![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Ah, Boethius.
1. He totally deserved it for plotting against Theodoric. 2. I can't stand his reasoning for why worldly things can't make you happy. He says that you can't be happy in this world because all pleasures can be taken away by Fortune. But I don't think it's the case that something has to last forever to make you happy.
I had a CD player. It broke (and was a piece of junk, but that's another story) but it made me happy while I had it. Similarly, if you stop liking something, it doesn't mean that you never really liked it, or that it was always worthless, it just means you've changed.
Ah, Philosophy would say, then you weren't truly happy. But if true happiness can only be attained with God, and that will never happen in this world, then the concept 'happiness' is meaningless.
But enough of him.
I saw Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met Monday. It was entirely worth the fifty mile trip and my three hours of sleep. I think that I should get this out of the way: Natalie Dessay is the best soprano currently singing, and I love her lots.
All three leads were strong, though tenor Marcello Giordiani was less so than Dessay and Marius Kwiecien, the baritone. He was good on his own, and I thought that he rallied for his concluding aria, but in duet with Dessay or Kwiecien, the flaws in his voice were more obvious. (One of his flaws is that he just doesn't have the power the other two do. Dessay filled the house even with her piano; Giordiani tried for "tender" and ended up with "weak".)
The production was interesting; it didn't always work the way it was supposed to. In Lucia's ghost aria, the spirit actually appeared, and when Edgardo was killing himself, Lucia's ghost came to embrace him. That didn't actively not work, but I thought it was unnecessary and sort of silly.
The other production thing was the photographer at the end of Act Two - Edgardo shows up at Lucia's wedding and is melodramatic. The producer had a photographer, who evidently decided that he was getting paid to take a picture of the wedding party, and he would take it, goddamn it! so Edgardo was on one side of the stage gesturing with a sword, and everyone else was on the other side sitting down and having their picture taken. (Although that would be a great picture to have. "And this is your Aunt Lucia, just before she went crazy and killed her husband...")
I think the production was better experiencing it at the Met, with the glamor of the night and all, then it will be on a TV or even movie screen - it's not great, but it's not terrible either, and there were some effective parts. (The chorus at the end having silly umbrellas was not one of them.)
And now for something completely different!
Is Eugene Onegin a Romantic work? My immediate answer is "yes," but I don't think it holds up on closer examination. For one thing, the moral of the story is "God sends habit in place of happiness," which is exactly opposite to most Romantic operas.
Tatiana ends up with the man who, in other stories, she would have killed herself rather than marry. Like Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor, like Riccardo in I puritani, there's nothing wrong with Prince Gremin except that he's not the man she loves. Lucia and Elvira go mad; Tatiana settles down and is happy, or close enough to it. She has a certain maturity that other heroines lack - she understands that Gremin loves her and that she loves him, just not with the same passion she loves Onegin.
Lensky's death is un-Romantic as well. Not that he dies in a duel, but that Olga forgets him. It is obvious that she will; hers is not a character that will sit and weep and cherish her first love to her breast until her dying day. It is almost a parody of Romanticism. The moment is one of high bathos - Lensky thinks of his love as he goes to his death in the most Romantic of terms, and after that death, we are told in the most unsentimental of terms that she will forget him.
Pushkin presents Romanticism as something to be grown out of, shown both by Tatiana and her mother. The letter scene, a great Romantic work, occurs during her girlhood, and she is reproached for it, and reproaches herself for it. Her mother realizes that her French airs are not worth it, and gradually renounces them as she ages, settling into her arranged marriage (Tanya's nurse says that in her day, they never would have thought about love).
Instead of being Romantic, Eugene Onegin is a rejection of the Romantic. Tanya's early love is entirely Romantic, but she can put it aside in a way that no completely Romantic heroine could. Lensky is a Romantic, a poet, and he has a Romantic death, but a death whose pathos is immediately negated. Onegin himself is not Romantic. The womanizer has no part in the Romantic novel, except as the villain. Even Byron's Don Juan is a womanizer only by accident. If true and constant love is the motive force of the world and worth madness and death, a man who falls in love every day cannot possibly be 'good.'
And now, at 2:20, I shall start my Bio assignment.
1. He totally deserved it for plotting against Theodoric. 2. I can't stand his reasoning for why worldly things can't make you happy. He says that you can't be happy in this world because all pleasures can be taken away by Fortune. But I don't think it's the case that something has to last forever to make you happy.
I had a CD player. It broke (and was a piece of junk, but that's another story) but it made me happy while I had it. Similarly, if you stop liking something, it doesn't mean that you never really liked it, or that it was always worthless, it just means you've changed.
Ah, Philosophy would say, then you weren't truly happy. But if true happiness can only be attained with God, and that will never happen in this world, then the concept 'happiness' is meaningless.
But enough of him.
I saw Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met Monday. It was entirely worth the fifty mile trip and my three hours of sleep. I think that I should get this out of the way: Natalie Dessay is the best soprano currently singing, and I love her lots.
All three leads were strong, though tenor Marcello Giordiani was less so than Dessay and Marius Kwiecien, the baritone. He was good on his own, and I thought that he rallied for his concluding aria, but in duet with Dessay or Kwiecien, the flaws in his voice were more obvious. (One of his flaws is that he just doesn't have the power the other two do. Dessay filled the house even with her piano; Giordiani tried for "tender" and ended up with "weak".)
The production was interesting; it didn't always work the way it was supposed to. In Lucia's ghost aria, the spirit actually appeared, and when Edgardo was killing himself, Lucia's ghost came to embrace him. That didn't actively not work, but I thought it was unnecessary and sort of silly.
The other production thing was the photographer at the end of Act Two - Edgardo shows up at Lucia's wedding and is melodramatic. The producer had a photographer, who evidently decided that he was getting paid to take a picture of the wedding party, and he would take it, goddamn it! so Edgardo was on one side of the stage gesturing with a sword, and everyone else was on the other side sitting down and having their picture taken. (Although that would be a great picture to have. "And this is your Aunt Lucia, just before she went crazy and killed her husband...")
I think the production was better experiencing it at the Met, with the glamor of the night and all, then it will be on a TV or even movie screen - it's not great, but it's not terrible either, and there were some effective parts. (The chorus at the end having silly umbrellas was not one of them.)
And now for something completely different!
Is Eugene Onegin a Romantic work? My immediate answer is "yes," but I don't think it holds up on closer examination. For one thing, the moral of the story is "God sends habit in place of happiness," which is exactly opposite to most Romantic operas.
Tatiana ends up with the man who, in other stories, she would have killed herself rather than marry. Like Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor, like Riccardo in I puritani, there's nothing wrong with Prince Gremin except that he's not the man she loves. Lucia and Elvira go mad; Tatiana settles down and is happy, or close enough to it. She has a certain maturity that other heroines lack - she understands that Gremin loves her and that she loves him, just not with the same passion she loves Onegin.
Lensky's death is un-Romantic as well. Not that he dies in a duel, but that Olga forgets him. It is obvious that she will; hers is not a character that will sit and weep and cherish her first love to her breast until her dying day. It is almost a parody of Romanticism. The moment is one of high bathos - Lensky thinks of his love as he goes to his death in the most Romantic of terms, and after that death, we are told in the most unsentimental of terms that she will forget him.
Pushkin presents Romanticism as something to be grown out of, shown both by Tatiana and her mother. The letter scene, a great Romantic work, occurs during her girlhood, and she is reproached for it, and reproaches herself for it. Her mother realizes that her French airs are not worth it, and gradually renounces them as she ages, settling into her arranged marriage (Tanya's nurse says that in her day, they never would have thought about love).
Instead of being Romantic, Eugene Onegin is a rejection of the Romantic. Tanya's early love is entirely Romantic, but she can put it aside in a way that no completely Romantic heroine could. Lensky is a Romantic, a poet, and he has a Romantic death, but a death whose pathos is immediately negated. Onegin himself is not Romantic. The womanizer has no part in the Romantic novel, except as the villain. Even Byron's Don Juan is a womanizer only by accident. If true and constant love is the motive force of the world and worth madness and death, a man who falls in love every day cannot possibly be 'good.'
And now, at 2:20, I shall start my Bio assignment.