You know, opera is really a visual art form. To truly understand it you’ve gotta see it. This is something that I suppose I always knew, but it didn’t really hit home for me until I saw my lovely Rolando in L’elisir d’Amore. I’d seen operas before. Even with very famous singers, such as Renee Fleming, in them. (She’s another favorite, by the way.) But somehow I never quite noticed it.
Case in point: A pianist friend of mine never liked opera. She very much preferred art song, and I must admit that for a long time I agreed. Then she went to SEE an opera instead of just listening to it or playing for music students who were singing a single aria taken out of context. She was surprised that she actually enjoyed it!
Another case in point: The first time my 7 year old niece heard an opera cd playing in my car she laughed. She thought it sounded really funny. As miffed as I was, in retrospect I can understand her response. For quite a while I made a point of not playing my classical vocal music when she was around, if only because I didn’t want her to laugh at it again. Some time later, though, I showed her most of my favorite opera (need I say which one it is again?). This time she didn’t laugh. In fact, she was interested. I explained what was going on, both with the music and the characters. And admittedly I skipped some of the less exciting parts (the opening scene with the choir, for example), and pointed out the funny parts, but she probably saw 3/4 of it. And if she left the room for any reason she made sure I paused it so she wouldn’t miss anything. Now whenever she comes over and sees the DVD case sitting around she points to it and says enthusiastically, “That’s a really funny movie!”
Even if you understand the text as you listen to an opera, it just doesn’t translate well into a believable story. Librettos are not plays. They cannot stand on their own. They NEED the music and the acting to make them make sense. And let’s face it, recitative is not the most beautiful of music. It’s functional. It gets the job done, and is therefore indispensable (unless the opera utilizes spoken dialog, like Carmen or Die Zauberflöte). An opera made up only of arias just wouldn’t fly.
This leads me to probably my biggest pet peave in opera performance these days. “Modern” productions. Now before I start ranting I must admit that I understand that it could get very boring doing the same opera the same way over and over. I get that. I’d probably get bored with it too. But at the same time, I expect any “new” production of an opera to remain true to the story line, themes, and dramatic context of the opera.
In my fervor over that tenor with the gorgeous voice, curly black hair, and electrifying stage presence, I went out and bought the DVD of him and Anna Netrebko in La Traviata. It was very well sung and the singers gave stellar performances, but what a wierd production! Ach, Gott! This is an opera I hadn’t seen before. I wasn’t familiar with the characters or the story line, so seeing this stripped down, homogenized production left me baffled. It wasn’t until the end that I realized who the other courtezan was. It was quite difficult to pick her out since she was dressed identically to all the men in the crowd. I really didn’t get the part where some man put on Violetta’s red dress and practically mauled Alfredo. (And what a wonderful Alfredo he was!) I understood that the big clock was symbolic, so I didn’t mind it so much, but I didn’t figure out who the old man was until the very end when she’s dying.
What bothers me about these strange productions is that they distort the story and make it much harder to understand. Or it makes it completely ridiculous. I once saw a clip from Don Giovanni where the banquet at the end is just him eating a hamburger and fries from McDonald’s and listening to a boombox in a back alley. Now, perhaps I’ve got it all wrong, but that’s not the Don Giovanni that Mozart (or Da Ponte, his librettist) wrote. That scene is supposed to show Giovanni’s self-indulgence and extravegance, not turn him into some schmo from the hood. He became a different character, and the story changed completely by changing that one thing.
In my opinion, if you change one thing, especially the setting, you end up having to change a whole lot more than that. The movie Clueless is a remake of Jane Austen’s Emma. I was quite familiar with both before I realized this. You have to really sit down and think about the parallels between Emma and Cher before you realize that they’re the same person. The reason it works is because whoever wrote the screenplay for Clueless didn’t just take Jane Austen’s dialog and superimpose it on a 1990’s Beverly Hills high school student and her friends. That would have been a disaster. But that’s often what happens when directors (or whoever it is who decides how it’s going to be staged) pulls an opera out of its intended setting and starts getting… creative. I suppose sometimes it works, but I’ve never seen it work yet.
Once upon a time a composer named Gluck came along and revolutionized the way opera was composed. I think we may need another Gluck to come along, but not to fix the composition of operas. He needs to revolutionize the thought process behind the way operas are staged. At the top of his list of ideals should be this: The staging of the opera should remain true to the composer’s intent and the dramatic content of the opera. I don’t mean that you have to stage it exactly the same way every time. I just would like it to make sense. Is that too much to ask?
~wannabe
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