The Met's broadcast season began this past weekend. I did not listen. They began with Il Trittico, which I must confess simply to not liking. Or, more precisely, I dislike Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica. I actually rather like Gianni Schicchi, in part because the story of probate fraud amuses me. All three are a bit, well, screechy and jumpy, but Schicchi seems to get the best of the lot.
Mercifully the radio disguises the ill effects of "updated" stagings. The Met season guide notes for Schicchi begin "Florence, 1959." Una momento, por favor. This is nonsense. While ten seconds of Google research indicates that it is still permissible under Italian law to make a will by dictation to a notary, this is simply nonsense. For one thing, under post-Napoleonic continental systems, it is not possible for a testator to disinherit direct descendants as drastically as Schicchi does. Furthermore, I simply refuse to believe that Italian public officials go around making pronouncements in Latin under the Italian Republic. And aren't some of Donati's bequests of things like cows? How many wealthy Florentines bequethed cows in the 1950s? The story is set in a particular time and place for a reason. Why do directors think they can change this part of the story? Why not turn the opera into a tragedy and have Rinuccio and Lauretta leap off the balcony at the end? That would be bold, edgy, attract new audiences to opera! Or, like most officious intermeddling, simply be uncalled for and uncivilized.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Faust at the Lyric
After a good long stretch of nothing worth writing about, we made it up to Chicago on Sunday for the matinee of Gounod's Faust. After an exhausting drive (if you are ever in Chicago on the day of the marathon, do not leave the interstate for any reason) and a delicious lunch, I really should have downed a large quantity of coffee before the show, especially since I had never heard or seen Faust before going in.
The opera itself has a fascinating story: it opened the old Met in 1883 and was the most popular operatic work in the world for decades, serving as the banner performance all across America for the first half of the twentieth century. If a person has seen one anthropomorphism of opera, it is sure to have been a classical Brunnhilda in winged helmet and breastplate. If he has seen a second, it was likely an old-fashioned Mephistopheles in red tights and handlebar mustache.
But like so many works, see, e.g., the complete works of Meyerbeer, it fell on rough times and faded out of fashion. So it was unusual to see Lyric performing not only Faust, but also premiering Bizet's Damnation of Faust in the same season. In some ways, I can see how Faust lost out over time to Verdi and Puccini works; it lacks the same kind of dynamic scale-shattering set pieces that form such memorable parts of Trovatore or Tosca. The music lacks the power to bring home in properly dramatic fashion the story that itself contains enough dramatic energy for several operas. Lyrical, emotional, rich---the music of course is all of these, but not powerful. It needed just a little bit more, a little something extra whose absence I cannot blame on the performers.
I have mixed feelings about the staging too. When houses revive Faust today, the red tights are long gone and Mephistopheles appears as the suave, well-dressed gentleman. Frankly, I find this an appropriate change: even when he openly hawks his diabolical wares, Satan comes in attractive trappings. But his stage presence left something to be desired: the ambiance of Act 4, sc. II, Marguerite's torment in the church, conveyed little of the sense of abject terror afflicting the protagonist on stage. Likewise, Mephistopheles appears silently onstage at the opera's conclusion, after the angelic choir has proclaimed Marguerite's salvation, and confronts Faust with the contract he signed in Act I. The paper then bursts into flames and falls to the ground: a dramatic touch, but an ambiguous one. If I were to sign an unpleasant agreement, I would be happier of nothing else than to find it smoldering in ashes. Furthermore, the devil has not heretofore been accompanied by pyrotechnics; why introduce them now? If props could rig the "contract" so it burned but was not consumed (propane line up the actor's sleeve, etc.), that might be one thing. But in the larger context of the performance, this particular stunt falls flat.
In the end, I think the less than adept portrayal of the power of Hell may go hand in hand with the decline in Faust's fortunes generally. Audience members today simply are not scared of the devil. I certainly cannot expect more from producers, who strike me as on average less intelligent than audience members, and frankly less skilled at their portion of the operatic experience. I had the distinct misfortune of spending the entire performance on Sunday sitting next to some buffoon who found the entire affair actually comical. Judging from the sounds in the house, others suffered a similar fate. This criticism excludes, of course, the few bits of intentional levity (Mephistopheles: "Your husband, ma'am, is dead and sends his greetings!"---dark, but somewhat comical). Faust is a story that only has anything to tell its audience if they believe that Faust's actions have real consequences: i.e. they have to believe in hell. Otherwise, it becomes simply a rather inexplicable story of a bumbling man who goes to great lengths to win a woman and then abandons her for no reason whatsoever. The leaven of contracts, a duel, and infanticide do not save such an otherwise helpless story. You cannot have Faust after reducing Mephistopheles to a baritone Cherubino with superior negotiating skills and a few magic tricks.
So how do we expect contemporary audiences to appreciate, and contemporary directors to stage, Faust? When the I-gave-so-much-money-they-put-a-full-page-biography-of-me-in-the-program fellow is a yoga master, such a request defies accommodation. Perhaps we should simply be thankful for living just outside Chicago, rather than New York.
The opera itself has a fascinating story: it opened the old Met in 1883 and was the most popular operatic work in the world for decades, serving as the banner performance all across America for the first half of the twentieth century. If a person has seen one anthropomorphism of opera, it is sure to have been a classical Brunnhilda in winged helmet and breastplate. If he has seen a second, it was likely an old-fashioned Mephistopheles in red tights and handlebar mustache.
But like so many works, see, e.g., the complete works of Meyerbeer, it fell on rough times and faded out of fashion. So it was unusual to see Lyric performing not only Faust, but also premiering Bizet's Damnation of Faust in the same season. In some ways, I can see how Faust lost out over time to Verdi and Puccini works; it lacks the same kind of dynamic scale-shattering set pieces that form such memorable parts of Trovatore or Tosca. The music lacks the power to bring home in properly dramatic fashion the story that itself contains enough dramatic energy for several operas. Lyrical, emotional, rich---the music of course is all of these, but not powerful. It needed just a little bit more, a little something extra whose absence I cannot blame on the performers.
I have mixed feelings about the staging too. When houses revive Faust today, the red tights are long gone and Mephistopheles appears as the suave, well-dressed gentleman. Frankly, I find this an appropriate change: even when he openly hawks his diabolical wares, Satan comes in attractive trappings. But his stage presence left something to be desired: the ambiance of Act 4, sc. II, Marguerite's torment in the church, conveyed little of the sense of abject terror afflicting the protagonist on stage. Likewise, Mephistopheles appears silently onstage at the opera's conclusion, after the angelic choir has proclaimed Marguerite's salvation, and confronts Faust with the contract he signed in Act I. The paper then bursts into flames and falls to the ground: a dramatic touch, but an ambiguous one. If I were to sign an unpleasant agreement, I would be happier of nothing else than to find it smoldering in ashes. Furthermore, the devil has not heretofore been accompanied by pyrotechnics; why introduce them now? If props could rig the "contract" so it burned but was not consumed (propane line up the actor's sleeve, etc.), that might be one thing. But in the larger context of the performance, this particular stunt falls flat.
In the end, I think the less than adept portrayal of the power of Hell may go hand in hand with the decline in Faust's fortunes generally. Audience members today simply are not scared of the devil. I certainly cannot expect more from producers, who strike me as on average less intelligent than audience members, and frankly less skilled at their portion of the operatic experience. I had the distinct misfortune of spending the entire performance on Sunday sitting next to some buffoon who found the entire affair actually comical. Judging from the sounds in the house, others suffered a similar fate. This criticism excludes, of course, the few bits of intentional levity (Mephistopheles: "Your husband, ma'am, is dead and sends his greetings!"---dark, but somewhat comical). Faust is a story that only has anything to tell its audience if they believe that Faust's actions have real consequences: i.e. they have to believe in hell. Otherwise, it becomes simply a rather inexplicable story of a bumbling man who goes to great lengths to win a woman and then abandons her for no reason whatsoever. The leaven of contracts, a duel, and infanticide do not save such an otherwise helpless story. You cannot have Faust after reducing Mephistopheles to a baritone Cherubino with superior negotiating skills and a few magic tricks.
So how do we expect contemporary audiences to appreciate, and contemporary directors to stage, Faust? When the I-gave-so-much-money-they-put-a-full-page-biography-of-me-in-the-program fellow is a yoga master, such a request defies accommodation. Perhaps we should simply be thankful for living just outside Chicago, rather than New York.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Scoreboard
I was perfectly content with ND stadium's monochrome digital scoreboard: it combined functionality while staying pleasantly low key. But the advent of the current monstrosity, apparently bought at some minor-league-baseball surplus store, is almost enough to make me agitate for a return to manual score keeping and the hand-clock timer (I can't manage to find a picture, but you get the idea: Fenway with a clock).
Monday, August 31, 2009
Periwinkle Moon
There was a time where I would have said that the ACLU and I only agree on a matter once in a blue moon---but now it's really only once in a light-blue, or perhaps a slightly blue moon. It is not the case that I have moved to the left or they to the right, only that the number of legitimately outrageous policy proposals or enactments about which I hear has increased notably.
Exhibit A: a Texas law that places DNA evidence from a crime scene in a person's criminal record, even if he was never convicted of the offense. From thither, it can presumably be introduced as either character evidence along with the rest of the file when permissible or used, along with the rest of the file, to enhance sentencing. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to find a government action that I would view as an actual deprivation of due process, but Texas has managed to do it. Enhancing the sentence of a criminal, or in the extreme convicting a suspect, on the basis of a past act for which no judicial finding of wrongdoing was ever made, strikes me as a fairly flagrant impairment of the criminal process.
Exhibit A: a Texas law that places DNA evidence from a crime scene in a person's criminal record, even if he was never convicted of the offense. From thither, it can presumably be introduced as either character evidence along with the rest of the file when permissible or used, along with the rest of the file, to enhance sentencing. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to find a government action that I would view as an actual deprivation of due process, but Texas has managed to do it. Enhancing the sentence of a criminal, or in the extreme convicting a suspect, on the basis of a past act for which no judicial finding of wrongdoing was ever made, strikes me as a fairly flagrant impairment of the criminal process.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Facilis est descensus Averno.
I read the entire Aeneid twice, once in each language, once upon a time. Needless to say, I did not remember this line, although it aptly describes so much of human history: "easy is the descent to Hell"
Although, I question whether the line has been reproduced faithfully; "facilis descensus Averno est" seems the more likely arrangement in the original. Of course, that would be a prose trope, putting the verb last: one imagines that was a good reason to write it this way in verse.
For more Virgil references, see here.
Although, I question whether the line has been reproduced faithfully; "facilis descensus Averno est" seems the more likely arrangement in the original. Of course, that would be a prose trope, putting the verb last: one imagines that was a good reason to write it this way in verse.
For more Virgil references, see here.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
H.R. 3200
Say hello to my Very Large Friend: A Bill to provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.
1,000 pages of nobody knows what. If this is self-government, sign me up for autocracy, please.
1,000 pages of nobody knows what. If this is self-government, sign me up for autocracy, please.
Monday, August 3, 2009
The Crape Myrtle
Like most worthwhile things this side of cathedral and war memorials, the crape myrtle is both beautiful and unassuming. It has such a subtle effect on the landscape when not in bloom that I spent six winters in the midwest without realizing that the tree simply does not grow there at all. I only noted its conspicuous absence among the retarded summertime---a word used generously if there ever were one---progress of the plains' flora.
I won't bother with the scientific names and that sort of thing. Not because such information isn't useful or worthwhile, but because I would simply be cutting and pasting, which is mildly disingenuous. Anyone can look these things up as well as I can. I will note, however, that the shrub is not native to the Americas, but comes from Asia. Unlike other Old World imports prevalent in the South (see "kudzu"), crape myrtle behaves well and as expected. Also unlike other notable Southern flora, it is highly multi-functional. Keep it trimmed and it makes a pleasant bush. Let it grow up and prune lower branches and it becomes a delightful small tree. Spare it all attention from the loppers and it expand in every direction like a large botanical globe.
Despite its foreign heritage, the crape myrtle is a proper Southern shrub, largely because it is never in a hurry. It knows quite well that irises, day lilies, and magnolias will regale the neighborhood through the spring and early summer. So it comes later, to add color to July and August, when it faces less competition. And like any good friend, its arrival is not only timely but called for. Come late July and August the lawn considers dying off, asphalt stays sticky through the night, and a neighboring state just might try to resolve its carpetbagger-induced water shortage by attempting to annex part of your local river. But while the birch trees wilt in the heat, the crape myrtle puts forth an effusion of color. Together with the choices watermelons, now available, the crape myrtle gently reminds us to enjoy every moment of summer in spite of heat, humidity, and mosquito.
I won't bother with the scientific names and that sort of thing. Not because such information isn't useful or worthwhile, but because I would simply be cutting and pasting, which is mildly disingenuous. Anyone can look these things up as well as I can. I will note, however, that the shrub is not native to the Americas, but comes from Asia. Unlike other Old World imports prevalent in the South (see "kudzu"), crape myrtle behaves well and as expected. Also unlike other notable Southern flora, it is highly multi-functional. Keep it trimmed and it makes a pleasant bush. Let it grow up and prune lower branches and it becomes a delightful small tree. Spare it all attention from the loppers and it expand in every direction like a large botanical globe.
Despite its foreign heritage, the crape myrtle is a proper Southern shrub, largely because it is never in a hurry. It knows quite well that irises, day lilies, and magnolias will regale the neighborhood through the spring and early summer. So it comes later, to add color to July and August, when it faces less competition. And like any good friend, its arrival is not only timely but called for. Come late July and August the lawn considers dying off, asphalt stays sticky through the night, and a neighboring state just might try to resolve its carpetbagger-induced water shortage by attempting to annex part of your local river. But while the birch trees wilt in the heat, the crape myrtle puts forth an effusion of color. Together with the choices watermelons, now available, the crape myrtle gently reminds us to enjoy every moment of summer in spite of heat, humidity, and mosquito.
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