opera, a touch of it

[calimac]

Lisa Irontongue wants everyone to buy a ticket to the SF Opera production of Berlioz' Les Troyens. A 5 1/2 hour opera based on one of the most boring books I've ever read? Not for me, thanks.

But, while it's true that "opera" is not much more enticing a word to me than is "5 1/2 hours" or "boring", there are some things operatic I'll attend. I've already proven my devotion to the greatest of all opera composers, Sir Arthur Sullivan, having been to productions of two of his lesser-known operas this year alone; and tonight I was more than pleased to attend, at Stanford, a piano recital of a few arias and duets from a new legal opera, Scalia/Ginsburg, by composer and lawyer Derrick Wang.

I'm glad I took the trouble to go. It was so clever and witty and erudite, both musically and (in its libretto) legally. The law is based on precedent, right? Well, Wang composed based on operatic precedent, with quotations and pastiche all over. To tell their backgrounds, Ginsburg sings a Mozartean aria for her favorite composer; Scalia's, for his Italian ancestry, is based on Puccini. (Voice from the background: "Puccini's too good for him!") Wang said he was initially inspired by Scalia dissents which read to him like Baroque rage arias: full of strong emotion exposed on the surface, and firmly rooted in the 18th century. So he gets one of those too.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I am, as you know, an opera junkie and I love 'Troyens'!

My own personal line is drawn at Wagner, however.........

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There is one Wagner opera I like: Das Rheingold. Not just because it's short, but also because it's an ensemble piece and there's a minimum of two characters alone on stage emoting at each other for hours on end.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I can enjoy a good performance of the Hollander, but that's about all.

Saw Willard White in the title role a few years back- just wow!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've never listened to that all the way through. I put on a full recording once: the overture was great as always, and then these people started singing and I thought "oh god ..."

B's take (on opera in general, not this one in particular) is entirely different. She wants the overture to get over with so that the real music can start, the part with voices in it.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

That tends to be my own view too, I have to admit! :o)

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Berlioz hated the idea of doing the two sections of The Trojans separately, but it does make them more digestible...These days, I tend to feel the same about the various acts of the later Wagner operas,

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I like Otto Friedrich's solution to the length of Wagner operas, though this only worked because he had bottom-of-the-price-curve top-balcony seats to the already inexpensive Paris Opera productions in the 1950s:

Buy tickets to two successive nights. On the first night, attend the first half and then go out to dinner. The second night, have an early dinner and come in for the second half.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

At Bayreuth, the intermissions are, very sensibly, an hour long, so you can eat, stroll, whatever, between acts.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that sounds like great fun!

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Whether a libretto's source material is dull or not has little to do with whether the opera itself is dull. That has a lot more to do with the music. As well, Troyens is based on a small part of the Aeneid, and the libretto is by Berlioz, not Virgil.

And I was under the impression that you like Berlioz! There are excerpts and whole performances on YouTube, so you can judge for yourself whether you'd find Troyens boring. Start from the very beginning, would be my suggestion.

Whether you care to sit through the whole epic is another matter.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I beg your pardon, but I find that the interest level of the libretto, the quality of the acting, and other purely dramatic elements have a great deal to do with the dullness or lack of same of my experience of an opera.

This is why I class opera as a different genre from concert music, even though it's often composed by the same people: in opera, it's not just about the music. It's music plus drama plus spectacle, and they all have to work, and work together. (The problem with Regietheater is that the third element has gotten out of hand from the first two.)

I do like Berlioz! (At least in aspects: his problem is structure, which can sink a bad performance, and the lack of the kind of structure that concert music has is my biggest aesthetic hurdle in appreciating opera.) Even parts of Troyens: I'll listen to the "Royal Hunt and Storm" any time. It's "whether you care to sit through the whole epic" that's the rub, and that's what's on offer at SFO.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I continue to encourage you to listen to, say, 20 minutes of Troyens, starting from the top. And you could certainly take a look at the libretto to see whether you find it boring. It's here:

http://operalively.com/forums/content.php/729-les-troyens-libretto-in-english?s=90fb239112b9ca9b97891b06407ef3f1

You could have an interesting discussion with Mozart, Verdi, and Berg about the musical structures of their operas. Concert music has used any number of different solutions to form and structure issues, and opera is no different.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Concert music has used any number of different solutions to form and structure issues

Yes it has, and my liking and appreciation of a given piece of concert music has a lot to do with what that solution is. Long pieces that have structures similar to those typical of opera, like most Richard Strauss tone poems, are among my least favorite concert music, and that's why.

Contrawise, an opera that takes a more integrated, concert-music approach to its structure will win more of my favor. This is part of why I favor Das Rheingold over the rest of Der Ring: it's more tightly constructed.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Another solution to the Wagner problem is just to forget it's an opera and ignore the stage. Better yet, get a seat where you can't even see the stage. I had a seat for Tristan once jammed right up against the top of the safety curtain. It was gorgeous that way - I gather the set and acting was terrible and I have no idea whatever about them...Haitink was at his best.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't work for me. Judged as concert music and not as opera, Wagner at full length is flaccid and meandering far beyond my tolerance. I have to wait for one of the tighter and more interesting "bleeding chunks" to come up, and when it does, there's these annoying and distracting people trying to sing (or, if it's the Ride of the Valkyries, shout) over it. Even if I can't see them, I can still hear them.

If anybody could pull it off, though, it would be Haitink. I love his Bruckner ...

[ken-3k.livejournal.com]

I saw the Metropolitan Opera's "HD Live" presentation of "Les Troyens" and was glad that I did; but then we know that I am much more enthusiastic about opera than you are.

aradiva and I have a story about a regional opera company -- Pittsburgh, maybe? -- which edited the Ring cycle down to two evenings. I wish I'd seen that. I am coming to appreciate Wagner somewhat but he sure needed an editor.

The Met is repeating their "La Fille Du Regiment" in movie theaters in mid-July. This was from 8 years ago, with Natalie Dessay doing a spectacular amount of comedy to go with the singing. One of the best of the 9 years of the movie-theater series. "Daughter of the Regiment" I could compare to G&S in spirit, so you might want to take a look at it. YouTube has clips.