opera, a touch of it
May. 13th, 2015 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacLisa 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.
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.
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Date: 2015-05-14 05:15 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2015-05-14 05:30 pm (UTC)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.