Arabella (R Strauss)

[cahn]

OK I saw the Fleming-Hampson Arabella and I have so many feelings about it.

First, we have the following items:
-One tenor (Matteo) who is going around... being... a tenor
-One overreacting baritone (Mandryka), confronted with misleading though convincing evidence of soprano betrayal
-One mezzo (Zdenka/Zdenko) who is cross-dressing and complicating everything
-One utterly blameless soprano (Arabella) who nevertheless is not very pleased by everyone else going crazy around her and eventually gives up on trying to explain, especially since she doesn't actually know at this point what's going on
-One bass (Waldner) who is having some family HONOR issues as a result of all of this
-Some swords and/or pistols that make a convenient appearance at this point in the plot (it's not actually clear to me whether it's both?)

Basically speaking, all the ingredients for a Verdian level of tragedy.

And then --

Well -- seekingferret will also laugh that I have managed to take this epic romance opera and turn it into a family drama in my head -- I finished watching this and although the romance was nice and I liked it much more than I usually like romance, I was completely bowled over by the SISTERS.

Because what happens THEN is that Zdenka, Arabella's sister, rushes in because she has to say goodbye to Arabella before she kills herself for ruining Arabella's marriage prospects (to the baritone! which can I say I totally appreciate, the baritone should always get the girl because the baritone is always more interesting than the tenor). And Arabella, who has quite a lot on her mind at the time -- the very real possibility her future and her romantic prospects for love (in particular, a romantic match that is both supremely satisfying and financially workable) have been entirely ruined by the events of that night -- responds immediately by saying, look, stay here with me, whatever has happened, I'll still love you. I CAN'T EVEN. YES ALL OF THIS PLEASE.

And it's because of this -- not because of any of the romantic shenanigans, which have just complicated matters up to this point, but because of this bond between these sisters who love each other in a profound and complex way, that everything is allowed to be made clear, and the whole story unwinds itself, and everything works out in the end.

(Well, kind of clear, at least to the characters. Honestly, if I hadn't read a synopsis beforehand I would have been totally unclear as to everything that was going on in that last act.)

Basically, I love all of this. I love the inverting of the usual opera plot, to make what is clearly a tragedy into a happy ending. I love using usual opera characterization to perform inversions -- have I mentioned that Matteo totally acts like a tenor and gets very little sympathy about it from the narrative? And the mezzo crossdressing is treated perfectly seriously by the narrative. (seekingferret, you might be interested to know that in this production Zdenko's line "I will be a man forever!" is not treated as a proud declaration but as a cry of despair -- this Zdenko doesn't want to be Zdenko.)

This production is... a little weird? Some of it is rather lovely -- I liked the set design (though I am informed by zdenka, ha, it's odd to type that, that there should have been stairs and there are no stairs). It's not regie exactly (except for the chorus, who are treated somewhat oddly and are generally sort of milling around, possibly as nightmare figments of Mandryka's own imagination?) but it makes some weird choices, like Zdenka suddenly revealing herself by dramatically taking her coat off to reveal that she's wearing only her breast bindings and slacks underneath, which is a very strange choice, although I have become reconciled to it by imagining that Matteo took her shirt and she couldn't fit into his, hee. But I can't imagine that was the intent.

But Hampson as Mandryka is brilliant (though this may be the only opera I've watched with Hampson where I admired him and liked Mandryka quite a bit but didn't fall totally in love with the character, possibly because Mandryka does get a happy ending) and Fleming and Hanna-Elisabeth Müller as Arabella and Zdenko/Zdenka are just gorgeous, and I thought it was worth watching for that.

Judging by this, I like R. Strauss quite a bit (sorry carmarthen), although I would like to listen to this with much thinner voices, sort of like all my Britten recordings, because I felt that there were lots of places where my brain couldn't figure out what Strauss was trying to do because I wasn't sure of the singer's pitch because vibrato augh, and it bothered me. (I am currently listening to the Decca ROH recording on Spotify with Kiri te Kanawa, and so far I am liking it a lot better, musically speaking.)

Comments

[alcanis_ivennil]

http://count-di-luna.tumblr.com/post/183690009131/thais-liveblog-met

Yeah! It's very good. Also wow Fleming is so radiant. And Hampson is ridiculously hot. Schade is excellent, he's also the only singer I know who managed to make Don Ottavio not boring. Can the Met get him to sing Captain Vere already? He would be great.

[cahn]

It is So good!! Schade is really great. I mean, Nicias is a pretty awesome character regardless (I thought it was hilarious that the tenor... actually does get the girl, and the baritone doesn't, but not really... come on, baritone, why always make life decisions that means you don't get laid?) but Schade is so good. I also once listened to an enormous number of (audio) Zauberflotes and Schade was my favorite Tamino <3 YES PLEASE Schade for Vere!!

And of course you know how I feel about Hampson. Man I would watch him do anything. He is indeed ridiculously hot. Fleming is so gorgeous, she makes Thais totally believable to me.

[alcanis_ivennil]

Also, have you seen the new ROH Forza?

http://operaportugues.tumblr.com/post/183925945520/la-forza-del-destino-verdi-roh-02abril2019

You will probably need to get a player that can handle this format. VLC can't. Windows Media Player worked for me but there are also others (or you can convert them to mp4).

Pappano felt the need to say the tenor/baritone duets are "not love duets", but Jonas and Ludovic were like "oh my sweet summer child" XD

[cahn]

omg no I didn't evne know it was around THANK YOU!! I will look for this as soon as I get home from work.

Huh, I thought VLC handled everything! Thanks for the heads up.

[alcanis_ivennil]

Yeah, me on the rare occasion VLC can't play something: "this format isn't even real".

I mean, VLC could probably run even Skyrim.