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Cold Mountain (Higdon, opera)
Aug. 9th, 2019 12:38 pmWell, I went to see the opera Cold Mountain by Jennifer Higdon (put on by the super-excellent summer music program in my area) and I am glad I went.
-I... really like tonal tunes, I guess. My favorite bits were by far the choral songs and dirges, which were tonal and tuneful and quite beautiful. My next favorite were the parts where only one singer was singing at a time, sometimes doubling the orchestra; the singers were almost all very good at staying very much with the orchestra. (I think the doubling parts were rewrites, as I don't hear them on the recording and I found an article online saying that Higdon was rewriting. Good job rewriting, Higdon. Much better that way.)
-The ensemble parts were not good for me -- I have this problem with ensembles with vibrato-y singers written after Verdi (and sometimes Verdi too, for that matter) because I can't keep the pitches of the lines straight in my head. With straight-toned singers I like it a lot, but these weren't straight-toned singers. I suppose this is a me-being-raised-as-an-instrumentalist thing.
-This summer program has amazing singers. Seriously almost everyone in the cast was amazing, including most of the minor parts. There was one singer who was in the program last year and has an astonishing dark baritone voice, although he is much younger than the other people in the program and perhaps because of that played only minor parts. The conductor was also very good, I think. There was only one singer where I was not very impressed, and she had a very minor part. I liked them much more than the Santa Fe premiere recording, in fact -- although to be fair (a) it's a completely different experience seeing it (and I thought the staging was excellent), (b) I don't think the recording was the best quality (c) apparently I just don't like Nathan Gunn's voice?? (I have only ever heard him in the Met's Magic Flute, and I didn't like his voice then either, although at that point I chalked it up to having to compete with Simon Keenlyside in my head, which is a rather high bar.)
-I had no idea that this thing was set in NC until I was browsing around and found an article from an NC newspaper being annoyed that no one had Southern accents. It's true. On the Santa Fe CD NO ONE has anything even approaching a Southern accent; if I had to guess I would've said it was set in Colorado! In the production I saw, Ada (who was great) at least made an attempt at one, and I seem to remember another of the minor characters, but... that was all. Everyone else (and everyone in the Santa Fe production) did some kind of weird cowboy Midwestern accent, like we were in Ballad of Baby Doe, what.
-It was really good I had listened to it beforehand for many reasons, but one kind of funny one was that I had conflated Brokeback Mountain and Cold Mountain and was sort of astonished to find that it was rather more heterosexual than I had thought!
-...having said that, I felt like the opera really made this into a found-family-love story between Ada and Ruby. I mean, Inman and Ada have love duets and the major story arc is about him coming back to her, Higdon really played fairly with it, but Ada and Ruby are the ones who have a relationship that grows and changes them (and who end up together, ahem).
( I guess there are spoilers here )
-I got the last of the $10 "community" seats at the time I bought, and am very happy about that; to be honest although the singers were wonderful I would not have paid $70 for the experience (the next cheapest tickets). Especially since they had some remaining seating that went on sale for $10 the day of. Next time they do a modern opera if I miss the community seating sale I'll see if I can wait until the day of :) Even then they had a number of empty seats -- not a whole lot, but some. And the people sitting next to me left after the first act...
-Someone brought what looked like his 5-year-old daughter to this opera. WHAT WERE YOU EVEN THINKING? My 4-year-old actually likes (some) opera excerpts and I would just not ever even think about taking him to a full-length one (at this point he can't even sit through the truncated English Magic Flute -- I have tried), not even to mention a 21st-century opera ABOUT HOW WAR SUCKS, like, what?? (They left in the middle of the first act, which was a smart move.)
-I... really like tonal tunes, I guess. My favorite bits were by far the choral songs and dirges, which were tonal and tuneful and quite beautiful. My next favorite were the parts where only one singer was singing at a time, sometimes doubling the orchestra; the singers were almost all very good at staying very much with the orchestra. (I think the doubling parts were rewrites, as I don't hear them on the recording and I found an article online saying that Higdon was rewriting. Good job rewriting, Higdon. Much better that way.)
-The ensemble parts were not good for me -- I have this problem with ensembles with vibrato-y singers written after Verdi (and sometimes Verdi too, for that matter) because I can't keep the pitches of the lines straight in my head. With straight-toned singers I like it a lot, but these weren't straight-toned singers. I suppose this is a me-being-raised-as-an-instrumentalist thing.
-This summer program has amazing singers. Seriously almost everyone in the cast was amazing, including most of the minor parts. There was one singer who was in the program last year and has an astonishing dark baritone voice, although he is much younger than the other people in the program and perhaps because of that played only minor parts. The conductor was also very good, I think. There was only one singer where I was not very impressed, and she had a very minor part. I liked them much more than the Santa Fe premiere recording, in fact -- although to be fair (a) it's a completely different experience seeing it (and I thought the staging was excellent), (b) I don't think the recording was the best quality (c) apparently I just don't like Nathan Gunn's voice?? (I have only ever heard him in the Met's Magic Flute, and I didn't like his voice then either, although at that point I chalked it up to having to compete with Simon Keenlyside in my head, which is a rather high bar.)
-I had no idea that this thing was set in NC until I was browsing around and found an article from an NC newspaper being annoyed that no one had Southern accents. It's true. On the Santa Fe CD NO ONE has anything even approaching a Southern accent; if I had to guess I would've said it was set in Colorado! In the production I saw, Ada (who was great) at least made an attempt at one, and I seem to remember another of the minor characters, but... that was all. Everyone else (and everyone in the Santa Fe production) did some kind of weird cowboy Midwestern accent, like we were in Ballad of Baby Doe, what.
-It was really good I had listened to it beforehand for many reasons, but one kind of funny one was that I had conflated Brokeback Mountain and Cold Mountain and was sort of astonished to find that it was rather more heterosexual than I had thought!
-...having said that, I felt like the opera really made this into a found-family-love story between Ada and Ruby. I mean, Inman and Ada have love duets and the major story arc is about him coming back to her, Higdon really played fairly with it, but Ada and Ruby are the ones who have a relationship that grows and changes them (and who end up together, ahem).
( I guess there are spoilers here )
-I got the last of the $10 "community" seats at the time I bought, and am very happy about that; to be honest although the singers were wonderful I would not have paid $70 for the experience (the next cheapest tickets). Especially since they had some remaining seating that went on sale for $10 the day of. Next time they do a modern opera if I miss the community seating sale I'll see if I can wait until the day of :) Even then they had a number of empty seats -- not a whole lot, but some. And the people sitting next to me left after the first act...
-Someone brought what looked like his 5-year-old daughter to this opera. WHAT WERE YOU EVEN THINKING? My 4-year-old actually likes (some) opera excerpts and I would just not ever even think about taking him to a full-length one (at this point he can't even sit through the truncated English Magic Flute -- I have tried), not even to mention a 21st-century opera ABOUT HOW WAR SUCKS, like, what?? (They left in the middle of the first act, which was a smart move.)
