovered from that :)
Also featured in this is an aria for Silva in which -- I mean, the Met's subtitles are not the greatest -- but it really appeared that he was singing about how he was just so Frustrated because as an old guy he still Has Needs. Uh, for love, that is. After being super super impressed by Furlanetto in Don Carlo, here I kind of felt sorry for him, because Silva is just such a flat villain, and over-the-top, that it was hard for me to feel anything for him but amusement, although he tried really hard.
Anyway, all the singers were wonderful (I was not familiar with Giordani, who was quite good, and Meade's voice was great although her acting, while decent, was not quite on par with Giordani or Furlanetto), but mostly I thought it was fine, not great, and too much unison singing in the trios, but then Verdi (and the singers) pulled out all the stops for the ending. Now, it is a totally bizarro silly ending which I was glad I was spoiled for (the King pardons everyone, and Ernani and Elvira get married, and then Ernani had earlier promised Silva to kill himself once Silva blows this horn, and Silva blows it, and Ernani kills himself), and yet -- something about the music, and the singers really rising to meet the music, was so marvelous that I was totally invested. Verdi is really something.
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Date: 2018-06-14 02:56 am (UTC)I agree that Ernani is totally hilarious. (It's based on a play by Victor Hugo, so you have the Hugo ridiculousness piled on the Verdi ridiculousness. :D (I say this affectionately.) But parts of it are still magnificent, because Verdi. I'm also a little amused by the Don Carlo connection -- in Don Carlo you have Philip and Carlo and the others hanging out at the tomb of Charles V, and in Ernani, you have Charles V hanging out at the tomb of Charlemagne . . . Anyway. Silva has a very rigid kind of honor and an obsession with purity which it's hard to sympathize with, but I feel like he's not only a one-dimensional villain. He's willing to risk death by refusing to give up Ernani, because that's what he thinks his honor demands.
My interpretation of Silva's aria is more "I was foolish to let myself fall in love" than "A man has Needs, okay?" but YMMV. :) Here's a super quick translation of his recit and aria:
What do I see! In the most holy sanctum
of my house, near her
who is to be the wife of a Silva,
I discover two seducers?
Enter, what ho, my faithful knights!
Let all be witness of the dishonor
and shame which is brought to their lord.
(Unhappy man! And you believed
such a beautiful lily was stainless!
Instead dishonor falls
on your snow-white hair.
Ah, why has old age
preserved a youthful heart in my breast!
The years should have made
my heart only of ice.)
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Date: 2018-06-14 04:05 am (UTC)Oh -- yes, you are right... I was thinking that there were certain bits of acting in the production I saw that weren't in the libretto, like Fenema reaching out at one point to Abigaille and being turned away, and then in the Abigaille/Nabucco duet every time Nabucco says "Give me back my daughter" Abigaille reacts a lot -- first with a slight hope that he might be referring to her, then with growing anger. But now that I look at the libretto as a whole, it does actually look like that's probably intended, given the surrounding text about daughters etc.
...I have no idea how I forgot about that part about Silva's honor! DUH. Yes, that was great, I really enjoyed that, and I really liked Silva's character there, although he then totally lost my sympathy by not listening to Ernani at the end :)
Ahhhh, thank you for the translation! I think it was partially that I probably had to pause and start again mid-aria (my life involves a fair amount of watching five minutes at a time, sadly), and then given that, the line "why has old age preserved a youthful heart in my breast?" made me laugh :)
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Date: 2018-06-15 12:08 am (UTC)Those sound like some good acting choices. I've sadly seen some productions on YouTube where they basically stand there and sing with minimal reaction, and unless you're going to treat it like an oratorio, Nabucco really needs more than that.
Well, I'd agree that Silva is totally unsympathetic in the last trio, so that's fair. I just wanted his one heroic moment to be mentioned. :)
Glad it was helpful! And I'm not blaming you for finding it silly, especially in a bad translation. But I thought a different translation might help.
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Date: 2018-06-15 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-15 04:49 am (UTC)I'll see if I can think of some things, but I won't be offended if you don't like them. If you don't mind, could you say what it is about bel canto that turns you off? Just so I can try to minimize those aspects.
Are you familiar with The Barber of Seville? The first thing that comes to mind is "Numero quindici, a mano manca". It's a tenor-baritone duet, but it's just so sparkly and delightful. Also "Largo al factotum" from the same opera (which is Figaro's introduction song).
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Date: 2018-06-16 01:41 am (UTC)Hm. I feel like I associate bel canto with very frothy soprano solo arias and tenor-soprano love duets, which I don't necessarily object to (and I understand that you have to have them!) but I don't like when it's the only thing around. :) I also feel -- and maybe I'm wrong about this? -- like there are too many duets/trios where everyone just kind of stands around and sings more-or-less in unison rhythm -- I was really pleased when Verdi turned out to have all these really interesting trios and quartets where everyone is doing something different!
Also I had a bad experience with Lucia di Lammermoor, which I really, really didn't like -- to be fair this was rather early in my opera-watching days, so I was ambivalent about opera as a whole and this may have played into it -- but anyway, I disliked pretty much all the characters, and felt the plot only worked because everyone behaved completely idiotically. (Though I will say that even though I'm not really fond of mad scenes, I did like Lucia's music in the mad scene -- can't remember the soprano but I think it was a famous one and she was brilliant.) So I think the librettos can really bother me.
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Date: 2018-06-17 04:57 am (UTC)That makes sense! The soprano/tenor romance is often the least interesting part of a bel canto opera for me. (And the sopranos are very often sweet and virtuous and helpless, which personally annoys me as an amateur opera singer who would really like to try some other kinds of characters.)
*nod* Everyone doing something different is also one of the things I like about Verdi ensembles (and Mozart has some brilliant examples too). It's a fair complaint, but it's also the hardest item on your list to avoid, I think, because bel canto does that a lot.
. . . and bel canto librettos frequently being stupid is also a fair complaint. :) I say this though I like them.
I'll keep thinking about what you might like and I'll try to come back with a longer list later, but here's a another suggestion to start with. Maybe you'll like bel canto if it involves a dramatic confrontation at the Spanish court? ;) This is the Act II finale from Donizetti's La Favorita (or La Favorite, since this is another opera with both French and Italian versions).
Leonor (soprano) is the mistress of King Alfonso XI of Castile (baritone). Alfonso wants to divorce the Queen and marry Leonor. Balthazar (bass), an important churchman and the Queen's father, strongly disapproves. In this scene, Balthazar bursts in and publicly threatens Alfonso with divine wrath if he won't banish Leonor and reinstate his queen. He has gone to Rome and come back with a decree from the Pope: if Alfonso won't permanently separate from Leonor, they will both be excommunicated. Alfonso is furious at the insult to his royal authority, and Leonor is terrified. The court, horrified by the threat of anathema, joins in demanding that Leonor be driven out.
(Poor Leonor doesn't even want to marry Alfonso. Like Violetta, she's a "fallen woman" who has fallen in love with an ardent young man -- the tenor, Fernando, who doesn't appear in this scene. Sadly, Fernando, rather like Alfredo, has the capacity to be a total dick when he thinks he's been betrayed, and it doesn't end well.)
I couldn't find a Youtube clip with just that scene, so here are the links to the correct spot in two different complete performances. The scene is about ten minutes long.
A video in French, with subtitles, though unfortunately with a weak bass:
https://youtu.be/pwApcfB41P4?t=59m2s
And a much better bass (and a fantastic cast), but without subtitles and audio only, in Italian:
https://youtu.be/M1XiqkrF3KI?t=51m5s
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Date: 2018-06-20 04:00 pm (UTC)Are there bel canto operas you would recommend as a whole that have a good (non-totally-stupid) baritone or bass role and that have not-completely-stupid librettos? :) (Extra points if they're relatively popular so there are more choices on Youtube and Met on Demand :D ) I do have a rather higher threshold for stupidity in librettos than I used to, but Ernani was... about the limit I'd be willing to go, I think :)
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Date: 2018-06-16 03:59 am (UTC)Also adjacently, I feel I would enjoy Hvorostovsky's Ernani shenanigans, and feel the need to check it out after exchange writing is over. I saw a wonderful painting of Charles V on my travels, which I will email to you!
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Date: 2018-06-16 04:31 am (UTC)Oh, my opinion about his voice being too operatic is mine alone and no one else in the world actually thinks this (he really has a completely gorgeous voice), it's only that I spent way too long in a choir at an impressionable age (college) that focused on Renaissance-ish music, and as a result I developed a marked preference for very pure-straight-toned voices. Which is one of the reasons it took so very long for me to get into opera :)
I am not sure how much Hvorostovsky Ernani there is online, but here is a fun clip of him from that production
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQf1SUyQwaE
(he seems to have taken his hat off)
Good luck on your exchange writing!
ETA: OMG have some Keenlyside singing Broadway! *swoons* (I actually really love his voice singing Broadway)
On the street where you live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQfAPXaduqE
So in love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol6NA3SeDOs