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La forza del destino
I finally got through Forza! It took me a while to get through it (mostly because of the real-life music festival around here -- I posted about Nozze and will post more under lock later). RL-opera-friend insisted that I watch Corelli-Tebaldi-Bastianini, and she was right -- Tebaldi and Bastianini were also in the Spotify recording I found (though the tenor was Mario del Monaco, who was also excellent) and they were wonderful (although to be honest Tebaldi came across better on the presumably-remastered audio recording, where I was soooo impressed). I was really surprised that I liked the singer singing Melitone (Renato Capecchi?) so much! I didn't think much of Melitone in the recording but he was really great in the video. Cesare Siepi, the Guardiano in the audio recording, must have imprinted me, because I had a really hard time with Boris Kristoff in the video, but I got over it eventually :)
So -- that will teach me to ask for family relationships. This is the opera where the tenor is basically goaded into killing the baritone over the baritone's family's HONOR. In fact Don Alvaro didn't actually do anything, it was a combination of bad luck and bad timing, and Carlo di Vargas and his dad being racist. Alvaro is perhaps the only tenor I've ever seen in an opera where I am basically in love, he's amazingly awesome especially for a tenor, he doesn't pressure any sopranos to do things they don't want to do (hi Riccardo --yes, I'm concurrently listening to Ballo -- hi Faust, hi Don Carlo of Spain) or get extremely jealous of anyone or try to run anyone through because he isn't willing to listen to what they have to say, and although he honestly does have a bit of a temper he actually tries to work on it and gets better at it through the timeline of the opera... I mean, he just is super nice and is even mostly okay with it (if, understandably, rather hurt and a bit stroppy) when Leonora thinks maybe she doesn't want to go with him, and when he thinks he's mucking everything up he becomes Father Rafael (sp?) and does nice things for everyone and everyone in the Entire Opera loves him, including the guy who wants to kill him. I do too. He just has the most horrible bad luck ever, my poor sweet Alvaro, him I want fix-it fic for.
Also Alvaro gets gorgeous music, which doesn't hurt. The tune for Alvaro's big aria at the end I had absolutely heard before, though in an instrumental format, and I drove myself crazy for a while trying to figure out where because I had this idea I had heard it played by an accordion. I thought the most likely case was that it was a movie my mom liked and had asked me to learn the music to (this is how I know the themes to movies like Love Story). Finally, after literally days where this was bugging me, I did what I should have done at the beginning and put it into google and immediately found it was the theme from Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. OH. Right. That explains it all. My wonderful French teacher, the one who constantly fed me all the great books, also adored Gerard Depardieu, with the consequence that I think I must have seen Jean de Florette multiple times by the time I left high school -- I am not sure whether we watched Manon in class or whether she lent it to me afterwards. Man, I was way too young to see those movies (I totally did not emotionally get a lot of what was going on), but I'm glad I did anyway. (And I got the accordion part right, too!)
I also love Carlo di Vargas, because Verdi seems to be incapable of writing a baritone who isn't humanly lovable, although it's more of the "Carlo totally needs a hug and also to be whapped REALLY hard on the head" kind of feeling. It's kind of amazing the way he can't stop poking at Alvaro, he clearly has all kinds of Feelings for him :)
I have a bunch of Thoughts about seeing this in conjunction with Don Carlo and Faust that I'm struggling to articulate... One of the things I love like burning about Verdi is the way he treats religion, and in particular religious people, because he's about the human connection really. Religion can be used to be terrible and awful, like the Grand Inquisitor, but also to be redemptive and a force for good, like Guardiano <3
And then when I watched Faust I talked about this problem of awful things happening even though people call on God to save them, so it was interesting to watch this right after Faust, as obviously it's the same kind of situation here. But here we've got Guardiano, we've got both Leonora and Alvaro/Rafael (Raffael? How do you spell that?)(I need to know for Reasons) having these beautiful lines about redemption and forgiveness -- and it seems to me that God, who just seems so far away in any capacity whatsoever from Marguerite even when she's trying her hardest, is there helping these people, sometimes through each other (Guardiano is really great), even though He does not in the least prevent all these terrible things happening to them. (To be fair, Leonora does have all these lines about how she's still miserable because she's still in love with Alvaro, but before that she had so much beautiful stuff about the peace she's feeling there, that I am going to assume she just had her bad moments every once in a while, like all of us.)
Onto Ballo! (Hopefully this will not take so long, as now the local music festival is over and so I am not running around cavalierly abandoning my familyand Verdi-watching to go see Awesome Stuff.)
So -- that will teach me to ask for family relationships. This is the opera where the tenor is basically goaded into killing the baritone over the baritone's family's HONOR. In fact Don Alvaro didn't actually do anything, it was a combination of bad luck and bad timing, and Carlo di Vargas and his dad being racist. Alvaro is perhaps the only tenor I've ever seen in an opera where I am basically in love, he's amazingly awesome especially for a tenor, he doesn't pressure any sopranos to do things they don't want to do (hi Riccardo --yes, I'm concurrently listening to Ballo -- hi Faust, hi Don Carlo of Spain) or get extremely jealous of anyone or try to run anyone through because he isn't willing to listen to what they have to say, and although he honestly does have a bit of a temper he actually tries to work on it and gets better at it through the timeline of the opera... I mean, he just is super nice and is even mostly okay with it (if, understandably, rather hurt and a bit stroppy) when Leonora thinks maybe she doesn't want to go with him, and when he thinks he's mucking everything up he becomes Father Rafael (sp?) and does nice things for everyone and everyone in the Entire Opera loves him, including the guy who wants to kill him. I do too. He just has the most horrible bad luck ever, my poor sweet Alvaro, him I want fix-it fic for.
Also Alvaro gets gorgeous music, which doesn't hurt. The tune for Alvaro's big aria at the end I had absolutely heard before, though in an instrumental format, and I drove myself crazy for a while trying to figure out where because I had this idea I had heard it played by an accordion. I thought the most likely case was that it was a movie my mom liked and had asked me to learn the music to (this is how I know the themes to movies like Love Story). Finally, after literally days where this was bugging me, I did what I should have done at the beginning and put it into google and immediately found it was the theme from Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. OH. Right. That explains it all. My wonderful French teacher, the one who constantly fed me all the great books, also adored Gerard Depardieu, with the consequence that I think I must have seen Jean de Florette multiple times by the time I left high school -- I am not sure whether we watched Manon in class or whether she lent it to me afterwards. Man, I was way too young to see those movies (I totally did not emotionally get a lot of what was going on), but I'm glad I did anyway. (And I got the accordion part right, too!)
I also love Carlo di Vargas, because Verdi seems to be incapable of writing a baritone who isn't humanly lovable, although it's more of the "Carlo totally needs a hug and also to be whapped REALLY hard on the head" kind of feeling. It's kind of amazing the way he can't stop poking at Alvaro, he clearly has all kinds of Feelings for him :)
I have a bunch of Thoughts about seeing this in conjunction with Don Carlo and Faust that I'm struggling to articulate... One of the things I love like burning about Verdi is the way he treats religion, and in particular religious people, because he's about the human connection really. Religion can be used to be terrible and awful, like the Grand Inquisitor, but also to be redemptive and a force for good, like Guardiano <3
And then when I watched Faust I talked about this problem of awful things happening even though people call on God to save them, so it was interesting to watch this right after Faust, as obviously it's the same kind of situation here. But here we've got Guardiano, we've got both Leonora and Alvaro/Rafael (Raffael? How do you spell that?)(I need to know for Reasons) having these beautiful lines about redemption and forgiveness -- and it seems to me that God, who just seems so far away in any capacity whatsoever from Marguerite even when she's trying her hardest, is there helping these people, sometimes through each other (Guardiano is really great), even though He does not in the least prevent all these terrible things happening to them. (To be fair, Leonora does have all these lines about how she's still miserable because she's still in love with Alvaro, but before that she had so much beautiful stuff about the peace she's feeling there, that I am going to assume she just had her bad moments every once in a while, like all of us.)
Onto Ballo! (Hopefully this will not take so long, as now the local music festival is over and so I am not running around cavalierly abandoning my family
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(Hopefully more comments later when I'm not tired.)
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And Carlo is a gay disaster who is like "Hello. My name is Don Carlo di Vargas. You killed my father. Prepare to die" but also in love with Alvaro :D
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Oh Carlo. Calm down a bit, Carlo!