Theodora Elucubrare

so I was "camping" yesterday. In a cabin with a/c and electric lights. The less said about that, the better. And my mac is out of commission, having had limeade and cheerios spilled on it. Yes, I was eating the cheerios with the limeade. We had no milk. So I'm on my Dell, which will give me eyestrain, since half of the screen is very dim. Anyway,

Day IV- A Book that reminds you of home.

I have certainly done a lot of reading at home, and there are certainly books that I associate with certain places or times. Unfortunately, these two statements don't coincide. Home is my default, and after a while you don't really notice the default. However, Lord of the Rings makes me feel that I've come home. The first time I read it, or rather had it read to me, was when I was four and five*. Since then I've read the whole trilogy at least ten times. The places and history are as familiar to me as the history of, say, Byzantium or Rome. Every time I read it, I feel happy (and then I cry buckets at the end, whatever). In fact, I'd be reading it now, if re-reads weren't lowest priority in the long tale of the forty-six books I have acquired and not yet read*.

And Day V- A Non-fiction book that you actually enjoyed.

Well, I take exception to the "actually!" I've been reading quite a bit of non-fiction lately*. In any case, The Castrati in Opera was pretty entertaining, although totally trashy. Much of it was essentially an 18th century gossip rag, though there's nothing wrong with that. Along with Opera and Sovereignty, it decided where I'd go first with my time machine - man-on-the-street interviews about Zeus with Athenians can wait, I'm going to the opera! Half for the baroque no one's recorded (yet, I hope!*) and half for the singer-drama. Farinelli refused to sing an aria because it was written for Caffarelli, and singing it would make it look as though Caffarelli were the better singer! One castrato said he wasn't going to sing, for the audience effect when he did show up! Two singers got into a physical fight onstage! However, while the music would probably be great (well, some of it at least. I admit, some baroque can be dull), I have a feeling that today's singers would be better - probably better trained, probably bigger voices. Nonetheless, going to an 18th century opera house would be an Experience that I would totally love, and maybe I'd get to see/hear Adriano in Siria without paying seventy dollars*.

Anyway, Opera and Sovereignty was much deeper, and while I was hoping it would put more focus on libretti, it was still very interesting. While seria libretti clearly uphold the picture of the world as governed by a just king (Clemenza di Tito is quite explicit), the very fact of opera's existence also supported the world order - in fact, the nobles were quite unhappy when the burghers opened their own opera house. Also, anything you may have heard about silence in the opera house being a Wagnerian thing is not exactly true: the Duke of Naples also had a list of rules and regulations for opera-goers in his house. Like you couldn't wear your sword.

--
*Dad read it to me as bedtime stories, and of course had to stop every so often. After beginning one night after a cliff-hanger, he asked me if I was worried, and I replied that no, I had read ahead.
*If I keep going at a book a day, I'll have seven left when school starts. Alas, at least two of them are over 1000 pages.
*The History of Byzantium I'm reading right now so does not count, as it reads like the back-story to a trashy fantasy novel.
*Someone has recorded Pergolesi's Olimpiade, but it's not available on Amazon. GOD I AM SO BITTER.
*Man, I would kill for that Adriano in Siria on Amazon. Bitter Pergolesi fan right here.

So I saw Attila last night. And oh man, it has cemented my love for Violeta Urmana. Her "Santa di patria" was amazing.

Anyway, I'm trying to write about the reasons the production was kind of ok, I guess, but not really effective in German, so I'm doing it here first because it's easier (and will probably make more sense in general.)

So, it's no secret that I prefer traditional settings. Mainly because I like the pretty clothes and sets, but also because modern settings tend to try to Say Things, because Opera is a Thing now, and not the pure entertainment it was created to be. Attila in particular. It's a very simple revenge plot; there's no reason to place the chorus under the action, or have Attila's tent/sleeping quarters be a circle in a leafy green scrim.

What I mean is that both of those things emphasize the distance of opera from life. Clearly the Hunnish horde wouldn't have broken into song at dramatic moments, nor would Attila; but as long as the chorus is fully integrated into the scene, or Attila sings in a space that mimics normal human space - a building, or a tent, it doesn't really matter, you can almost forget. As soon as the production is abstract, it's more about the decor than the music; the question "why" arises.

"Why," in this production, did they choose to set the prologue on what seemed like bombed concrete? Why, having done that, did they choose to keep the characters in something like ancient dress? and the bigger question of why they chose to have the chorus of Huns in shirts and pants or shorts. It creates distance from the music; in an ideal production the decor would work with the music to create a single unified whole.

Let it be noted that I'm not arguing against modern productions in general. If you really feel the need to do that, I can't stop you. However, one can have a modern production without making the staging isolating. It simply doesn't make sense for Attila to be about isolation; if you want that, put on Die Frau ohne Schatten or something that has any indication in the libretto that it's not a simple thriller.

Appropriateness is, I think, the biggest problem. Attila is, as I have said, a thriller. It makes as much sense to make it thinky as it would to produce The da Vinci Code a hundred years from now as a deep study of man's inhumanity to man.

Wow so I knew I had a certain inclination to obscure operas, but The Chessboard Fugitives is really the farthest I've gone. No google hits, or at least not descriptive of the opera; at most one hit for the composer (George Courouros, b. 1942). But it's really pretty:
and so is Mata Katsuli's voice.

This has a very strange tonality, and again Irini Karaianni's voice is lovely:


So yeah. And it really makes me sad that I'll never find a recording.

ETA, two minutes later: Τιμή means literal "price" now. Achilles is ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE.

ETA AGAIN: yeah yeah yeah I am Mata Katsuli's biggest fan, whatever. More importantly, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE:

ETA son of ETA: well, the people at the bottom are really animals, and not wearing gas masks, as I first thought. That part actually does makes sense, since Alcina, as a descendant of Circe, turns people into animals, although it's not exactly how I would have done it.

So yeah. Obscure opera. Has ridiculous plots sometimes, like people jumping into Vesuvius when it's erupting. But nothing like This (and dammit, dolique, before you say anything, it was free):
The story is set in sixteenth-century Brazil and deals with the love of Cecilia, daughter of the Portuguese nobleman Don Antonio, and the ‘noble savage’ Pery, chieftain of the Indian tribe of Guarany (who eventually accepts baptism). They are threatened both by the hostility of the cannibal Aimore tribe and by Spanish adventurers led by Gonzales, who has designs on the silver mine owned by Antonio and on Cecilia. The opera ends spectacularly a la Meyerbeer when Antonio, to save his daughter, blows up his castle with himself and his enemies in it.

ETA: Holy cow, this was a common plot device! From the Wikipedia article on Meyerbeer's Le prophète: during the celebrations of his coronation, Jean sets off an explosion which brings the palace down on all who remain of the principal characters.

I totally love this production of Serse. I'm not even kidding, and it's only partly for the WTF effect. (Which, it must be said, is very strong. As in, WTF is going on in "Io le diro"? A carrying chair, awesome long coats... no idea. Ditto for "Si, la voglio" - Sword fighting, with a guy in an awesome coat? Girls in sequined hats laughing at this? We're in some odd dictatorship? Indoor tree in "Ombra mai fu"? What?)

In any case, I do like it. It's odd, but it has an aesthetic of its own - it's not just throwing random elements together, and there's a nice stylization of sorts. It's also helpful that the singing is very strong.



(also everyone has awesome coats.)



(what, I like coats, OK?)

This is not a major post. Just mentioning that Sondra Radvanovsky's face when she's describing the plot of I vespri siciliani is totally amazing, even if I think her voice is slightly too heavy for Elena's bolero. You can hear her say, under the Italian dubbing, "And they're going to kill all the French in Sicily! At my wedding!"

(I also like the production; I think the stylization is very nice -clean and attractive - though I'm not sure how it would work for the rest of the opera.)

And Radvanovsky's d'amor sull'ali rosee is really very good.

My grand plan to fuck with people's heads:

1. Become a director well known for outré productions (Giulio Cesare in an ice-cream shop, with Tolomeo dressed as a giant ice-cream cone. Cleopatra is clearly the manager, and Cesare works at a rival shop. Ballo in maschera at a high school prom. Or maybe just everything at a high school prom, 'cause I can make almost anything work.)

2. All of a sudden, go hyper-traditional. Either study costumes from the first productions or make the (somewhat unreasonable, much as I love it) decision to use correct historical dress.

3a. Laugh at everyone.

3b. (Probably) Get really really fired.

Oh, Danielle de Niese loving mouse, defend this. Please. It is seriously terrible. She's harsh all the time and she thinks that moving her shoulders a lot is acting. I mean, I like Cecelia Bartoli's Deh vieni better than hers; at least Bartoli got rid of her customary breathyness for once. This make me sure that de Niese can't get rid of the harshness in her voice - it's intrinsic, i.e. she does not have a good voice.

Also the production sucks, as is made doubly clear by their terrible Venite, inginocchiatevi (which de Niese doesn't do very well either, by the way). For one thing, what constitutes dressing Cherubino as a girl when everyone's wearing odd formless jumpsuits? For another thing, that aria has the most obvious implicit stage directions I've ever heard - so it doesn't make all that much sense for Susanna to say "Guardatemi" when Cherubino is already looking at her, or again, for her to tell him to keep his eyes on her and not on the countess when HE IS ALREADY LOOKING AT HER.


On the bright side, their Cherubino is adorable x infinity

EDIT: NO SERIOUSLY I FUCKING HATE THIS PRODUCTION.  I hate modern productions in general, it's true - either a work is relevant to our times or it's not, or it doesn't matter (which is my view), but putting everyone in jeans won't make it more relevant - but they can work, if they have a. an organizing principal and b. something to do with what's going on in the opera.  I mean, in the first duet, Figaro isn't measuring the room that the count gave them, because they are in a car factory, or something.    In "Via, resta servita," Susanna and Marcellina have to be trying to get past each other, because otherwise their exchange of insults makes no sense.  In this production, they're just sort of sitting there. 

Also, have I mentioned that de Niese can't act or sing?  I'd much rather listen to Marcellina - and when your Marcellina's better than your Susanna, you have a problem.

When I saw Eugene Onegin at the Met last year, the nice old lady with whom I was sharing a box said "What a bastard," in reference to Onegin. Well, he is, of course he is, it's 99% of the point of the opera (this is not exactly true; it's 99% of the novel, but only ~70% of the opera, the other 30% being "Tatiana is Noble and Incorruptible"). So, it wasn't her saying that that struck me, but rather the point at which she said it.


It was during "Vi mne pisali," which, thanks to my second semester Russian skills, I know means "You (formal) wrote to me," which Tanya, amid much melodrama, did. He tells her that he can't take advantage of her, and that he was not meant to be someone's husband, sitting with children on his knee, but if his fate had been different, he could have loved her. It's a bit patronizing, of course - but then, he is practically old enough to be her father. (I don't know if their ages are specified, but she can't be older than twenty, or maybe even eighteen, and I put him in his early thirties.) So, overall, not that bad, on the bastard front. Mantova or Don Giovanni would have taken advantage of her in a second.

And this is why he's, to some extent, worse than either of them to me. He waits until Tatiana has a husband and a reputation before she's interesting, worth pursuing. Both of the above womanizers are certainly despicable, but neither of them delights in ruining a woman more than her physical charms.



of course it doesn't stop me from having a crush on him.

Well, it's reading period, and I don't actually have any sit down final exams, Athena or whoever arranged that be praised, but there's gotta be something to procrastinate about - my paper, which really should be easier to write, considering that I've breathed Indo-European mythology for the last four months, and my take-home final.

So, to that end, I've compiled a list of operas that FOR SERIOUS need to be brought back, regardless of musically quality:
( And here it is )