Broadening my Perspective about Rigoletto

I did not go to the Met's simulcast of their new Rigoletto last fall because 1. I really dislike Las Vegas and 2., I strongly believe changing a time and place by 400 years and 6,000 miles is a stage director's ego trip and unlikely to serve the original in a meaningful way.  But I've been rethinking this production of Rigoletto after reading many positive comments and thinking about the possible parallels between a decadent Italian court and a decadent city of gamblers and the 1960s Rat Pack.

I have to say is was the the most moving Rigoletto I've seen. Michael Meyer's vision and a very contemporary translation in the subtitles worked very, very well.  The video work was excellent (and owes much to the fact that most of this set was brilliantly lit, in contrast to some of the atmospheric, gloomy sets I've seen and disliked. Opera singers have to be actors today and this cast of European singers were very good actors although it was quite a stretch for Gilda (German Diana Dramrau) who is surely in her 30s with the body of a woman that age, to sometimes display the innocence and naivete of a protected teenager, but she mostly pulled it off. She has a lovely voice. The Duke, not royalty but a singer with a retineu of empty headed lackeys, was Zelijo Lucic, obviously East European although I don't know the country. He has a smooth and engaging tenor. I didn't get the name of the scarily snake-like Sparofucile who had a wonderful light bass voice and suave beard and sideburns. Best of all Rigoletto was Piotr Beczale (Russian, I think). A wondeful voice, a fine actor.  So sincerely troubled, so quick to be frightened by Monterone's curse and then to beg for his kidnapped daughter.  So grasping and loving a father and finally utterly destroyed by the cruelty of the ending brought about by his desire for vengence (more 16th century than 21st).

 

Oh, the ending -- always a problem.  Verdi's violins sob and I choke up but my head is saying that her throat was cut, how is she rallying and singing for five minutes?  That beautiful line about  praying from him along side her mother in heaven (preferably with out the words) could make a concete block cry. I'm emotionally drained, but in the good way opera can do it.  So glad I saw this opera.

The Met, doing what I love

This is a new era at the Metropolitan Opera, they are doing updated productions, simulcasts and everything else they can think of to attract new audiences.  I understand that but I don't always like it.  I hated their new La Traviata last year.  Other  new productions I've liked, sometimes hated and sometimes deeply admired. 

Today I saw Donizetti's Maria Stuarda which the Met has never done before for some strange reason.  It is a beautiful opera, based to a large extent on Schiller' poem which posits a meeting between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I that never happened. For me, seeing a simulcast today, this was a perfect Met experience. The sets were modern in their simplicity and did not use elaborate technial as staging several new productions have. Set and costumes were designed by the same man, costumes seemed lifted from court pictures of the period. In  way, mostly thanks to Shakespeare's popularity, we are more familiar with the Elizabethan period, 500 years ago, than with many more recent historical periods.  Elizabeth I is a familiar figure and so are the courtiers. Many movies have told this story of the rival queens.

Best of all, it is an opera of gorgeous bel canto music and it was sung by wonderful soloists -- all of them but Joyce Dedonnatio, especially, as Mary. Acting is now important in Met productions and the acting of the two queens in their confrontation was wonderful. In the intermission Dedonnati explained its power because "they were both right" in what they hated about one another. The second act's pre-execution scene was very long but music, singing, acting were so affecting I know i wasn't the only one in the theatre in tears.  Two instances of brilliant design at the end left me, and surly the whole audience, with indellable visual memories: Mary was stripped of her severe black dress just before she mounted the scaffold to the block -- and was gowned in a brilliant red shift  (Elizabeth had been in gaudy red in the opening scene), and at the end as she walked forward and lights faded, a spotlight hit the big, cruel, silver blade of the executioner's ax. This is stage craft as I expect it to be at the Met. A production I will never forget!  I'm so glad simulcasts exist.

Verdi's Masked Ball from the Metropolitan Opera

I wonder what  people think who are just being introduced to grand opera through the Metropolitan Opera simulcasts.   As the photo suggests we have two men, very serious. In fact, the man on the right is the king (which in this production is  bit hard to tell since it's in modern dress and he mostly wears a morning suit. The man on the right is his best friend until that good old code of honor gets in the way when the friend's wife and the king admit their love for one another.  Although each plans to forego any kind of consumation  (except for a very authentic looking kiss  in a sinister graveyard). The plot is hard to follow; the set is modern, stripped down, the costumes are formal but modern, the women's gowns suggest the 1940s.  his is a middle period Verdi opera when his republicant leanings mean trouble with the censors which lead to odd subject choices.  But he was attaining his great lyrical powers so this opera contains one of the truly great love duets and much other magnificant music. 

Still the story is disconcerting. The first scene seems almost like a Johan Strauss light opera, then we revert to the dark predictions of the gypsy Ulrica.  The drama convusles and grows darker, the king's personality is not very kingly. Amelia, the beloved, enters gowned and made up like a caniving woman from a 40s movie (she is supposed to be pure hearted but helplessly in love with the king -- we have no idea how this passion grew).  It's all prepostrous but the principles keep singing beautifully.  Will this gain an audience for the most difficult, and one of the most expensive, art forms in the West? 

I don't know about the rest of the country. I hope there are more young people in the many other theatres where this simulcast wa shown. Here I added my own to a sea of white hair.  I  wasn't very attentive but I did not see anyone younger than 45 and that's a guess.  I have had mixed feelings about the many new productions set in modern times or in surrealistic times (like their new La Traviata which I saw last April and despised).  I certainly wish Gennral Director Peter Gelb all success in his efforts to secure a younger, nationwide or even worldwide audience.  But this confusing opera with its strangely angelic winged messenger and the menacing skull headed masks at the ball and the men in black with their black wings  seems to me unlikely to appeal  to any audience except the already devoted. It seems a bit geared to a goth audience but I'm certain those of the goth leaning do not attend opera.

A new opera, The Tempest

Today we in the hinterlands had an opportunity to see the simulcast of the new opera of Shakespeare's The Tempest by British composer and conductor, Thomas Ades. This was quite a marathon for me. The opera was three hours long, which was all right.  In the past two months I've read The Tempest in a class and watched the most recent movie of it which starred Helen Miren as as female lead, Prospera.  It also had, as only film can do. It was a very fine film.

The scene above is from the opening of the opera when the calm sea is about to become a raging torrent that capsizes a ship.  This opera was premiered in 2006 in Covent Garden in London and has had 6 or 8 productions in various opera houses -- it is a success.  The Metropolitan Opera production premier was only about three weeks ago.  The setting is different from the previous ones  showing the play taking place inside the La Scala opera house.  Although I understand the reference since Prospero is Duke of Milan this seemed a  director's ego trip and not integral to the story (at all!).  The text was much simplified, some rhymes were too forced such as "loiter/around my daughter."

By and large the opera caught the spirit of Propsero (and we're told, Sbakespeare) as he gives up his wizardry and returns to ordinary life.  The music was never tuneful but always appropriate except  that Ariel's arias were almost all in the highest, squeakiest notes and quite ugly as was her face make up. Prospero strangely had symbols "tatooed" all over his body.  I feel that I now have imbibed as much of The Tempest as I need to.  I know the story, I understand it, I think, and  I have a sense of satisfaction that this important play is now imbedded in my intellect. This is not an opera will expect to see a second time.

Hurray for Met Simulcasts

As a purist I want to believe that live performances, musical or dramatic, are best live. I'm not sure I believe that now. I've just seen a reshowing of the Metropolitan Opera's simulcast of The Tales of Hoffman which I didn't go to last winter because I was tired of new pretentious productions.  But I went today to the reshowing and I'm very happy I did; just as I'm happy I saw their new Don Giovanni a couple weeks ago.

I didn't get a cast list; the only already blazingly famous singer was Anna  Netrebko but everyone else was brilliant and the music was incredibly lush, thanks to Offenbach, the wonderful Met chorus and James Levine on the podium before he had to retire.  All this musical delight was wonderful but it's not what made me change my mind about  the value of a videoed performance.  I still have problems with many new productions (also of productions I've seen in the past couple of years from the National Theatre of London) when the stage director has chosen to be "atmospheric" and keep much of the stage in shadow much of the time.  Yes, Hoffman's stories are mysterious and dark but Bart Sherr's use of lighting insults the audience. I been a part of too many live audiences (admittedly often in the more distant seats) when I really couldn't see much of what was happening on stage. And I hate not being able to see what I paid good money to go see.

Often in these video casts the very professional videographers choose their angles brilliantly so we see the characters with a clarity that people even in the best seats don't get.  So the video audience sees the opera more like a movie, with the now well coached singers acting often brilliantly, not just singing. (The old fashioned "park and bark" opera staging is long gone and good riddance!) Plus the subtitles are well written, not clunky translations that were used when subtitle were first installed.

Because of these  improvements, I came home thinking that I truly followed the often odd story line of "Hoffman" for the first time and I also had understood all of Don Giovanni's escapades as never before.  So I have the beautiful music, the brilliant voices, good acting and helpful words for a full enjoyment of the opera.

Two very brief asides: I found the dancing and barely clad women (with fantastic figures but not part of the chorus) almost beyond bad taste, nearly pornograhic. And I hated the La Traviata I saw in April because almost everything about that self-conscious new production was awful and ruined my favorite opera sadly.  Win some, lose some, I guess.

Nearly Perfect

A reshowing of an Metropolitan Opera simulcast I missed last October was at noon today -- not exactly what one expected to be doing on a lovely late June Wednesday afternoon -- but nothing I could have done would have been more perfect.  I've seen a few Don Giovannis and never quite understood who was who and why they were doing what they were doing.  Today I really got it.

For my tastes this was a near perfect production; it had very good subtitles, the music is wonderful although I'd have wished some arias were shortened as they were all repetition but that's what music was like in Mozart's time.  The casting, costuming, acting and stage directions were as nearly perfect as I could hope for.  Most of the voices were wonderful.  The Don and his servant Leparello where really wonderful actors as well as singers, the women finally came across as distinct individuals. The set was simple and appropriate and didn't call attention to itself as too many new sets do -- I don't go to opera for architecture.  This was a level of operatic production that was satisfying in every way.  I can't say that about all the new Met productions.  In the next month the theatre will show Tales of Hoffman and then Lucia diLamamour both  of which have music I like more than this actually.  I've seen the Lucia and liked it but the production values didn't seem as fine.  I'm looking forward to Hoffman which I haven't seen in a Met production.  Summer opera is a treat even if it messes up my eating schedule.  The picture above is the Mariusz Kwiecien, Don Giovanni, who I had never seen before -- I couldn't ask for a better one, he rarely looked so serious.

Rainy evening, Reading

The window is streaked with raindrops. I'm not complaining. We've had a few wonderful first-of-summer days and now I suspect one can almost watch the grass regaining its green and growing taller as it soaks up the rain. I love the late lightness in the sky now that we've hit the solstice -- I know it's minisculely a shorter day than it was two days ago, but that won't be noticeable until the end of July. The lovely weather we've had has given me a nice sense of contentment. Good walks, today another lovely drive on Rte. 6A to the movie theatre in Dennis to see a replay of the Met's Don Pasquale, a silly opera with magnificent songs and singing by a cast of only four: bass, baritone, tenor and soprano. The stage director went a little overboard with the comedy schicts. But it was clear the singers were having a lot of fun pulling out the stops and acting over the top. It was also clearly a special tribute to conductor James Levine who had returned after a serious illness and who was having a wonderful time with the music. Lots of good feelings. I've also been awash in good feelings of a more serious sort reading Mark Helprin's book of short stories called The Pacific. The wonderful thing about this collection of 16 stories is, firstly, that the protagonists -- and there's quite a range of them -- are essentially good people. They have serious problems, they deal with them in a variety of ways, some ineptly, some just doing the best they can, one by working miracles. These stories are obviously written by a mature writer who has been many places, who knows many things, who is long past mining his childhood for his stories, who is not caught up in "today" but uses places and themes that are larger and deeper.

I've had the book on my to-read shelves for some time. Rather often when I finish one book and go to the shelves to choose the next I do so in an almost blank state of mind. Everything on those two bookcase -- the top three shelves of each -- was chosen because it interested me for one reason or another. If I begin a book and find it dull or disappointing I can always put it aside. Sometimes, as with the Hiss book I read a few days ago, it surprises me and may be harder than I expected. And then there are unexpected very satisfying surprises like Helprin's book. I have a treasure of surprises on those shelves, most bought at thrift shops, library sales, or on impulse as a two-fer at a book store. Some have been there a long time, some are as new as last week. The shelves never actually get emptier.