Dramaturgids

I am always pleasantly, somewhat narcissistically surprised when I come across a CD or DVD at the local library that seems so out of the ordinary that it seems as though it was selected for me and my peculiar tastes. What makes it narcissistic is that I am on the classical music committee, and suddenly recall that it was I who selected this particular CD or DVD, so no wonder it appealed to me now, even though I'd forgotten it was my selection.

There it was, Tiefland, a DVD that should have been wonderful; a new production from the Zürich Oper, great voices.

And it was an interesting production, when I looked at it; but it was so off-the-wall in the staging that I was of two minds: should I watch it? Or simply re-record it as audio? I thought the staging was compelling, but it had nothing to do with the story. Tiefland is a story about shepherds, people in the mountains and the valleys of Spain, with the humblest, proudest, butting up against the rich, the bored, the powerful. This production looked like a cross between Avatar and The Bride of Frankenstein. Characters in glass phonebooths emerged from the floor and elevatored up and down, changing costumes as they re-emerged; they sang from within them, and had video cameras on them, which were superimposed onto a master screen at the back, with smaller screens behind each singer. It all was so labored and so high-tech, and so 'huh?' that the whole thing was ruined for me.

Why do dramaturgs insist on making these ultra-conceptual pieces, especially for operas that people don't really know well? And how far would they take the best-known operas?

Would anyone find La Traviata better, performed on a battle-ship in dress-blues? When it was premièred, it was set in the distant past of the 1700's. Imagine Alfredo in his costume from the première, as seen here! Personally, I don't think anyone would want to see that production today, since the story is so perfectly tuned to the 'modern era' of the 1850's. But does it really become more relevant to place it in the 21st century? Would any of the social no-nos that drive the plot make any sense at all? Or would they have another layer of 'gear-switching' that the audience has to go through to enjoy it at all? Traviata does not seem to be one of those operas that get "updated" interminably, because there is too much in it that is so good in its own time.

But what of Wagner, whose conceptualization of his Ring had so many details dear to his heart, that have all been swept into the Rhine backwater because no one really wants to produce such a mammoth concept anymore. Personally, I'd love to see a Ring cycle that was just as Wagner conceived it, including pushing the robot Fafner up over the bank and having a little trapdoor in his chest open up to reveal a megaphone through which the bass can sing.

Maybe we should think of an opera company that stages one opera consistently on the set of another, with costumes as well? That way, at least it would all feel like part of the same genre. So we'd have Il Trovatore produced on the set of Madama Butterfly; Götterdämmerung unfolding, staged as Iolanthe; Wozzeck performed with the sets and costumes of Dido and Æneas dazzlingly behind it. Why not? It makes as much sense to me.

The Breadth of French Opera in the 19th Century

Speaking with colleagues the other day, I asked 'what French operas are in the repertory' in this country, thinking that there were perhaps five. Carmen, of course, Manon, perhaps; Samson et Dalila is pushing it, as well as Faust these days; Les Contes d'Hoffmann? It's truly pathetic that we simply don't listen to French opera much at all anymore, and just about anything that comes through is considered a 'rarity'. (That misused word we hear so much when referring to opera that no one pays to come hear.) My friend offered La Fille du Régiment, but of course that is Donizetti, and if we admit one Italian in this cadre we have to say Verdi and Don Carlos as well.

However, the number of French operas that were were written in the 19th early 20th century are so immense, I wonder if there were as many Italian and German operas written contemporaneously to match them. A Canadian archive in Ottawa has released a huge library of newly digitized scores from this tranche of time, and simply to browse through them is to make one's jaw drop with astonishment at what we do not listen to, nonetheless perform on the operatic stage.

Do you know any of the operas of Adolphe Adam (Le Bijou Perdu, Giralda, Le Brasseur de Preston, Le Châlet, Le Sourd, Pantins de Violette, Le Farfadet, La Poupee de Nuremburg)? How about Alfred Bruneau? (Attaque du Moulin, La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret, Le Rêve, Le Roi Canadaule, L'Enfant Roi, Naïs Micoulin, Virginie, Le Jardin de Paradis or Messidor?) Or Camille Erlanger (Aphrodite, Saint Julien Hospitalier, Le Juif Polonais, Le Fils d'Étoile, Kermaria)? Or perhaps the famous Grisar (Les Porcherons , Bonsoir M. Pantalon, Gilles Ravisseur, La Chatte Merveilleuse, Le Cariolloneur de Bruges, Le Chien du Jardinier, Le Joallier de St. James, Les Amours du Diable, Les Poupées de l'Infante??

We all know that Offenbach wrote a zillion and a half operas, opera-comiques, opera bouffes - but he was surrounded by men who wrote continually for the Opéra and the Comique, or the Monnaie. Looking at some of these scores, there are beauties galore in them. If you ever get a chance to hear an air from Paul et Virginie (Massé), you will feel the same, I am sure. I am not saying that these works are uniformly the miaule-de-chat, but the enormity of the creative industry in them makes them worth a second look, if not a first...

You can find a surprising number of CDs of less-than professionally recorded versions of some of these operas at House of Opera.

Victor Massé	Daniel Auber	Alfred Bruneau

RIP Giulietta

Giulietta Simionato died this past week, having almost attained the age of 100 (one week short, apparently). This centenarian was the first mezzo I heard singing recorded opera when I was a kid (Mario Lanza was the first tenor), with Mario del Monaco in Cavelleria Rusticana, a work my grandmother thought would be appropriate for a 13 year old to hear. Personally, I was more partial to Pagliacci, and only appreciated the Mascagni years later, but I recall reading about Giulietta S. and listening to that last note of Cavalleria, that high C -- on a C major chord! which is supposed to represent the horrorstruck townsfolk hearing that one of their own has been ammazzato'ed just behind the wall, over there, lying in the dust.

Later on, I heard her in Norma, with Maria Callas, her BFF, singing "Mira o Norma," that was a performance so good, you could hear in this live recording the crowd, as a living, seething organism, building to a full cheer, then going into true yelling and screaming, at the top of their lungs tearing up the seats and stopping the performance. Even after the conductor began it up again, there were residual yelps. Now that's opera.

Redeeming Social Opera

or
Lettres de mon Moulin Rouge.

The only problem with Baz Luhrman's Puccini's La Bohème on Broadway is that the last two acts are a real down.

Then again, all opera aficionados know that. It only seems to make a difference in this version, when so much of the production is full of life, that it seems a pity that they couldn’t find a miracle cure for Mimì this time around, much akin to the 19th century happy endings for Hamlet.

For all the hype and bother about the production, this strikes one as more authentic than most, because it is full of unabashed artifice, and is played by a young ensemble that took more than 3 rehearsals to get there, and knows they will not be leaving town to sing Rigoletto on Friday night in Fort Worth. The cool precision with which the actors and the choreographed stagehands meld the scenes together and fabricate an almost cinematic version of this time-flogged story is half the fun, and certainly half the action. It’s 1951 or so, on Paris’s left bank, and these are real bohemians who paint on canvas with siphons, eat in the bathtub, and type on an Olivetti. You cannot find a better quartet than these four youngsters crawling over each other to keep warm like puppies, to scrape together a living out in the streets of the Latin Quarter.



I have always found the first act of this opera quite an opera in itself, and don’t know why someone hasn’t put it on a bill with something like Trouble in Tahiti as two one-acters. What’s missing? It’s got action, humor, pathos, drama, love interest, and a happy ending. Who needs more? All right, I’ll keep that in abeyance for now. Read more >>