Moses und Aron (Schoenberg)
Jan. 1st, 2013 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn[Note: This was written (though not posted) before seekingferret posted his guess, but I figured I might as well post it, what the heck. Because also: Moses und Aron!]
To tell you the story of how I came to watch this, I must tell you the story of the Extremely Non-Anonymous Yuletide Fic. So... on the yuletide brainstorming post, I meandered on, as I do, about wanting crack!Turandot. (The fic I got was not crack; was far better than crack; was the fic I would have requested if I had known it would be possible for someone to write it.) And a complete stranger,seekingferret, posted something very nice on that about Turandot in SPAAAAACE, and one thing led to another, as these things do, and before either of us knew what had happened he'd recced me Schoenberg's Moses und Aron.
So I watched it. I watched two versions. My favorite, the 2009 version, is available on youtube here. I do not think it is the best one musically or in terms of interpreting Schoenberg's original stage directions (both those honors go to the Straub version); however, I find it the most accessible of the available versions. The conflicted love Moses and Aron have for each other, the tension between the idea and the image, the misunderstandings Moses and Aron have, the "game of telephone" as seekingferret put it in one of his letters -- these all come across beautifully in this version. If you were in the market for a weird Schoenberg opera that takes the Exodus story and twists it around into a dialogue about the philosophy of God -- the tension between, on one hand, a God who is inherently abstract and unknowable, and on the other, the images we make to try to understand and imagine that which is incomprehensible and unimaginable -- well, anyway, if you were looking for a production that underlines and sells that, I think this is it.
However, this version does not contain the problematic unfinished third act (and for good reason; the third act does away with a lot of the relationship and tension between the two brothers/concepts, so it would not have suited the interpretation in the 2009 version), so I had to watch the Straub and Huilet version to get that. (Note: This is seekingferret's favorite, and the one he recommended to me.) This one has an Aron whose voice is quite a bit more suited to the role. It is a very spare, very -- I don't know how to describe it except in images of desert and purity and the idea of scouring away everything inessential. Which makes it exactly what Schoenberg was talking about in the opera. But which makes it, I think, somewhat less accessible to someone watching it for the first time. (Note: the Straub version comes with the libretto (Allen Forte translation, OMG DO I HAVE ISSUES with the translation, but anyway)! Also, um, I made a PDF copy so I could carry it around to write this thing, I KNOW I AM OBSESSIVE SO WHAT, so if anyone wants one, PM me).
(The third available version is apparently set during the Holocaust, and seekingferret warned me away from it. I did watch a five-minute clip of it just in case it might bother me less than him, but yeah, he was right.)
But oh, the FEELINGS I have about this opera. I felt very much the way I felt reading Jean-Paul Sartre in college, and for much the same reasons: it's fascinating stuff, really meaty fascinating stuff to think about and sink my teeth into, I totally enjoyed it, and gosh a lot of the time I felt like he was completely missing the point. I mean, really, Schoenberg?
Anyway. And then I was all agreeing with seekingferret that this HAS to have fic written for it. ...And then I found seekingferret had given up on fic for it and was not even going to nominate it, so I had to post anonymously on his DW to tell him he had to nominate/request it. I'm sure he just DIDN'T CONNECT THAT AT ALL with telling someone on the yuletide comm to watch it a week back, ha. Nor with the random person who popped up on his DW at around the same time, asking him random questions about Judaism and community (I'd already decided my "serious" fic had to be about community), at least one bit of which showed up in that fic because it was too good not to. So.
(...At least seekingferret probably didn't realize he'd be getting TWO yuletide presents, and that one of them would be total crack. But there, that's enough of that. More yuletide-reveal-ish-stuff here and here.)
Anyway, tl;dr version: This opera is so not for everyone, and I would not necessarily recommend it unless you are weirdly fascinated by early-20th-century music and religious philosophy. Like I apparently am. In which case, go for it!
To tell you the story of how I came to watch this, I must tell you the story of the Extremely Non-Anonymous Yuletide Fic. So... on the yuletide brainstorming post, I meandered on, as I do, about wanting crack!Turandot. (The fic I got was not crack; was far better than crack; was the fic I would have requested if I had known it would be possible for someone to write it.) And a complete stranger,
seekingferret, posted something very nice on that about Turandot in SPAAAAACE, and one thing led to another, as these things do, and before either of us knew what had happened he'd recced me Schoenberg's Moses und Aron.So I watched it. I watched two versions. My favorite, the 2009 version, is available on youtube here. I do not think it is the best one musically or in terms of interpreting Schoenberg's original stage directions (both those honors go to the Straub version); however, I find it the most accessible of the available versions. The conflicted love Moses and Aron have for each other, the tension between the idea and the image, the misunderstandings Moses and Aron have, the "game of telephone" as seekingferret put it in one of his letters -- these all come across beautifully in this version. If you were in the market for a weird Schoenberg opera that takes the Exodus story and twists it around into a dialogue about the philosophy of God -- the tension between, on one hand, a God who is inherently abstract and unknowable, and on the other, the images we make to try to understand and imagine that which is incomprehensible and unimaginable -- well, anyway, if you were looking for a production that underlines and sells that, I think this is it.
However, this version does not contain the problematic unfinished third act (and for good reason; the third act does away with a lot of the relationship and tension between the two brothers/concepts, so it would not have suited the interpretation in the 2009 version), so I had to watch the Straub and Huilet version to get that. (Note: This is seekingferret's favorite, and the one he recommended to me.) This one has an Aron whose voice is quite a bit more suited to the role. It is a very spare, very -- I don't know how to describe it except in images of desert and purity and the idea of scouring away everything inessential. Which makes it exactly what Schoenberg was talking about in the opera. But which makes it, I think, somewhat less accessible to someone watching it for the first time. (Note: the Straub version comes with the libretto (Allen Forte translation, OMG DO I HAVE ISSUES with the translation, but anyway)! Also, um, I made a PDF copy so I could carry it around to write this thing, I KNOW I AM OBSESSIVE SO WHAT, so if anyone wants one, PM me).
(The third available version is apparently set during the Holocaust, and seekingferret warned me away from it. I did watch a five-minute clip of it just in case it might bother me less than him, but yeah, he was right.)
But oh, the FEELINGS I have about this opera. I felt very much the way I felt reading Jean-Paul Sartre in college, and for much the same reasons: it's fascinating stuff, really meaty fascinating stuff to think about and sink my teeth into, I totally enjoyed it, and gosh a lot of the time I felt like he was completely missing the point. I mean, really, Schoenberg?
Anyway. And then I was all agreeing with seekingferret that this HAS to have fic written for it. ...And then I found seekingferret had given up on fic for it and was not even going to nominate it, so I had to post anonymously on his DW to tell him he had to nominate/request it. I'm sure he just DIDN'T CONNECT THAT AT ALL with telling someone on the yuletide comm to watch it a week back, ha. Nor with the random person who popped up on his DW at around the same time, asking him random questions about Judaism and community (I'd already decided my "serious" fic had to be about community), at least one bit of which showed up in that fic because it was too good not to. So.
(...At least seekingferret probably didn't realize he'd be getting TWO yuletide presents, and that one of them would be total crack. But there, that's enough of that. More yuletide-reveal-ish-stuff here and here.)
Anyway, tl;dr version: This opera is so not for everyone, and I would not necessarily recommend it unless you are weirdly fascinated by early-20th-century music and religious philosophy. Like I apparently am. In which case, go for it!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-03 02:42 am (UTC)Hmm. That sounds worth thinking about. One of my friends in college had a lot to say about linking the divine with a particular point in space and time, with Sinai being one of those correspondence points (this friend being Christian, the life (birth/death) of Jesus was of course another correspondence point). I know that's not exactly what you're talking about, but it's what it made me think of.