cahn

I went to go see Die Walküre with the local opera company! (I missed Das Rheingold a few years ago -- I really wanted to see it, I think I was out of town.) The local opera company has had some troubles with having enough audience for the operas, so they've slashed the number of performances from 2 to 1, and then for this opera they showed it in the smaller theater, not the big theater that I've seen e.g. La Traviata at. This had certain issues. The theater is not big enough to have a huge pit orchestra; I think to make a pit at all you have to give up some of the seats? (I think?) -- so they had a slimmed-down orchestra (the entire opera seems to have been "arranged" by someone for a small regional opera company, with a smaller orchestra and also abridgement of the music/text), and put the orchestra on stage. Personally I loved this. I love seeing the orchestra, I love having an idea of what instruments are playing when, I love getting to think things like "huh, someone thought about not having the violins playing for three hours straight." But the lady sitting next to me really didn't like it at all. Oh well. Anyway, and then a big problem was that if the singers were near the back of the stage, their voices didn't carry at all, and since most characters entered from near the back, this was a problem for dramatic entrances.

As you can imagine it was a very spare production, which works very well for Walküre. (IDK how they're going to do Siegfried, though, if they do it next year or in another couple of years. Maybe they won't do it?) Basically the set was: some sticks artfully arranged, suggesting an entryway on one side of the stage. (The sword Nothung was also thrust into it at the beginning.) The sticks also had lights attached, which changed color for different scenes (e.g., at the fire at the end they glowed red and orange; I think they might have been bright neon colors to signify Valhalla). I feel like my description makes it sound tacky but it wasn't; I thought it was really really effective, especially given their constraints. The choreography was also excellent, not in the sense that one noticed it particularly, but in the sense that one didn't notice it but thinking about it afterwards they clearly did make good use of their small space, you always got the sense that characters were interacting and not that they were wandering aimlessly.

And all the singers were great. I mean, it's a regional opera company, we're not getting Met stars or anything (plus which I suspect that one of the side effects of having a small venue and small orchestra meant that you don't have to have quite the Wagnerian volume that you presumably have to have in a large opera house and having to sing over a whole orchestra), but they were totally worth hearing for three hours. In my opinion Wotan stole the show; he was the same guy (Wayne Tigge) I saw play an extremely scenery-chewing Scarpia when I saw Tosca in the fall (he got a ton of boos, he was great), only Wotan gave him more scope and more breadth to do character work than Scarpia had. I wished I had got a seat closer so I could watch his face better, and if they'd had a second production I would have legit considered seeing it again just for him :D The Brünnhilde singer was also very good, quite a character in her own right, and had a great rapport with Wotan; one thing I hadn't seen before was that both Wotan and Brünnhilde were just having a lot of fun with each other in their opening scene (the text supports Brünnhilde having fun, but the Wotans I've seen on video have been more reserved even then). Siegmund and Sieglinde were also great (I mean, I basically watch this opera for "So grüße mir Walhall" and it was great, and his Siegmund was believably in love and gentle to Sieglinde, while out of his mind with grief at his impending death and parting from her), although I felt like Sieglinde's big "O hehrstes Wunder" didn't come off quite as it was supposed to due to either the general acoustics or where I was sitting in particular (as she was facing away from me). Hunding was great though his voice wasn't quite as loud as Siegmund's or Sieglinde's; Fricka was also great although she had an annoying tendency of raising her hands when she sang.

Okay, I'm going to put my Philistine hat on now. I was VERY happy about almost all the cuts. There's a lot you have to have for the story, and then there's just a lot that is kind of... repetitive :P Do we need to have Siegmund's description of the ash tree? Do we really need to have Sieglinde and Siegmund talking for ages about how Hunding is chasing them? (We already know that from Fricka and if we didn't catch that, Brünnhilde tells him later.) They cut both of those and I was a big fan. They did keep all the deep myth/philosophy bits in the beginning of Act 2 with Wotan's conversations with Fricka and Brünnhilde, and that too is right, in my opinion.

The two cuts I didn't like were a) they cut Siegmund talking about how his father had promised him a sword, which made Fricka's assertion of the same a little later sound a bit weird, and b) they cut Wotan's whole address to Hunding after Siegmund is killed: "Geh hin, Knecht!" and I am Put Out about this because it's one of my favorite parts and our Wotan would have done it spectacularly. It's important both dramatically and character-wise!

Also, Brünnhilde got a hug near the end from Wotan, which, YEAH. I think I am just a fan of sopranos getting hugs from their father-figures? But in general I felt like this production really leaned hard on Die Walküre being fundamentally about Wotan and Brünnhilde's relationship, more so than about Siegmund and Sieglinde's romance and tragedy or Wotan's dilemma (which I'd always focused on before) -- aided by the minimalist set, I think, and also by Wotan and Brünnhilde having super father-daughter chemistry. I loved it.

So, yeah, I would still love to see this in a big opera house someday, but I am very very pleased with getting to see it live <3

I saw a live oooooopera last weekend (La Traviata) and it was greeeeeeat and I'm so happy!

I feel like the last couple of years have made it so that although in principle I am reasonably comfortable going out and doing things now, in practice it is so easy now to just be like "eh, but maybe I shouldn't," especially if there's any impediment to Doing the Thing. So I did miss the local opera company doing Semele, earlier in the year, which now I regret. But Traviata is super special to me, and it was after the couple of weeks I was limiting us going places with lots of people so the kids could do a couple of academic-related-in-person things none of us wanted them to miss, and, and, well, it's Traviata! So I ditched the family and went downtown and watched it. It's a regional opera company so one doesn't expect the Met, but it was (I thought) really quite good! Live opera is sooooo greeeeat.

( Loved it all, but Violetta and the staging particularly I thought were great )

Hey, google (which knows way too much about me) just informed me of the following:

a) next week is the last week of free Met broadcasts (whatever else you might say about the Met -- and you might say a lot -- I really admired them for the free broadcasts)

b) on Thurs July 22 they are broadcasting the Contes d'Hoffman I keep raving about -- the one with Grigolo, Lindsey, and Hampson, which I just love because all three of them are amazingly great performers. (Also, I have a tremendous crush on Kate Lindsey after watching it, and I already had a tremendous crush on Hampson, and I'd probably have an equally large crush on Grigolo (who is really good) except that he's a tenor, so...) So you (particularly zdenka because I keep obsessing to you about it, and also iberiandoctor because Hampson, but everyone else too) should watch it and then come back and talk to me about it!

I should also note that (1) Hampson is getting older and his voice is not quite as beautiful as it once was, but he's just such a great performer I don't even care (2) the staging includes 100% too many random scantily-clad women for as far as I can tell no purpose whatsoever except to inform you that This Is The Met, Bastion of Anti-Progressiveness. So there is that.

My favorite thing about it is that Lindsey and Hampson do this interplay that I adore where they're always very aware of each other, sometimes as enemies, sometimes as allies (they both don't want Hoffman to get the girl), sometimes as... idk... supernatural colleagues where they are the only ones who understand how creepy the both of them are. And I really want someone to write me fic telling me what the heck is going on with them :D

c) Sun July 25 they are re-running the Ballo in Maschera I mentioned here which you should also all watch if you like semi-regie (so maybe not zdenka, haha).

Guuuuuuys I found out from shewhostaples about blackboxexchange, a fic and art exchange (art!! psst simonboccanegra) for theatre and musicals and opera and ballet!! HOW EXCITED AM I? THIS EXCITED. THIS EXCITED WITH CAPITAL LETTERS.

I have sooooo many things I want to nominate!! In no particular order:
-Turandot
-Die Walkure
-All the Verdi (or at least Ballo in Maschera, Simon Boccanegra, La Forza del Destino)
-Pelleas et Melisande
-Don Carlos (Schiller)
-Les Contes d'Hoffman
-La Clemenza di Tito
-La Traviata

...I don't even have room for Eugene Onegin and Don Carlos (Verdi) or Gilbert and Sullivan or musicals!! Ahhhhh musicals are a whole other thing that I want!

eeeeee I made the kids listen to opera in the car with me all day today (they didn't care, they were reading their books) :D

writing operafic is great because one doesn't actually have to get any history right, one can totally make it up

Also, are there any operas I should watch between now and signups (or possibly now and nominations)? :D (Ideally ones I can get free or from Met on Demand.)

Also also, does anyone have a good Aida they recommend? The Aida I watched (recent Met) had Netrebko, who's always good, but everyone else was kind of... boring.

Hmm, I had a draft of an opera post that seems to have vanished -- at least I can’t find it now -- and one of the operas I wanted to talk about was the Ballo in Maschera with Hvorostovsky as Renato, and Radvanovsky as Amelia, and Marcelo Álvarez as Gustavo. It’s streaming free for the next, umm, 18 hours? So I want to talk about it now and encourage you to watch it, because it’s great, and sorry I didn’t get to it until now. (And also sorry you’re not getting the post I can’t find, which was rather more detailed!)

The staging/choreography is abstract, stylized, over-the-top, and I love it madly. There’s a sort of hilariously Broadway component to it, where e.g. in this clip near the end everyone starts doing a chorus line with hats, I laughed so hard :D The bits with Ulrica are also hilariously over-the-top. There are a couple of missteps -- I thought the villains defacing Gustavo’s portrait was Too Much -- but generally speaking I really thought they did a good job of doing it so that the essential nature of the opera shone through.

I feel like there are some things Hvorostovsky is really good at, acting-wise, and playing the devoted, slightly ominous friend is one, and playing the pining lover is another, so being Renato is playing to his strengths :)

But I was totally shocked Álvarez (whom I’d never watched before) was the one who won my heart, because his acting was so good. He actually made me believe that Gustavo was conflicted about Amelia and Renato, instead of when I watched Domingo when I just felt super creeped out by Gustavo hitting on Amelia. (I suppose, somewhat presciently…) I could also see why Amelia fell for him -- on one hand, okay, Hvorostovsky, why would you even ever look at anyone else, yeah… but on the other hand Hvorostovsky plays Renato as very reserved and closed, and Álvarez is so energetic and peppy that you can just see how she might have been attracted to that.

And the end is just so great. When I watched Domingo, I was a bit “why are you suddenly all ‘I super didn’t have an affair with your wife’?” but with Álvarez it’s very clear that his Gustavo knows he’s hurt Renato, and he wants more than anything to make that right before he dies. It’s not about whether he’s had an affair with her, it’s all about Gustavo and Renato and their friendship in that moment, and… yeah, he totally sold it to me.

(I feel bad for not having much to say about Radvanosky! She was good, but I don’t remember all that much about her in particular.)

This is your reminder that tomorrow evening (and for the next 24 hours after that) the Met is streaming Don Carlo, one of my favorite productions ever, with the extra-fabulous Furlanetto, the gorgeous Poplavskaya, my fave Keenlyside (who is choreographed properly!), and the marvelously dramatic Alagna :D So watch it and then come back and talk to me about it! Like, seriously, I would rec this even to people for whom opera isn't their thing, if you happen to like music and ~drama~ :D (Although I think the first act is much less interesting than the rest of it -- okay, fine, I'm in it for the love triangle between son, father, and son's best friend, and less so for the son-father-wife triangle -- by which you can see how, er, operatic this is! Anyway, that is a long-winded way of saying, skip the first act if het love stories are Not Your Fave.)

Next week the Met will be streaming (among other things) Aida with Netrebko, which I was about a quarter through watching anyway, so I'm gonna commit to finish watching that and am excited to talk about that with anyone who is watching it.

Also, if anyone has anything interesting about any other broadcasts, including last week's Wagner, I'd love to hear it. I didn't watch any of the Wagner but I still have my Met on Demand subscription (which I'm going to keep for at least another month or two) so I could at some point, if there's one that anyone highly recommends.

Meanwhile... ( it only took me what, two weeks, but I finally finished the Met Trovatore! )

I have been listening to a Lot of Salieri and Mozart over the last couple of months, as a direct result of selenak reviewing Amadeus, and I promised her I'd write up my thoughts on them. As usual, I am only about a couple of months late :P (But this let me listen to a lot more Mozart, I guess...)

As for Salieri: I listened to Les Horaces, Tarare (the one that is featured in Amadeus, leading to Shaffer!Mozart's immortal line (at least, it's immortal in our household) "One hears such sounds, and what can one say, but -- Salieri!"), and La Scuola de' Gelosi. I liked the former two a lot, and I started out liking the third but in the end got kinda bored. I did not watch any of these, so I have no idea how they stack up as visual drama.

Horaces and Tarare remind me a lot of late Gluck. selenak informed historically-challenged me that Gluck was Salieri's teacher, so guess that makes sense! There is something about the musical texture that very much appeals to me, in the same way that late Gluck operas appeal to me (although when I went back and listened to some Gluck, it seems to me that Gluck has the more beautiful melodies). And I read somewhere (probably a combo of wikipedia and selenak) that Salieri and Gluck were both interested in the words taking primacy, which I very much approve of -- it's evident in the recordings even though I can't understand most of the words. I honestly think there's a lot to like in these operas.

My overall verdict is that Shaffer!Mozart is much too hard on Salieri :P As he should be, when I thought about it some more: Shaffer!Mozart isn't really acting as historical!Mozart in the movie (as far as I can tell from browsing articles on the interwebs, historical!Mozart liked Salieri's work). Of course, Shaffer!Mozart is the vehicle for Shaffer's ideas about genius and how it interacts with mediocrity and so on, but in addition Shaffer!Mozart is also acting a little here, I think, as a twentieth-century voice of musicality. We've all grown up with Mozart's music; we know what it can do, and we know Salieri wasn't quite doing it. Not because he wasn't a good composer, which I actually think he was! But he wasn't pushing the boundaries of things like Mozart was. It doesn't surprise me at all that Salieri's operas gradually went out of style; they were very good examples of their own time, but by the time Salieri got old, that time was past.

I also fiiiiinally listened to Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which has been on my to-listen list for... probably at least a year now. I listened to the Sung in English version first, and then the Gardiner version (John Eliot Gardiner is my gateway drug to opera in general, see also Mozart and Gluck), and I reactivated my Met on Demand subscription (more on this on some subsequent post) partially because I was going to watch it before writing it up but the Met does not have a video of this at all, boooooo. This turns out to be OK, in the sense that I like to watch operas before talking about them partially because I always miss stuff when I'm listening, but the plot of Serail is extremely simple, so I'm pretty confident I didn't miss an entire subplot someplace (which has happened before in more complicated operas).

(But seriously, the plot is reeeeally simple. Pasha Selim has captured the sopranos and one of the tenors, and the other tenor comes to rescue them. That's pretty much it, that's the plot, except for a bit at the end which I really liked (and which I was unspoiled for). )

The way I feel about Serail is that -- well, I enjoyed it! A lot! It's very cute! but as Mozart, it's rather minor compared to his major works. If he had been remembered based on this, people would have thought he was pleasant, but I don't think he wouldn't have been considered the genius he is today. The arias seem a little more dependent on whizzing scales or simple progressions rather than the gorgeous melodies that Mozart is famous for. (And I can't help but feel that Emperor Joseph II had a point when he said "Too many notes." Am I being a Philistine again? :) ) That being said, there are bits and pieces where you can see what will come later -- like "Welcher Wechsel herrscht in meiner Seele / Traurigkeit ward mir zum Losw" which -- if I knew more musicology maybe I could analyze and describe a little better what I like about it, but since I don't, I will just say, parts of this aria made my brain stop working from sheer loveliness, in the same way that my brain stops during the entirety of "Ach, ich fuhls" or "Porgi, amor." Salieri, bless him, doesn't ever do that to my brain.

But honestly, if I had to choose one of Serail and Tarare and give up the other, I'd probably choose Tarare. (Only in my best of all possible worlds I'd make Gardiner record it, lol.)

(Tangentially, the most hilarious part of listening to Tarare was that in "Martern aller Arten," when Konstanze sings, "Lärme, tobe, wüthe!" my whole brain suddenly flashed back to the part in Amadeus where Caterina Cavalieri sings that line. I don't think I do that with any other Mozart pieces -- oh, okay, fine, I do it with "Confutatis" too but I now have enough independent history with the Requiem that it's not my only association -- and I didn't do it with Tarare either. I suppose it's at least partially because it's such a dramatic cinematic moment in the movie -- which -- is another testament to how good the movie is; it's a dramatic soprano line, sure, but to make it a high point of tension and drama in the movie, unrelated to the drama in the opera, is pretty amazing.)

But then I had to go listen to Die Zauberflöte again, of course. I wrote about a whole bunch of different recordings/a couple of DVDs a while back, and I was pleased by my consistency -- I still feel the same way about all these recordings. :) (I like the Gardiner more than I did then, and Solti a little less, perhaps. I will also note that at the time Gerald Finley's Papageno in the Gardiner production didn't ping me at all; now, having seen and heard and loved Finley in a couple of things since then, it's cool to hear him here too!) I love Zauberflöte so much that I can't really talk rationally or analytically about it, nor can I really honestly compare it to Serail. But I do think that Zauberflöte is a Great Work, and Serail is not, not really. (Also! The Gardiner video production of Zauberflote, a somewhat stylized and choreographed version (but not quite as wacko as the Taymor production) is on Youtube! I haven't finished watching it yet, though. Will report back!)

Simon Keenlyside, René Pape, Dinara Alieva, Fabio Sartori

I knew it was possible to do a Don Carlo(s) that ran counter to the text and was sometimes infuriating (see also the Willy Decker, which I haven't talked about -- so you can see it didn't make a huge impression on me -- but which I mostly enjoyed) but I did not know until last night that it was possible to do a Don Carlo, with a very very good Rodrigo and Filippo mind you, that was boring.

( it's more fun to complain about it than it was to watch. Mostly. )

This is totally too good to keep to myself: on my "I showed my family opera clips" post, mildred_of_midgard and selenak are talking about Frederick the Great (by way of Don Carlo, of course) and it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa

Things I knew about Frederick the Great before a year ago: he was king of... Prussia??

Additional things I knew about Frederick the Great before the last couple of days: selenak informed me last year that he and his dad may well have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Schiller's Don Carlos, and everything that goes with that: his dad (Friedrich Wilhelm, henceforth FW) was majorly awful, he had a boyfriend (Katte) who was horribly killed by his dad

Only a partial list of the additional things I now know about Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and associated historical figures due to mildred and selenak:
-Fritz and Katte's escape plan (which resulted in Katte's execution) was... really, really boneheaded. As boneheaded as opera plots! :P
-Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught (! puts all those letters in Don Carlos into perspective) (ETA: but also see mildred's comment below)
-Fritz wrote opera libretti and so did his sister
-Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD
-Fritz wrote a poem about orgasm that also reads as if he's never actually, like, had sex (although that was not in this post, it was in the comments to this one)
-FW apparently beat up George II when they were kids
-I am totally not even going to try to summarize the discussion about FW's "rationalized sadism" and sexual hangups and the reeeeeally bizarre Dresden interlude (go down a couple of comments for the really insane stuff)
-Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space

Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about

I talked about Opera for Beginners for my family reunion talk and used much of the advice I was given here, thank you! :)

-I brought speakers, because there isn't much use in giving an opera talk if you can't hear the music! The hilarious thing was that I was not the only one who had audio/audiovisual components to my presentation, but I was the only one who had brought speakers. I had been a little bitter about lugging them all around Montana, but less so when they turned out to be broadly useful :) What was more irritating was that after they worked fine when I tried them out in my office, they didn't work at all for a while when I was trying to give the talk. Finally my cousin's teenager, who was acting as unofficial tech support, suggested rebooting as a last resort, and of course that worked. Sigh.

-A couple of people mentioned talking about where one might go looking for opera. My biggest recommendations to a newbie are the following:
1.The Chandos Opera in English CDs, without which I would still hate opera today. I highly highly recommend all the Mozart ones, particularly the da Ponte operas (Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte), and the bel canto comedies (e.g., Barber of Seville, The Elixir of Love), and dis-recommend their Verdi except Don Carlos (for some reason Verdi tends to come out a bit muddled). Their French opera also seems to be very good, and I absolutely adore their Eugene Onegin (which stars Thomas Hampson and Kiri te Kanawa).

2. Met On Demand, which comes with a free 7-day trial. People who know a lot about opera rag on the Met for not being adventurous in its staging and concept, which, fair, but for a beginner, in my opinion, that's exactly what you want, and you can't do better than the Met for gorgeous staging and costumes, great singers, and great videography, which I didn't even know would affect me until I started watching a bunch of these... and... it does actually make a huge difference when watching video. (Watching live is, of course, different.)

-I showed several clips, one of which was a 3-minute clip of Kaufmann/Hampson/Salminen in the auto-da-fe scene from Don Carlo. (Alagna/Keenlyside/Furlanetto is still the whole version of Don Carlo I would recommend, but for auto-da-fe out of context I thought the former was better, not least because it didn't have a giant weeping Jesus in the background.) I explained beforehand the background about how Posa is Prince Carlo's best friend but also has the relationship where he has sworn fealty to King Philip. (I have uploaded the clip here (google drive video clip, ~3 minutes) -- mildredofmidgard, I know music/opera is Not Your Thing but this is the moment in Don Carlo I was talking about, check it out) and my big triumph, as far as I am concerned, is that when the clip ended my cousin cried out, "Oh, that's so sad!" MY WORK HERE IS DONE.

-My other great triumph was that E was curious about what I said about Don Giovanni. Being her, she could not care less about Don G himself -- she was perfectly content with a limited understanding that he was the Bad Guy -- but she was particularly interested in what I said about Don G coming to a sticky end, and asked about it the next day. Once I further explained that there was a singing statue and that in many productions Don G disappeared into flames with the statue at the end, both she and A really wanted to watch it, so that afternoon we all snuggled up on the couch and watched "Don Giovanni, a cenar teco" (this one with Rodney Gilfrey) and they still ask for "the statue opera" on occasion. (That's the only part they have watched or are interested in watching, or that I am interested in playing for them, until they're a lot older. Well, okay, "O statua gentilissima," but that's along the same lines.)

-Since you guys said it was fun for people to recognize music in opera, another short clip I showed was from Thais, because, well, I don't know if it's all Koreans or just my particular family, but all our extended relatives LOOOOOVE Meditation from Thais and all of us cousins who play violin (or piano, if that cousin happened to be near one of the cousins who played violin) have had to play that song approximately six million times, every time a third cousin twice removed came to visit. There was much groaning when the melody was revealed :)

-It turns out my aunt (uncle's wife) really likes opera!!!! We are already making plans to go to Salzburg or Italy sometime and watch opera :D (well, pipe dreams right now... I certainly wouldn't go until my kids are older)

(Part 1 was where I asked for help; Part 2 was an outtake of this post about emoting in opera)