Hansel & Gretel (an opera review post)

All right, last opera review for 2019.

Last year, SFO performed It's a Wonderful Life, a west coast premier, as their December opera. Considering the story takes place at Christmas, it was a timely production. Maybe that started a trend of doing Christmas-associated operas because, this year, they did Hansel & Gretel. What does Hansel & Gretel have to do with Christmas? Well, nothing on the surface, but you can google it and figure out the association for yourself. Which is to say that it has been associated with Christmas since its earliest productions. It is about candy, after all.

The opera version of Hansel & Gretel has some differences from the fairy tale, most specifically, the children are not abandoned in the woods; they just get lost.

Which is fine, actually, because a surprising number of kids were at the performance we saw, and SFO had some special activities for the kids associated with the opera. It was a lighthearted and fun production despite the fact that there is a witch trying to cook and eat the children.

Hansel and Gretel were played by Sasha Cooke and Heidi Stober, respectively, and were a delight. They were equally believable as a pair of bickering siblings and as a brother and sister trying to save each other's lives. The rest of the cast is great, too, but the production really hinges on these two, and they nailed it.

However, easily the best part of the show had nothing to do with the children. They fall asleep in the haunted wood and, during the night, all of the characters from Grimm's fairy tales come out into the woods and do what they do. It was a spectacular and fantastical ballet number, rather magical. I would have gone for that. And I'm not a ballet person. Meaning, other than a local production of The Nutcracker, I've never been to the ballet. My entire experience with it comes from opera. Which is actually where it originated from, so I suppose that's appropriate.

I can't say for sure that Hansel & Gretel was my favorite production this fall, but I also can't say that it wasn't. I really enjoyed it, surprisingly so, actually. It was not at all what we were expecting.

Manon Lescaut (an opera review post)

Yeah, yeah, I have no image for you for this one, either. I'm just not excited about the cover of the opera book enough to want to go to the trouble of getting a picture of it. Visualize this: a strand of pearls on a glossy, black tabletop with a few scattered pearls lying around it.
There you go. If you can get that picture in your head, you have the cover of the program.

The opera is much better than the program cover but, then, it is Puccini.

Manon Lescaut is based on the French novel L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut published in 1731. It's one of two operas based on this work, the other being Manon by Messenet, and both are still popular and rotation today. Without having seen the other one, I'm going to say that the Puccini one is better. Hey, it's Puccini!

Here's what I found amusing from this opera:
Part of the opera takes place in the wastelands of Louisiana. Wait, let me make that more clear: It takes place in the desert wastelands of Louisiana. Of course, having grown up in Louisiana, when I heard this, it made me laugh and wonder what the heck Puccini was thinking. I mean, he wrote Lescaut in 1890; everyone knew there were no deserts in Louisiana in 1890. It was kind of like, what the heck?

Then, I realized that it was based on a novel from the early 1700s, and Louisiana was a huge territory in the 1700s. Something like 1/3 of the total area of what is now the United States. When the novel was written, there were wastelands in Louisiana, and the opera is set during the same time period as the novel, so the it all suddenly made sense. Still, it was funny, and that's going to be the thing that most sticks with me about this opera.

The next thing is that Manon was much abused. She was an incredible beauty that her parents were sending off to a nunnery, which means the character is probably somewhere in the 14-16 year old range. The opera opens with a rich old white guy attempting to kidnap her to take her away to be his sex slave. It ends, as with all Puccini operas, in tragedy. In tragedy in the wastelands of Louisiana.

This production was good. It's not the best Puccini I've seen, but it might be the one with the most complexities and nuance, including a scene of prostitute branding which was quite horrific.

Brian Jagde, whom I have mentioned many times before, played des Grieux and was as good as always. Lianna Haroutounian was Manon and was a good match. The only real issue with the production was the death scene at the end, which I'm not going to try to explain, but I'm sure was a directing problem. Beyond that, though, it was a great production with great performances.

The Marriage of Figaro (an opera review post)

I know I usually have some kind of image to go along with these posts, usually the program book, but I'm not feeling like going to the trouble at this point. It's already been, like, a month (way more, now, actually) since we saw this, so I'm going to be doing good just to get some words out. Speaking of getting some words out, this is actually the second production we've seen of The Marriage of Figaro so, theoretically, I should have another post reviewing the previous production we saw... but, well, I can't find it. Not that I went back through my posts one by one or anything, but I did do several searches for it, including on google, and came up with nothing. Maybe I didn't review it when we saw it a few years ago? That doesn't seem right. At least, I was pretty sure I'd reviewed each opera we saw, but maybe I didn't start doing that right away. Except it wouldn't have been right away, because it wasn't one of our first operas.

Oh, well, a mystery probably not worth solving, but it does make me wonder.

I'm also wondering how I'm even going to review this considering how long it's been since we saw it, which was back in October. Look, things have been busy.

I suppose the most important thing to say is that this is a great opera. It's Mozart, one of his comedies (Mozart at his best), and one of the top 10 most performed operas each year. It has a famous scene in it where there are seven (or eight?) people on stage singing at once, all singing something different -- nothing like this had ever been done before -- and, yet, it works and blends perfectly. But, then, it's Mozart, so of course it does.

The Marriage of Figaro is the middle opera of a trilogy which begins with The Barber of Seville. The most famous version of Barber is not by Mozart, though I think he has his own version of that one, too. I haven't seen the third of this trilogy, yet (and can't remember the name of it, right off hand), but I really want to. See, each of this first two operas are quite outstanding as individual operas but, when you roll the plots together, they become so much more.

Let me explain:

In The Barber of Seville, there's this guy who wants to marry this girl, but she's promised to someone else, someone she doesn't want to marry, of course, but he has money, so her father wants her to go with old-money-guy rather than the guy she's in love with. In steps Figaro, the barber of Seville and quite famous, to help the love birds get together. Which he does through quite a few hi-jinks.

Which brings us to Marriage. Well, you know, the love birds get married, but I was speaking of the opera. The young woman in Barber is titled, so the couple is now Count and Countess, and Figaro works for them. Marriage is set about a year after Barber, and Figaro is, himself, about to get married to the Countess' handmaid. Except...

Except that the Count is hot for Figaro's bride-to-be and doing all he can to bed her, including gifting Figaro and Susanna with the best room in the mansion (aside from his, I suppose) as a wedding present because... yeah, it's very close to his room, so, you know, he'll have easy access to the new bride after the wedding. Yeah, this is the same guy whom Figaro just helped to marry his "soulmate." Or whatever. Real stand-up guy.

At any rate, it's a comedy and full hi-jinks, including mistaken identities and people falling out of windows. The production at SFO was wonderful. But I'm probably biased.

Romeo & Juliet (an opera review post)

I realize we had a rough opening act with the opera this season, but that ship has sailed (pun totally intended and, if you don't get it, you haven't been paying attention), but they've come back strong with Romeo & Juliet.

Romeo & Juliet may be my least favorite of Shakespeare's plays. At least of the ones I've read. Which is more than a few considering I've taken whole classes about Shakespeare. Look, I have a degree in English; what do you expect? But even as a teenager, R&J pushed all of the wrong buttons for me. My entire response could (and pretty much still can) be summed in, "Stupid teenagers." Yeah, that's how I felt about it when I was 14 and reading it for the first time. It actually put me off of Shakespeare entirely for more than a few years. I do have more of an appreciation for the play at this point in my life than I did when I was in high school but, still, stupid teenagers.

None of which is to say that I can't enjoy a good production of the story. It's not a bad story, though I don't get all of those gushy romantic feels from R&J that seem to be so common. For one thing, Romeo is a cad, but I'm not going to get into that right now.

R&J is not a commonly performed opera these days. It's French and, evidently, French is out as far as opera styles go at the moment. Honestly, I don't understand why. Maybe I just don't know enough about opera and music to understand but, having seen it now, R&J didn't seem much different to me than other operas of its time period. SFO, though, hasn't done R&J in decades until now (which seems to me to be another example of what I was saying in my SFO post about Shilvock). It's weird to me, though, that this opera in particular would fall through the crack. Because pretty much everyone knows the story, it seems to me that this should be a great opera to keep in rotation because it should accessible to people exploring opera for the first time. Even though they have supertitles, it still helps to know the story ahead of time.

I think this was a pretty decent production of R&J. Except for the set. They went for something which was barely more than a bare stage. I was unimpressed. Especially in comparison to many of the SFO sets. This one was just... kind of nothing. The costumes were good, but I sort of think the costumes and the set should complement each other, but maybe that's just me.

The performances were great. Nadine Sierra, whom I've mentioned before, played Juliet, and she was perfect. As with all good R&J productions, Mercutio steals any scene he's in, right up until he doesn't anymore, and Lucas Meachem (whom I've also mentioned before) did just that. The other real standout performance was by Stephanie Lauricella as Romeo's page, Stephano. She had a great scene where she taunts Tybalt and the Capulets that was a lot of fun.

I wasn't as sold on the Romeo, though my wife says that Pene Pati was a great singer. I don't disagree with that, and I enjoyed him in the production of Rigoletto we saw him in (see, I've mentioned him before, too!), but he never really grabbed me as Romeo. As I said, Romeo is a cad, and Pati never came off as such. It's got to be believable when all of his buddies are making fun of him that Juliet is just his flavor of the week, but Pati never rose above lovesick, which is almost right but not quite. I mean, he's trying to "meet" another girl when he discovers Juliet. Maybe it's a problem of the writing, though. It's difficult for me to tell since it's in French.

All said, though, I thought this was a fine production, and I think it's a great introductory opera for anyone who wants to find out what opera is all about.

SFO (an opera house opera review post)

Over the past few years, opera and going to the opera have become rather significant things in my life. My wife's life, too, probably, but I'm not going to speak for her as to how significant. I know it's an important thing for her and the fulfillment of a lifelong love, but I'm not going to put those words in her mouth. In short, we love the opera and going to the opera and SFO in particular. Therefore, it pains me to have to talk about some ways that SFO is really missing the high notes lately.

Some of this stuff is not new. I mentioned toward the end of last season's opera run that Matthew Shilvock, the general director of SFO, seems rather on the traditional side of things in how he's running the San Francisco Opera. I mean, he's British; it's probably in his DNA or something. And maybe it's not fair of me to speculate -- because what I'm saying is speculation -- buy that's how it feels to me (and I'm generally pretty good at intuitive conclusions). It feels like SFO is attempting to appear new and fresh by reaching back and putting on traditional productions of obscure or rarely performed operas, like the just reviewed Billy Budd and the soon to be reviewed Romeo & Juliet (yes, R&J isn't much performed, probably because it's a French opera and they're not really in style these days). However, that doesn't make something cutting edge; it means it's going harder and faster at being traditional. Like I said, the performance of Billy Budd we attended was the lowest attendance of any opera we've been to.

Here's what I'm going to say about the entire discussion I could have here (because I don't want to spend this entire post talking about all of the things that SFO could be doing to pull in new people): Hamilton is an opera, and it's insanely popular. One of those events that changes the public. SFO is doing nothing to approach what Hamilton has done. They're not looking at what works but trying to find ways to keep doing what they've been doing in a way that seems new when it's really the "same old thing."

And, look, I have nothing against "traditional" opera, as should be apparent from all of the opera review posts that I do. I like exploring all of these classic operas but, let's face it, there hasn't been a significant opera composer since Puccini (by significant, I mean popular with the masses and performed constantly). I want to make one thing very clear about Puccini: He wrote for the masses and frequently re-worked pieces after seeing the audience reaction to early performances of his works. I think opera has lost its way in appealing to the "common man," or however you want to say that. But it doesn't have to be that way!

The thing is is that it wouldn't really matter if SFO was making money. When you're turning a profit, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want, even if that means doing the same old thing over and over again. However, SFO seems to be suffering financially, at least somewhat due to a lack of attendance (probably mostly due to a lack of attendance judging from Billy Budd).

Here's how we found out:
SFO has, for years, offered something called operavision. You know how when you go to a concert there are often huge screens behind the stage which show the musicians performing so that people in the wayback can see what's going on rather than just seeing ants on stage? Opervision is kind of like that, except that it's smaller screens that come down out of the ceiling so that people in the balcony can see closeups of the performance and not be forced to use opera glasses. The screens also contained the supertitles, making them easier for people in the balcony to read. And just as an aside, if you're in the balcony and using opera glasses to see the performers, you can't also read the supertitles while doing that.

My wife loves opervision, and we always buy the season tickets that include operavision (because, actually, they would only offer that on one or two performances of any given production). Oh, and opervision nights cost more. So we went to see Billy Budd and... no operavision. There were, we thought, only two real possibilities of why there was no opervision: 1. My wife accidentally purchased the incorrect package. 2. They sent us tickets to the wrong performance.
During the intermission, my wife checked to see if the error had been hers because that would mean we would need to see if we could fix our tickets for the rest of the season.
The mistake was not hers. SFO had just failed to inform us that, even though they let us purchase the operavision package, opervision had been discontinued. Due to the expense. They couldn't afford to offer it any longer. There was a long list of reasons, none of which are really that important other than the underlying message that SFO is struggling financially right now.

This was further backed up when I called about the whole operavision thing and whether we had been charged for it. Oh, but wait! No, they had not charged us for it, but they also had not honored our seating choice (the cheap seats up in the top balcony) for some of the operas. For Romeo & Juliet and next month's The Marriage of Figaro, they had given us more expensive seats. And charged us for that, instead, which was quite a bit more than our cheap seats with operavision. I still am failing to understand the thought process that went into this decision.

Yeah, I was a little upset.

But, you know, we'd already paid for all of this and, sure, I could have known sooner if I had looked carefully at our tickets when they arrived in the mail but, hey, we'd never had any problems before with the seats being wrong, so it didn't occur to me check the tickets for every performance ahead of time, not until I saw that our tickets for R&J were for seats in a more expensive section. This is where I expressed my concern to the woman I was speaking to that all of this had been done without ever communicating with us about it. And, hey, I even stayed calm through this whole discussion. So, not only had they failed to inform us that operavision had been discontinued, but they also charged us for upgraded seats without asking us.

The woman got my point, at which point she gave us upgraded seats (to some of the really expensive seats) for the rest of our season! So, yeah, I'm not complaining because the new seats are quite nice, but it underscores that SFO is having some... issues... right now.

The other thing I brought up was their opera cd. Ever since we started buying season tickets, at the beginning of the season we would get a cd with an introduction to each opera on it. Our tradition has been to listen to the portion for any given opera we were seeing on the ride down to that opera. This year we didn't receive a cd. Guess what. They discontinued that, too. Why? They needed to cut costs. That's what she told me. So I got it straight from someone there.
And, you know, fine. We don't have to have the cd, but it is something that they actually advertised as part of buying season tickets.

Clearly, they made all of these cost-cutting decisions after printing all of their materials with all of the season information from which people purchase tickets, but they really need to be better at communicating if they're going to make changes like that. And, actually, I feel like if they sold season tickets with operavision included then they need to honor that. But maybe that's just me.

They're also only doing eight productions this season instead of the usual nine, and there's some speculation that they couldn't afford to do more than eight. I wouldn't know if that particular thing is true or not.

Now, I'm not going to go so far as to say that Matthew Shilvock should be replaced as general director; I don't know enough details of the problem or how long it's been going on to make that kind of statement. What I do know, though, is that someone needs to be working on how to make the opera more appealing to the masses rather than trying to convince the masses that they need to like the opera the way it is. That's a recipe for disaster that will end the opera rather than people coming to see something they don't want to see.

And we love the opera and we love SFO, and we don't want to see SFO shut it doors due to a lack of funding.

Billy Budd (an opera review post)

Here we are at the beginning of a new opera season, and, man, is there going to be a lot to talk about. As I mentioned, last week was a shitty week, but we were having our first opera and were really looking forward to it as a break from the shitstorm at home. [No, I’m probably not going to quit making shit jokes anytime soon. I mean, I’m still cleaning up shit stains in the bathtubs, so it’s not like I’m going to get past it right away.] After all, we love the opera! We’re always looking forward to getting back to it after the summer break.

However, the first opera on our schedule was Billy Bud, and my wife was feeling a bit trepidatious about it. I suppose that’s understandable; however, I was looking forward to it, being a Melville fan, so to speak, and seeing how it had been adapted from the… I don’t know what Billy-Bud-the-Melville-story is categorized as. I’ve always thought of it as a short story (it’s been a long time since I’ve read it), but the guy doing the pre-opera talk kept referring to it as a novella. I don’t remember it being long enough to be a novella, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. At any rate, the pre-opera speaker was so enthusiastic about the opera that, by the end of the talk, my wife was looking forward to it.

What we both should have learned by now, though, is that we really just do not like modern operas.

Let me make it clear before I continue that the term “modern” here has to do with a style and is not referring to when it was written. Of course, knowing that it’s “modern” also tells you that it was written within the last century since the modern style developed in the early 20^th century sometime (I’d tell you exactly when, but I’m working away from the internet (I know! Right? It’s weird!), so you’re stuck with the stuff that’s already in my head). Billy Bud debuted in 1951.

Now, for a long time, I’ve held the Usher opera up as my standard for worst opera, and it probably still holds that position, but it’s now a close call. We actually left Billy Budd before it was over. That's never happened before but, yes, it was that “modern.” Budd does have some redeeming moments, musically, but it’s also incredibly long, more than three hours. Usher was the length of act one of Budd, so it, at least, had its brevity going for it. What I can say is that I would never want to sit through either of these again. It wouldn’t surprise me if the devil is taking notes so that he knows what opera rooms to lock me in in Hell.

So... Why was Billy Budd so goddamn awful?
You know all of those things that I've mentioned in previous opera posts that are things that are wrong with opera? Well, all of those things are in this opera.
Before I go on, I want to say two things:
1. Evidently, the critics loved Budd. We always look up reviews on our way home from the operas we see, and Budd had pretty excellent reviews. I have to think this is one of those occasions where critics "like" something because they think it makes them more sophisticated than everyone else. Like wine snobs liking to drink shit-tasting wine because it's expensive. Or whatever.
2. I say that about critics because Billy Budd was the most lightly attended opera we've ever been to. There were no other people on our row with us, only two in the row below us, and only a few people behind us. It was like a matinee performance of a mediocre movie.

Did Billy Budd have droning, non-melodic music?
Yes.
Was the performed completely recitative?
Yes.
Did Billy Budd have performers who just stood in place while they sang?
Yes.

Just to expand on those thoughts a bit:
The music did have a few -- it seems incorrect to call them "high points," but there were some bits that were better than others -- less bad parts. Because it's a sailing story, Britten wrote some parts that resembled sea shanties. Those bits of music when the all of the sailors were doing shanty bits were not quite good, they also weren't exactly bad. Other than the shanties, the entire opera is done recitative, including a "monologue" from the villain about how evil he is which must have lasted at least 20 minutes.
To make matters worse, there's no action during any of this. When the villain sang his song, the stage was darkened with just a spot on him while he stood there and droned on about being a bad guy. Even during the big "battle" scene, the sailors just stand on stage and sing about it.
And to make matters even worse, there are sections, long sections, when the performers just stand in place on stage while the music... well, while it does whatever it's doing. It felt like parts of watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, except without any cosmic yawn to watch.

By the time we'd gotten to the intermission, my wife was ready to go. I never would have imagined that we'd find an opera she wanted to leave. I was hesitant, though, because... well, you know me, I hate to quit things. If you've been around for a while, you know the kinds of books I'll make myself finish reading, no matter how torturous they are.

So we stayed.

As soon as act two started, though, I began regretting it. So I made decision:
There's a murder that takes place in the story, so I decided I would give it till the murder so I could see how they handled that. Could they manage to put some action into this thing with the murder? If so, maybe it would be worth staying through the ending.
Ah... But no... The "murder" amounted to the one guy punching the other guy in the face (yeah, I'm keeping it vague in case you haven't read the story (and maybe you don't want to, now, after hearing all of this, but you shouldn't let a mishandled opera keep you away from the source material)) and managing to kill him that way. That was it. The entire piece of action in the whole opera, one punch to the face boiled down from a scene of rage and loss of control in the story.

So I leaned over and told my wife we could leave. That that was the highlight of the whole opera and that it wasn't going to get better.

We left.

Remember, this was supposed to be our enjoyable evening away from all the shit at home. All of the literal shit at home, which we drove back to to find the kids angry about the plumbing situation. I couldn't really blame them, but it wasn't the best thing to come home to.
At least there was the pleasure from finding a thing that my wife and I can hate on together. That was her thought, but it's true. It's great to like something together or to hate something together; it's never much fun when only one of us likes something.
But we don't want to ever see Billy Budd again.

It's Been a Shitty Week (wait for it...)

Today is Friday, September 13 (as I write, not as you read), so I suppose this is an appropriate thing to be writing today. Though it may turn out to be that today is the best day of the week, to a certain extent. But we'll get to that in a moment. Before we do, though, let's go back to last weekend...

Sunday night (that would be the 8th), my daughter took a shower. She didn't tell anyone that the shower didn't drain, but I discovered it a little while after she was finished when I found the water from her shower in the other bathtub in the house. Or half of it, anyway, since, when I looked, her tub still had standing water, too. Verdict: a clogged sewer line. All of the water in the house, therefore, was draining up into the bathtubs.

I could go into some depth with the details of what happened next, but we'd be here all day, so I'll skip to the part where, the next morning, I got in touch with a plumber friend (seriously, he came out to fix my hot water heater last year and we bonded over politics (not that we hang out or anything, but we exchange text messages every once in a while)) who came out to fix the issue. Which he did but only after seeing how kind of fucked up my house is due to all of the DIY stuff the previous owners did to it. Specifically, he got to see up close how they screwed up the plumbing.

Seriously, my house has some things in it that there is no other way to say than, "That's fucked up."

So he unclogged the sewer line but caused a leak in the bathroom sink because it didn't quite go back together correctly because the sink had been one of those DIY projects of the previous owners. Of course, we didn't know there was a leak...

...until Wednesday morning (which, by the way, was after (of course) I'd cleaned the tub in the master bathroom of all of  the... stuff... that had come up into it on Monday (I say "stuff" because I'm not sure what some of it was) and is some of what I skipped over telling you because Monday, in comparison, turned out to be a mild day), when the sewer line clogged up again. I discovered this after going to the bathroom because, when I flushed the toilet, water came up in the bathtub and the toilet didn't flush. So I texted my plumber friend and cleaned the stuff out from the cabinet under the sink so that he could run his snake thing in there again. Which is when I discovered that the pipes there were leaking and the towels were damp from the water.

However, before he could get to my house, the sewer line cleared itself, so the plumber said he'd come by later in the day to look at the sink since there was no longer an emergency. He did have other jobs already lined up despite the fact that he had been about to push them off till later in the day to come and fix my problem, which is what he had done on Monday. See, he's a good friend. Remember that when we get to later in the week.

But he didn't make it by on Wednesday. It got late enough that I needed to start cooking dinner, so I called him and told him not to worry about it and that he could work the sink in on Thursday if he had time. It was just a little drip, so I wasn't worried about getting it fixed on an emergency basis. His main concern was that he had caused the leak and didn't want to leave it like that, so he told me he'd come by first thing Thursday morning.

Thursday...

The only thing I can think is that Thursday decided that Friday the 13th gets too much attention and that it was going to give the 13th a run for its money.

Here's the thing with Thursday:
Thursday night (which would be last night) was the first opera of the season for my wife and me. I had a lot to do on Thursday, which included doing laundry and taking a shower, not to mention some errands to run outside the house. Thursday was already going to be a busy day.

When my wife got out of the shower on Thursday morning, she told me that it had drained slowly but, when I went into the bathroom to use the toilet, the tub was clear so I shrugged it off and sat down to do my business. What else was I supposed to do?
And let me be clear: Yes, I was taking a shit.
Yes, it's important for you to know that.
[And just as an aside here, you should know that I have what my plumber referred to as "healthy turds," and, if you look up a chart of what a healthy turd is as opposed to unhealthy turds, mine, actually, do fall into the range of "healthy." At any rate, as a plumber, he's in the somewhat unique position of seeing lots of turds, and he was impressed with mine because he doesn't see a lot of what would be considered "healthy" turds.]
Anyway... I flushed the toilet when I completed my business, and... it didn't flush. In fact, a little bit of water gurgled up in the bathtub. I sighed and, hoping, grabbed the plunger and tried to get the toilet to flush, but just a little more water gurgled up into the bathtub. Clear water, just so you know, and it wasn't all that much, just up around the drain.

As I was trying to decide what to do, my phone rang; it was my plumber letting me know that he was on his way over to deal with the sink... I got to let him know that the sewer line was, for really reals, clogged up again...

And, you know what? I'm out of time and this is getting beyond the length that people like to read in a... sitting...? Do people read blog posts while on the toilet? Like my dad used to read the newspaper almost exclusively in the bathroom? Huh, I wonder.
And you will have to keep wondering what happened, too. Until tomorrow, anyway...

Hamilton (an opera review post, part two)

"Ladies and gentlemen, you coulda been anywhere in the world tonight!
"But you're here...!"

Okay, maybe you couldn't have been anywhere, and maybe you're not here -- actually, looking around me, I know that you're not -- but you get the message, I'm sure.
Or, at least, I hope you do.

As I said last post, we in my family were kind of early adopters of the whole Hamilton thing. Christmas of 2015 was full of Hamilton merchandise, and we hadn't done more than listen to it online before that. A lot. Seriously. A LOT. But after Christmas, there were CDs and, then, the music went everywhere with us. I did mention, didn't I (last post), that 2/3 of my kids know the entire thing, basically, by heart. Actually, the 1/3 might also know it, but he tries to feign indifference to Hamilton. (It's complicated.)

At any rate, it's the kind of immersion that makes me wonder about the necessity of seeing the actual stage production.
Let me tell you a brief story:

Once upon a time, I had never been to Disneyland. When my extended family found out, they were amazed and dumbfounded and decided that had to change. But I'd been to Six Flags, many of them many many times, and didn't get the big deal. I mean, it's just a bigger amusement park, right? Boy, was I wrong about that. It's the difference between a McDonald's cheeseburger and the best hamburger you've ever had, unless a McDonald's cheeseburger is the best burger you've ever had, in which case I'm very sad for you.

Yes, what I'm saying is that the stage production is so worth seeing. It was... tremendous.

That said, there is one hangup I have with Lin-Manuel Miranda over Hamilton. It's a small hangup because the work is, overall, amazing, but it's still there, and I would definitely point it out in any other piece of work (and have). Miranda needlessly changes the history in a few places. I'm not talking about changes one might make to a story so that it would flow more smoothly or something; he just changes some facts here and there. Even though they're relatively "small" things, in this day and age, I think it's dangerous. For one thing, it gives people who want to detract from the larger Truth of the work an opening to do so. But, also, since people tend to not bother with knowing history stuff, it leads them to believe things that aren't true. You know 99% of people who have seen this had no idea who Alexander Hamilton was before they saw Hamilton. [Yes, I pulled that number out of my butt. It's a metaphor because I have no idea what the actual percentage is, but I know that it's very very high.]

Of course, he did write it before all of the fake news and alternative facts, so maybe he wouldn't do it that way again. It just happened that it exploded onto the scene and was quickly followed by the quasi-reality we're all living through right now.

Other than that, there's nothing bad I can say about Hamilton in general. It's a great opera. Even I know some of the songs. And seeing it live... well, it took it up another level.

For one thing, there are a few things you can't get from just listening to it, things I didn't really realize I hadn't gotten until I saw it. I didn't know I was missing stuff, because I was out of context from the action on the stage but, when you see the performance, the lyrics in places click into place and it's like, "Oh! That's what that means!" Plus, I don't have the best ear, so I can't always tell when I'm listening to it who is singing what in the pieces where there are a lot of singers telling different bits, like in the opening number, so, for me, it was really nice to be able to see who was singing what.

As you can see from the picture,

the stage was pretty impressive. There were rotating portions of the stage as well that produced some interesting effects at points as people were rotated in opposite directions or were able to walk without moving across the stage.

The cast was great, even Simon Longnight as Lafayette, at which point I didn't care for him because of the nasal pitch to his voice, but I wasn't sure if it was him I wasn't liking so much as the faux French accent for the character. In the second part of the production, he becomes Thomas Jefferson, and he was completely enjoyable as Jefferson, so it was the accent that was the issue in the first part. At any rate, that's the only part of the entire production I have any quibble with, and that's hardly even a thing.

Julia Harriman, as Eliza, was powerful powerful during "Burn." I was surprised at how powerful.

Donald Webber gave a similarly powerful performance of "Wait for It."

Isaiah Johnson was amazing as Washington, possibly the best in the case? I don't know. I have a hard time judging that kind of thing. Like I said, I don't have the best ear.

Rick Negron's calves stole the scene as King George, but he was still great. It's not his fault all of us (seriously, we all noticed) noticed the size of his calves. Also, I want to point out, there are parts of the production that contain George where he's not singing, so you never know until you see it. It was so awesome to see him dance around the stage during "The Reyonlds Pamphlet."

And, then, there's  Julius Thomas as Hamilton. He was amazing. I mean, probably not the best singer up there, but he has to carry the show, and he certainly did that. Also, he came out after the show and signed autographs and let people take selfies with him and was so gracious about all of it. Thanking people for being there and supporting the show while allowing them to take up his time when you know he has to be tired and wants to just go home already. I was super impressed.

Look, if you have the chance to go see Hamilton, you should do it. It's an amazing show with fabulous music, and it's playing in several venues across the U.S. and on tour as well. I know you might have to "Wait for It," we did, but it is well worth it. I want to go again.

Hamilton (an opera review post, part one)

Okay, let's talk about the elephant I just brought into the room: I called this an "opera review post." Why would I do such a thing when Hamilton is clearly not an opera.
Right?
I'm just gonna guess that you don't actually know what an opera is. You just have a vague cultural idea of opera as some snooty upper class thing full of boring classical music and languages you don't understand.
And, well, unfortunately, that's kind of what opera has become, but it's not what it actually is. Oh, and when I say "kind of" what it's become, I actually mean that's not at all what it's become, but I can understand why so many people think of that way: It's how I used to think of it, too.

So what is opera, then? And what makes it different from musical theater?
Or from a play?
Well, both opera and musical theater fit under the broader category of what a play is. We tend to think of plays as the things without music, but they're all plays. If you add a few songs (or more than a few) but the play still consists of mostly spoken dialogue, you get musical theater. If it's a completely sung work, it's an opera.
Don't look at me like that, I'm talking about definitions, here, and definitions are important.

Look at it like this:
When opera was the entertainment of the day, opera was not a snooty upper class thing. Opera was entertainment for the masses and full of popular music. Classical music wasn't written to be classical -- there was no such thing at the time -- it was written to be popular. It's only "classical" now because it has endured. That's how popular it was. You'd probably be surprised at how much of the music you'd recognize if you became an opera-goer. (Just sayin'.) This was Top 40 stuff, is all I'm sayin'.

Also, opera wasn't written in other languages to be inaccessible to people. They were written in the languages of the people watching them. So, you know, French and Italian, especially. Some German. Other languages, too, just not much English. Look, I don't know why the British didn't get into opera writing. If they had, maybe we'd have different ideas about opera these days, but they didn't. Probably something to do with their "stiff upper lip" personality thing. It's a mystery to me. What it means, though, is that all of the big, famous operas from the past are mostly French or Italian, which means that when we think of operas, we get this idea that they have to be written in some other language.

It's the Three Wise Men, okay. It's all assumptions with no facts to back it up.

Hamilton is a sung work. There's really nothing spoken in it. A line or two here or there for emphasis, if you want to get all technical about it, but one word spoken without music doesn't make it not a sung work, so don't try to go all musical theater on me. And, no, the line between opera and musical theater can be blurry, but it's not so blurry that it extends to a word or two.

Hamilton is full of popular music. It's very singable. I know, because 2/3 of my kids know the entire thing by heart. It's also in the language of the people, which I'm just gonna say again, older operas were not written in some special "opera language," they were written in the languages of the audiences and the composers. It's not surprising, then, that Hamilton is in English.

So, Hamilton is an opera, which means that if you've seen Hamilton or listened to Hamilton, you've been interacting with opera. If you enjoyed Hamilton, you're enjoying opera.
It's not my fault; I'm not making this stuff up.

It also means that Lin-Manuel Miranda is the most famous opera singer in America.

My family's involvement with Hamilton began in the fall of 2015. NPR did a piece about it which my wife heard on her way home from work. She came home and played a bit of it for me, sure that I wasn't going to like it. Hip-hop isn't exactly my style of music. She was astonished when I liked it and told her to let it play. Maybe it was that I already liked Alexander Hamilton and had thought since high school that he's kinda gotten the short end of the stick. Maybe the music is just that catchy. Maybe it was a double-full blue blood moon and the tides were both extremely high and non-existent. I suppose it doesn't really matter why, but I liked it and, because, at that moment, I told my wife to let it play so my daughter heard it and she liked it and, well, it just cascaded from there.

We were all very disappointed that it only won 11 Tony awards.

All of which is to say that we didn't just go see Hamilton because it was a thing to do and people talk about it a lot. It was a dream-fulfillment thing, especially for my daughter. And it was her birthday present, which we will probably never be able to top.

None of which has anything to do with the performance that we saw, but that will have to be next time...

Orlando (an opera review post)

After having said, just this week, what I said about the general director of SFO and more traditional productions of classic operas, here's one that's... not. Which does not change the validity of my statement; the productions have still been trending toward "traditional" rather than "experimental" or "updated" or whatever you want to call anything that isn't set in its traditional setting. But, yes, Orlando gets a more modern setting, and it's a very good thing. I'm not sure how I would have felt about it if it had been done as written. As it is, I'm still conflicted over it.

Orlando is by Handel. Yes, that Handel, the Messiah one. Which means it's pretty. It's also everything that people who have never seen opera think opera is: people singing one line over and over again for five minutes. Okay, maybe three lines, but Orlando is really like that. This could be reduced to a not-even-very-long short story, even shorter if it was dialogue-based.

All that, and it makes use of one of my least favorite writing devices: the deus ex machina.

However!
This production is set during World War II rather than it's original setting, and the opera becomes something much more interesting than having the problem solved by "god" coming down and making everything right. In this case, it's solved by a rather pompous psychiatrist and electroshock treatment. Of course, the electroshock treatment does seem to affect everyone involved, not just the receiver of the treatment, but it's much better than Zeus waving his hands around and making everything good again.

Here's something fun:
My brother, who is six years younger than me, sang in a boys' choir when he was probably about six or seven. Due to his association with that particular choir, I picked up a few tidbits of information about choirs of that sort, the main being that in the not too distant past, even, it was not uncommon for the best of these singers to be castrated before puberty so that they could retain their high-pitched voices into adulthood. Yeah, I'll just let that sink in a few moments...

You ready to go on yet?
Good.

So... Handel had a favored lead male singer who was one of these men who had been castrated to retain his voice, and Handel wrote the part of Orlando for that specific singer. Needless to say, it is, at best, a difficult role for a male to play these days, so SFO cast a woman in the role, which seems to be the norm. I don't know; I haven't done any research on the history of Orlando and at what point it became commonplace to have a woman in the role.

Anyway... None of that has any bearing on the actual opera production. It's just free trivia for you.

It took me a while to get into this one. It starts with this whole thing with the doctor/wizard Zoroastro trying to convince Orlando that he should forsake love and get back to his duty in the war because, you know, he's a war hero, and there are still Nazis to kill. That's probably advice Orlando should have taken because the woman he was in love with was in love with someone else, and so we have a conflict. It's a much more complicated conflict than that, though, more like a love tangle than a love triangle. After awhile, the story got interesting enough to draw me in. It just takes a while when it takes half an hour to cover a few sentences of story.

The set was pretty interesting. They set it in a hospital because Orlando has been wounded and this is where he had been making his recovery. It was, on the surface, a fairly simple set, just a spinning wall that could be different rooms as they turned it from one side to the other. It was very effective.

In the end, I liked it. A lot more than I expected to. It's sort of a stand-in-place-and-sing kind of opera, but the director turned it into a piece that plenty of movement and action. It was good. It helped to pull the audience, or, at least, me, into the performance.

Christina Gansch, who played the nurse Dorinda, really stood out. She was clever and funny and, really, made her role the center of the performance.

I don't know that I'd want to see this opera again, but I'm glad I saw this production of it.

Carmen (an opera review post)

Carmen marks the first opera I have seen more than once. Evidently, it's one of SFO's favorite operas to perform, so I suppose you should expect another Carmen review in two to three years. This was a different production than the one we saw last time, and, I have to say, this one fell short. It's something that I'm saying that, too, because, at the point of the intermission, I announced to my wife, "I like this one better than the last one." I was wrong. But I'll get more to that in a moment or three.

First of all, this was a much more traditional production than the previous one. What I'm learning is that the new general director of SFO, having taken over in 2016, just after we started attending, is very much a traditionalist in his approach to the productions of older operas. He's British, so maybe that's why? It's not that they don't perform newer operas, after all, since we've been going, they've debuted several new opera productions, but, since he's been in charge, the trend has been to return all the staple operas to more traditional styles of productions. So, last time we saw Carmen, we had a show set in the 60s or 70s, while this recent production returned us to the 1800s. I don't know that this traditionalist approach is a detriment or not, but Carmen, in particular, seems to be ready for a more up-to-date interpretation.

I believe the reason I liked the first half of this particular production as much as I did is that Don Jose, the male lead, is not actually in it much. I enjoyed J'Nai Bridges in her role as Carmen. She very much embodied the character and was fun to watch. Matthew Polenzani, however, was barely believable in his role as Don Jose. He creates no romantic, sexual, or violent tension, and all three of those things are required in the male lead.

I would kind of love to break it all down, but I think that would take too long and, ultimately, prove to be uninteresting, so I'll give the highlights:
1. Polenzani turns what should have been a highly charged meeting of sexual tension into something that more resembles insta-love, as he ignored Carmen during the entire exchange. Once she's off the stage he picks up a flower she threw at him and decides he's in love with her.
2. During the pivotal scene where Jose is forced into running off to the mountains with Carmen, it doesn't actually feel forced. It comes across more as an "oh, well..."
3. During the final scene, Carmen keeps going on about how Jose should just go ahead and kill her if that's what he's going to do, but Polenzani managed to be so non-threatening throughout the production that it comes across as emo whining on the part of Carmen rather than any real threat upon her life. It makes her murder somewhat out of the blue and arbitrary feeling, more like he did because she was saying it rather than there being any threat of murder hanging in the air.

It's so bad, in fact, that when the romantic rival shows up, I really felt like Carmen should go off with him. You're not supposed to be rooting for this guy and, in the previous production we saw, I wasn't. In the that one, he felt like the villain he was supposed to be but, in this one, he felt like the better option. You could feel his passion for Carmen and could support that over Jose's milk-toast ambivalence.

Now, I realize that a lot of these issues could be directorial, but I think the lack of believable passion from Don Jose falls squarely on Polenzani's shoulders. Unless, maybe, the director told him to be as uninterested as possible, but I highly doubt that. Maybe it all would have been fine if I had just shut my eyes and listened to the music only but, then, I wouldn't have understood it because I need the translation on the screens.

All of which is to say that the specific production can make a huge difference in an opera. Yes, I knew that... in my head... but I had never experienced it before. Not in an opera, anyway. It's interesting to get this perspective.

Rusalka (an opera review post)

When we think of fairy tales we think of what? Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? The Little Mermaid? Sure, because those are fairy tales, and they come to mind, but they come to mind in their Disney versions. The versions where everything has a happy ending. In fact, we so much think of fairy tales these days in terms of Disney that people say things like wanting a fairy tale wedding or a fairy tale ending. All I have to say about that is, "Fuck that!"

I mean, have you even read fairy tales? Do you know what they're really like? The originals? Like, in Sleeping Beauty, part of that story has to do with the fact that she was impregnated while she slept. And The Little Mermaid? Dissolved into sea foam. Dissolved! And washed away because the prince decided to marry someone else because trying to get on with a girl who couldn't speak was too much for him. And don't even ask about Cinderella's stepsisters' feet.

Back in the day, fairy tales were cautionary.

Imagine taking a cautionary tale, one in which the protagonist dissolves into foam at the end, and turning it into an opera, a form already rife with tragedy! Yes, Rusalka is largely based on Hans Christian Andersen's mermaid story, though it draws inspiration from other sources as well, especially Wagner's Ring Cycle.

Rusalka's not a mermaid, though; she's a water nymph. Close enough, right? Her father is the Water Goblin; he seems to be the guy in charge of all the nymphs. Not that that's explained, but the opera opens with all of the other nymphs cavorting around and trying to gain the "favor" of the Water Goblin. All while Rusalka pines over the prince who can't see or hear her because she's a water nymph and lives down in a lake.

But I'm sure you know how the story goes.
Apart from the tragic ending, that is.

As is so often with SFO, the sets were amazing! I mean, really amazing. Maybe the best sets they've had that we've seen? I don't feel qualified to judge that, actually. What I really loved was that during the forest scenes, which were full of nymphs and fairy creatures, the trees moved around. It made it feel really magical to have the scenery shifting around during the action. The rest was really impressive, too.

As always, the performances were excellent. I think Rachel Willis-Sorensen was especially good as Rusalka. She brought an appropriate amount of longing and despair to the role. There's not a lot of joy for the character, only that brief moment when the prince notices her (after she's made her deal with the witch) and takes her to his castle. After that, the prince goes about flaunting another woman, basically, right in front of her. It doesn't get better from there. Willis-Sorensen does a pretty perfect job of channeling the character's grief.

I'm not saying this is one of my favorite operas, but I enjoyed this one more than my wife did, a rare occurrence for us since my wife starts out at a much higher love for any individual opera than I do. She's loved opera since she was a teenager, and I'm just learning it now. She felt the music was too slow in this one, and I can see that, but, thinking about it now, I might describe it as lush rather than slow. At any rate, it's definitely an opera I'd be open to seeing other iterations of.

One other thing of note: Rusalka is a Czech opera, as was The Makropulos Case, which I am still rather fascinated with and would like to see again. And it's from Czech theater that we get the word "robot." But Czech opera and theater hasn't been very popular outside of itself, mostly due to the difficult language, according to the experts. I'm intrigued enough that I want more.

It's a Wonderful Life (an opera review post)

Wait, what? Opera review? It's a Wonderful Life is a movie, not an opera!
Don't worry; it's still a movie but, now, it's also an opera.
And, of movies that could be turned into operas, It's a Wonderful Life is, on many levels, the perfect choice. It's also a very daunting choice. I mean, the movie is beloved by so many people... It's a fine line to tread to reproduce something in another medium to the satisfaction of people who love it in its original medium and, yet, make it attractive to people who have no association with it. It's why adapting books can work so well. The percentage of readers is usually small enough that it doesn't matter if they like an adaptation or not. But taking a beloved movie, a movie that millions of people watch every year... Well, that's another story entirely.

And let's just get it out of the way:
I love It's a Wonderful Life, which has nothing to do with it being a Christmas movie (because, let's face it; it's not) and everything to do with loving Jimmy Stewart. And this isn't even my favorite Jimmy Stewart movie, just the one I've watched the most and the one that most people know him from. That said, I wouldn't want to be the one cast to fill his shoes in this operatic adaptation.

But before we get to that, does the opera make me want to partake of the source material? That's a much easier question to answer when you're not already familiar with the source material, just by the way. That said, I don't think the opera would have made me want to watch the movie if I hadn't already seen it. I could be wrong. However, we went to see this with a couple of friends who were both mostly unfamiliar with opera and had never seen the movie, and both of them said they felt like, now, they needed to see the movie. They both had a much greater positive reaction to the opera than I did, which could account for that, especially considering some of my lack of positive reaction came from places where I thought the adaptation was lacking.

The greatest area it was lacking was in its George Bailey. George was played by William Burden, who never felt George enough for me. In the movie, one of the main qualities about George is his enthusiasm, his excitement over all that he plans to do. That's really lacking in the opera and, instead, George comes off as seeming rather depressed through most of the opera, sad all the time. It gave the opera a melancholy feeling that the movie doesn't have. Being a story of hope, I think the melancholy dragged the opera down somewhat; at least, it did for me.

On the other hand, Andriana Chuchman really nailed Mary Hatch. She was a pleasure to watch and listen to.

On the other other hand, Rod Gilfry wasn't quite evil enough as Mr. Potter, though that probably wasn't his fault. He doesn't have enough stage time to let the audience know how despicable he is. We have to rely on George's pronouncement that Potter is like a fat spider in a web preying on everyone else as our measurement on how evil Potter is.

The music and singing were good but, overall, not very memorable. It never really soared, and it seems to me that there should have been opportunities for that. Then, again, I'm not a musician.

Then there's the stage...
SFO generally has great sets. You should know; I talk about them pretty much every time I do an opera review. But this one... Well, it was interesting and a great way to handle the first part of the story. The stage was full of doors floating out in space and was where the angels viewed George's life, where Clara (the angel sent to save George (rather than Clarence from the movie)) learns what she needs to know so that she can help George Bailey as he stands on the bridge ready to jump. And they had angels flying around the stage, too, which was really cool.

As they progressed through George's life, different doors would open and the actors would come out and act out the scenes of the important moments. It was really cool, like visions in space for the angels to watch.

The problem was that that was all there was. When they finally got up to "now" in the story and everything was progressing in the moment, the action was still happening in front of the doors. It made the ending seem less real than it should have. At least for me.

All of that said, I did enjoy the opera. It was good; it just wasn't great. And certainly not as great as I wanted it to be. It was something I was glad to see, but it's not an opera I'd go out of my way to see a second time. And, really, there's nothing wrong with that.

Arabella (an opera review post)

All right, so, remember back to my review of Elektra where I said that it kind of put me off Strauss and that that might not be fair? Of course, you don't, which is why I put in a link so that you can go back and look. As it turns out, it wasn't fair. Not that I like Elektra anymore than I did at the time, but I thoroughly enjoyed Arabella, one of Strauss' comedies, a romantic comedy. A romantic comedy with those Shakespearean kinds of mistaken identities going on.

And the music was much better.

Not to do a plot synopsis (because you can look that up if you want to know what it's about), but I'm going to give you a little of the set up... because it's funny, and you can probably figure out where some of the humor in this piece will come from once I tell you.

Count Waldner has come down in the world, and he and his family are living out of a swanky hotel. Which may not sound like he's doing too terribly, but that means he's had to sell off his ancestral home and, evidently, he's behind on what he owes to the hotel, too. Through the course of the opera, we learn that he has a gambling addiction; maybe not the actual original source of his family's financial woes, but he's certainly not helping anything.

The count and his wife have two daughters, but daughters are expensive to bring out into society, so they have raised the younger daughter, Zdenka, as a boy, at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Which includes Zdenka's best friend, Matteo, who believes Zdenko (notice the spelling difference) is his bro. The count and his wife are trying to marry Arabella off to some rich suitor so that they can get some money out of the deal. Of course, Arabella wants none of that; she wants to marry for love.

To complete matters, Matteo is in love with Arabella, whom he used to "date," or whatever you'd call what they did, but Arabella is over him and has no interest in him. However, Zdenka is in love with Matteo, who thinks she's a boy.

I'm sure you're getting the picture.

And I haven't even mentioned the guy who shows up in love with Arabella after only seeing a photograph of her! But that's handled relatively believably, so it wasn't a problem.

For once, I wasn't really impressed with the set. It was interesting in its versatility, as they used the same main two set pieces (large pieces!) in different configurations to make the different rooms and things, but it all seemed a little too elaborate to me for something that could have been much less so. I mean, if there was ever an opera that could have gone for a minimalist set design, this was it. Basically, the set overwhelmed the preforms, especially since most of the time there are only one or two people on stage.

The cast was good, especially the father and the daughters. Richard Fink (Count Waldner) was delightful as the card-obsessed, gambling dad who was constantly trying to figure out where he could get some money and get back into the game. His expressions were great, meaning he was a good actor on top of being a good singer.

Ellie Dehn (Arabella) and Heidi Stober (Zdenka), both of whom I've mentioned from other operas, were great and worked well together. Great sister chemistry, even with one of them dressed as a boy. Which kind of makes me wonder, now, how old Zdenka was was supposed to be, considering that she's referred to as a "boy" in the opera and Arabella is only at the age of being presented to society (so I'm kind of thinking that Arabella must be something like 16 or 17?). And Matteo is a soldier and trying to woo Arabella, so I'm thinking he must be around 20? But his best friend is still referred to as a kid, basically. And, well... Well, that would be telling.
Boy did I digress...

Anyway! Dehn and Stober are great together. And great individually.

What this opera did for me for sure was change my opinion on Strauss. At least as a composer. My thoughts on him as a person are bit more conflicted, but that's a story for another time.

Tosca (an opera review post)

In my last opera review, I talked about the bel canto opera style. Well, I'm not the only one who doesn't, or didn't, like it. Verismo, which means "true" or "real," was, at least in part, a reaction to the bel canto style which dominated opera through a large part of the 1800s. Puccini is probably the most well known verismo composer. So, where last time we had Donizetti playing fast and loose with history and facts in the name of some "emotional truth" that he completely made up, this time we have Puccini paying close attention to facts and details and presenting a fictional story set against exact historical veracity.

When I say he wanted to get it all correct, I'm not exaggerating. The story is set against a particular day in Rome when they got news early in the day that Napoleon had been defeated. In fact, the news was false and Napoleon was actually victorious, so the celebrations that had started over Napoleon's "defeat" came to a sudden halt when the actual news finally reached them that Napoleon had won the battle. Puccini set his story at three specific places in Rome, actual places that are still there today, and reproduced them exactly. In fact, he wanted to include the ringing of the bells in  the church that part of the opera is set in, so he went to Rome so that he could listen to them and accurately incorporate their music into his score. There was no loosey-goosey "emotional truth" and re-writing history for Puccini!

Of course, none of that has anything to do with this production; it's just to contrast Tosca against Roberto Devereux.

As for this production, it was great. At least we (my wife and I) thought it was. Evidently, the local opera critics didn't think much of it, overall, because they felt it was not original enough... What...? These are the same people who complain when SFO stages a classic opera in some new way, as with the opera set in the museum last year (or the year before; I forget).  So you can't do it the way it's always been done, and you can't do something too original, either. What line is it they want walked, here? Oh, wait, the invisible one.

So my wife and I thought Tosca was great. The sets were stunning. Of course. And the singing...

Well, Briane Jagde was in it as the male romantic lead, and he was great. I know I've talked about Jagde before -- this is at least the fourth opera I've seen him in, maybe fifth -- and he's always quite good. Okay, very good. I enjoy him a lot. He's not one of those "stand and sing" fellows, and I really appreciate that. In fact, in this one... wait, hold that thought.

Tosca was played by Carmen Giannattasio. This was her debut to the role and to SFO, and she was also great. Giannnattasio and Jagde had great chemistry together, and they both had scenes where they had to sing while lying on the floor! Excuse me, they both had scenes where they had to sing while lying on the fucking floor! And if you'd had your eyes closed, you wouldn't have been able to tell they were on their stomachs on the floor. Do you know how hard it is to sing while lying on your stomach? Why don't you try it. And they had no loss of volume while doing it!

Yeah, I was pretty impressed with that.

All of that to say that we really enjoyed the opera. And, if you go into it without knowing the plot, it might just throw you off a bit. At least once. However, it is Puccini, so expect everyone to die in the end. Okay, well, it's not Hamlet, but Puccini may be the best at deaths other than Shakespeare.

Roberto Devereux (an opera review post)

Donizetti is one of the most prolific composers of opera who has ever lived, having composed nearly 70 operas in his 50 or so years on Earth. I'm just going to assume, wait, I don't have to assume; he wrote his first opera at 19, so that's better than two a year for the rest of his life. Which I don't know why I'm telling you (or even if I told you before, considering that this is the third Donizetti opera I've now seen) other than to say that Donizetti wrote a LOT of operas, and I'm having to go with idea that they weren't always good. On the one hand, I loved Don Pasquale but, then... Well, then there's this.

I want to make it clear, here, that my problem is specifically with the opera itself, not the production. As is generally the case with SFO, the production was top notch. The set, while not as good as the previous opera we saw, was still pretty fantastic and based, loosely, on the Globe theater. It was meant as a metaphor, but I'm not sure that bit really worked. The costumes were great. And the performances...

Okay, Sondra Radvanovsky, who played Queen Elizabeth, was amazing. Seriously, she was incredible. Both her singing and her acting. I can't quite say the same for the rest of the cast. Not that any of them were bad, they just didn't rise to the same level as Radvanovsky.

And this is where bits of the opera begin to fall apart for me, though. It's a bel canto style opera, which means, approximately, "beautiful song." Donizetti was one of the central figures in bel canto. On the surface, that sounds fine, right, an opera with beautiful songs? The problem is that bel canto can better be described as happy sounding music. It's all light and bubbly and stuff and, well, Roberta Devereux is a tragedy. The words and the music don't fit together at all. It's a little disconcerting to have someone singing about betrayal and heartache while sounding as if she's singing about a glorious spring day.

Then there's the bit where Donizetti and his librettist, Salvadore Cammarano, took an actual historical event and completely fictionalized it... to get at the "emotional truth" of the story, they said. Um, wait... If you completely change the story so that it has no real relation to the things that actually happened, how can you get at any emotional truth involved in what really happened? The short answer: You can't! And they went for the wrong "emotional truth" with this story, anyway.

Which brings us to the biggest issue of Roberto Devereux:
Elizabeth governed England during a time of tremendous prosperity for the country. "She" defeated the Spanish Armada, making England ruler of the seas. And while I know it can be debated how much of this or how much of that can be attributed to Elizabeth, Donizetti reduces her to a petty, lovesick adolescent who has people executed for spite and personal vengeance. A female Trump (#fakepresident), if you will.

It was disappointing, to say the least. It played up all of the worst cliches about women while adding some horrible plot devices, including what can best be described as a "magic" ring that worked as a "get out of execution free" card. This is not an opera I'd ever want to see again, no matter the production. And it puts in doubt future Donizetti operas. Yeah, despite how much I loved Pasquale, this one was so bad that I'm not sure I want to see anything else by the guy. Especially since I wasn't crazy about Lucia di Lammermoor, either. Maybe another of his comedies.

Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci (an opera(s) review post)

Here we are well into the 2018/19 opera season. "What?!?!" you say, "When did that happen?" Well, that happened last month when I was posting only photos. And writing various posts that weren't scheduled to go up until October. Like this one. Oh, come on. It's not like you were going to rush right out and see it anyway, so you didn't miss anything. You can just be happy in the knowledge that I got to go see it and wish you lived closer to San Francisco.

Our first opera(s) of the season was a pair of one act operas that are traditionally performed together. There's not really a good reason for this other than the fact that they are relatively short for operas, being one acts, and the fact that they were composed at roughly the same time and are early representations of the verismo movement. That's that thing that Puccini is known for. Cavalleria Rusticana is considered the first verismo opera.

It's kind of funny, actually: Mascagni wrote the opera for a contest... Yes! A contest! They had those back then, too! It's kind of weird because I always sort of thought that writing contests (of whatever kind)  were more of a modern invention, but I guess not. So, anyway, he wrote it for a contest, the first prize of which wass that the organization holding the contest would produce the winning opera. Well, Mascagni won. And you could say that it actually changed opera permanently.

But this isn't a history lesson; it's a review, so you'll have to look it up if you want to know how that turned out. Cruel, I know.

The first thing to know about this particular production is that the set was amazing! I mean seriously amazing. The two operas, the second being Pagliacci, are actually set in different places and aren't connected at all; however, for this production, they set both operas in the same small village and used the same village people for both operas as well as some of the characters. That, also, was really cool, but the main thing was that the set was amazing, and they were only able to do that by setting them both in the same place so that they didn't have to do a set change between the two performances.

The next thing to know, I suppose, is that the set (and I'm including the costuming as part of the set, just because) was the best part of the production. Which is not to say that this was not a good show, because it was. All things considered, it was pretty engrossing. As is pretty typical with verismo operas, they were both tragic love stories, not that that is not pretty typical in opera in general, but verismo kind of specializes in it.

Unfortunately, the performances didn't rise to the same level as the set. Mostly, they were solid, but there was nothing exceptional. Actually, the one guy who was supposed to be a big deal, Dimitri Platanias, fell flat. And he had parts in both operas. But he was definitely a "stand and sing" kind of guy and seemed to have problems moving around the stage when required to. He tended to be rather expressionless, too, so, when in Cavalleria Rusticana he finds out that his wife is having an affair, he comes off as kind of bored, likewise when he's challenged to a duel by his wife's lover a bit later.

It's amazing how one person's performance can affect an entire show.

And, you know, maybe he was just having a bad night. I don't know. All I know is that Platanias was supposed to be a big deal, but it's difficult for me to always know what that means. Maybe he's a big deal solely because of his voice, which is a valid thing in the opera world, but, I think, opera is changing and you have to bring some form of acting ability with you to the stage, and this guy, at least on this night, didn't have it.

Still, the production was well worth seeing.

Der Ring des Nibelungen (final thoughts)

The Ring of the Nibelung is a lot of opera; there's no denying that. Opera isn't like going to the movies, even if they are a similar form of entertainment, and they are a similar form of entertainment. However, it does require quite a bit more concentration to take in something that's in a different language. It can be challenging, especially with something this long.

However, I also think it's worth it. Of course, that's from the guy who will slog through books and movies that I know I'm not going to like just so that I will have the context of it. Or to prove that it's bad. Or whatever. You can take what I say about opera, then, with whatever kind of salt you need to use. But I do like opera, both in theory and in experience. I think it should be a more widespread form of entertainment, and it would be if it could break its bonds of tradition that old, white people have it chained to. Old white people like that opera is seen as some kind of elitist entertainment because it makes them feel superior to other people who don't see opera. But that's a different conversation.

The Ring is a significant achievement in opera-viewing. I didn't really appreciate the extent of that achievement until seeing it. I think it says something that I would be more than willing to see it again. In fact, I want to see it again. It's a complex story, and I think it needs another viewing.

Having said that, I am no "Wagnerian." I didn't find the opera to be any kind of "religious experience," as some people describe it. I've actually been having a hard time coming to terms with that viewpoint, in fact, but, then, some people view Game of Thrones that way and, by comparison, Thrones is so far inferior it's difficult to even call it a work of art.

Which is not to say that The Ring doesn't have its flaws. It actually has what I would consider some pretty significant flaws, the central one being the Ring itself. For a Ring of absolute power, it seems to do very little and fails to protect its wearer at every juncture during the opera. Of course, it's no different than the way magic is used by most authors: It only works when the author wants it to and, for whatever reason, fails the user at plot-opportune moments. So this isn't a just a problem I have with Wagner; it's a problem I tend to have with authors in general, especially when they don't follow the rules they themselves have set up for their work.

Based on the scant knowledge I have of Wagner, I'm going to say that the Ring is a metaphor for technology and that he represents himself within the opera through the character of Wotan. Wagner was not a fan of industrialization and viewed it as somewhat of a curse upon the world, the same way Wotan speaks of the Ring once he has resisted his own temptation to wield its power to control the world (which I found puzzling because Wotan was already in charge of the world, so to speak, so it seemed a bit odd to me that he would, then, feel like he needed the Ring to be in charge of it).

Wotan is a seeker of knowledge and spends lifetimes searching out all the secrets and hidden places of the world. And hatching schemes. Through the first part of the Cycle, Wotan's efforts are going toward building up Valhalla and, by extension, the world. It's his desire to bring into being a champion, a hero, who can wield the Ring and not be corrupted by it. Then, suddenly, at the beginning of Twilight of the Gods, we find that Wotan has retreated into Valhalla and locked all of the gods in with him and is waiting to burn it all down using the wood of what is the equivalent of the World Tree. There will be no escaping for the gods.

Maybe it's the events in The Valkyrie that push him in that direction. It's hard to say because he's still around meddling during the events in Siegfried, but his goals may have already shifted at that point. At any rate, I find the idea of the only way to save the world is to destroy it to be chilling, especially in our current political climate in which so many people actually believe that. The fanatical religious Right, as a group, believe in the apocalypse as a form of salvation and do more and more to usher in a destroyed world, which seems to have been Wagner's view based on the ending of The Ring.

Needless to say, I don't really understand this idea of destroying something in order to save it, but I suppose it is very Biblical. The Flood immediately comes to mind. And Sodom and Gomorrah. It's even a view echoed by the character Delores in Westworld. But I just don't think it's okay to make that decision for someone else. Why should you get to impose your view of whether something is broken or not onto me. Well, you shouldn't.

The question of burning the world down to purify it is particularly relevant today. Much to my horror. It's a little weird to experience that same kind of thought in a piece of work dating back 150 years. It's more than a little weird to find how close we are, right now, to fulfilling Wagner's vision.

Gotterdammerung (an opera review post)

My wife went to the opera, and all I got was this t-shirt...
Okay, well, that's not precisely true since I also went to the opera. In fact, I'm the one who wanted to go to this... exercise in endurance. Seriously, why does your butt hurt from sitting? Isn't that what it's made for?
Okay, maybe not.

But I digress...

For an opera named Twilight of the Gods, there are not a lot of gods in this one. In fact, an appearance by one lone Valkyrie is about as close to a god as we get, and the Valkyries, though immortal (other than Brunnhilde, who is no longer a Valkyrie), are not quite gods. It was kind of weird to not have Wotan show up at all, but he's gone and locked himself up inside of Valhalla -- along with all of the other gods -- and is waiting to burn it all down. Yeah, I'm not going to try to explain how we got to that point; you can go read a plot synopsis if you want to.

I think I should make it clear that Siegfried is an asshole. Sure, he's the greatest hero in the world, but that doesn't make it okay to be a blatant, flaming asshole. Which he is. Seriously. His go-to response to any and every situation, including just meeting someone, is, "Hey, I'm going to fight you!" Occasionally, he'd throw in, "...or we can be friends," but that isn't the norm.

And he's an abuser of women. Not like he beat them up or anything, but he definitely had that "I'm famous, so I can grab 'em by the pussy" attitude. At one point, the Rhinemaidens are trying to warn him that he needs to give up the Ring or he's going to be dead before the end of the day, and his response is, "I'll tell you what: Why don't all three of you have sex with me, then we can talk about the Ring." Of course, when they reject him, his response to that is, "Well, I'm faithful to my wife, anyway." His wife who is not Brunnhilde, because -- remember last post when I said he was stupid? -- he got tricked into drinking a potion that made him forget all about Brunnhilde, so he married someone else, a woman named Gutrune.

Toss into this mix Hagen. Hagen is the son of Alberich via the rape of Gutrune's mother and merely a tool of Alberich to try to reclaim the Ring. Because, evidently, that's the primary purpose of children: to be the tools by which you accomplish your own goals. At least that's what we can learn from Alberich, Mime, and Wotan. Oh, also, Hagen has a thing for his half-sister and keeps trying to put the moves on her.

It's all a very sordid affair and that's before Brunnhilde gets involved.

All of that to say that I didn't feel bad at all for Siegfried for what happens to him. Okay, maybe a little bad, but only because he has a moment of being horrified at what he's done to Brunnhilde once he regains his memory, just before he's... well, that would be telling. The problem is that he's regretful for the unintentional asshole move he made but, apparently, is perfectly okay with all of the other ways he's an asshole. Needless to say, Siegfried is a flawed hero, which is not a bad thing from a story perspective.

A thing I really liked in this production is the handling of the Rhine and the Rhinemaidens. Back in Das Rheingold when we first meet them, they are playing and cavorting in a pristine Rhine river. The world is young! Everything is fresh and good. But, when we find them again, here in Gotterdammerung, the Rhine is clogged with trash and pollution and the maidens seem to spend their time trying to get garbage out of their river. It was a very pointed touch, one I thought was great, especially now as we endure an administration that is doing everything it can to actively destroy the environment.

The most interesting aspect of Gotterdammerung is Brunnhilde's persistence in "punishing" Siegfried for the harm he did her even once she realizes it wasn't really his fault. But, then, some of what he did was because of whom he was as a person, which, as I've pointed out, wasn't all that great. So what wrongs does he do to Brunnhilde?
1. He compels her to have sex with him even after she has asked to remain pure. But she's cursed to obey his every order, so she can't actually turn him down when he presses the issue.
2. Once he's forgotten her, he enacts a subterfuge against her and gifts her to another man whom she is also compelled to obey through the curse on her.
3. You can surmise at that point that she has had to have sex with the second man, also against her will, though she would not have been able to actually tell him no. Thanks, Wotan!

The real tragedy in all of this is that Brunnhilde legitimately loves Siegfried. As she tells him, she loved him from before he was born. However, she doesn't let how she feels get in the way of what she feels is justice for his betrayal of her.

It was a good opera. All of them were.
I'd go back and do the 16 hours again. I think that says a lot.