I don't know how to love Him

Last Tuesday I was at the San Francisco Opera for the fifth of the seven performances of the world premiere run of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, with libretto and music by Mark Adamo. It purports to be an alternate version of the life of Jesus, based not only on the canonical gospels but also on the gnostic scriptures found at Nag Hammadi, contemporary research, and, I suspect, lots of wishful thinking. It's a fascinating idea that has resulted in a disappointing opera. I found the music quite enjoyable but as it stretched out to three hours I found it a bit too unvarying. I was sitting in the first row, right in front of the brass section, so obviously I was very aware of when they were playing (and of when the players were whispering to each other), but my impression after I left the opera house was of a smooth continuous stretch without much variation - a seamless garment, if you will. I very much wanted to love this work, or at least find it provocative and challenging, but the plot and themes are - well, keep reading, and I'll try to explain; I just found so much wrong with what's on stage; and there's so much talent and conviction and complete sincerity up there that the final effect was very dispiriting, and I felt with the saints who pleaded with the Lord for a glimpse of his grace during their spiritually barren days.

The opera opens on the single set, a 21st-century archeological dig. Chorus members in casual contemporary dress (they are described in the cast list as "seekers") mill around, until someone lights a fire and they start wondering if they should burn their Bibles, for though they love "the story" (presumably of Christian salvation) they are not sure how to separate it from its "lies." These lies are unspecified. The word is problematic, since the implication is that what we're about to see is The Truth, as if at this far remove there is some empirically verifiable version of what "really happened" in Galilee about 2000 years ago, as opposed to more or less educated choices shaped by our current culture and made from among conflicting and fragmentary materials.

Adamo freely selects and shapes his various sources, which is fine but in that case why the strenuous and inflated pretense that what we're seeing is "authentic"? Texts are combined or cut without regard to the differing motives and meanings and cultural contexts of the original works, and some material is apparently invented. Somewhere in the program we are told that the libretto has over 100 footnotes, which is nice but a bit pointless since we're watching something on stage, not reading the libretto. Some of the footnotes are built into the sung text, and the chorus will occasionally intone "Gospel of Thomas" or some other source, and I have to admit I enjoyed the charming pedantry of having them sing "ibid.", but such choral citations should happen either more frequently or not at all; they are very spotty, raising more questions than they answer. (I'm curious if there actually is an existing ancient Scripture in which Mary his mother confesses that Jesus was the illegitimate product of a failed premarital love affair, and that she seriously considered drinking a midwife's offered potion to induce abortion).

Why should we believe that the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary [Magdalene] is more "truthful" than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Even within the canonical Scriptures themselves, there are choices to be made; to take one example relevant to the subject of this opera, St Paul (or someone writing under the name of St Paul) tells us in one spot that women should be silent in the churches but in another that in Jesus Christ there is "neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free." If we see one passage as false, and the other as true and useful, we're making a choice guided by our personal and cultural beliefs. Why not acknowledge that? Again, why the spurious claims of telling the "real story"? Why the implication that the canonical gospels (which have, after all, touched something very deep in millions of diverse people for many centuries, and therefore should be respected as literature, regardless of your personal belief or lack of belief in them) are less reliable than the gnostic gospels? Why set the whole work in an archeological dig, with its implication of the actual and scientifically uncovered, as opposed to, say, a library, with its plethora of possible texts and interpretations?

Here are some changes made to the events recounted in the brief, fragmentary Gospel of Mary [Magdalene], which I understand is one of the major sources of the libretto: what Mary actually recounts to the apostles, an esoteric revelation made to her in a vision by the dead Jesus about the progress of the soul through various "powers," is all omitted: this omission makes sense, since anything smacking of the miraculous, the divine, or the supernatural is strenuously avoided in the opera, and so this passage would sound like the most ludicrous mystico-moonshine mumbo jumbo; the closest thing in the opera to a religious or spiritual impulse seems to be a generalized wish to improve oneself and do good, and despite the occasional reference to God or demons, the society depicted here is so secular that you wonder why anyone is bothering at all with Yeshua the street preacher. Jesus is clearly the fount of spiritual knowledge in the gospel, not a co-preacher who learns from his equal Mary Magdalene, as he is in the opera. When Peter questions Mary Magdalene after she speaks, doubting that "the Savior" (a term avoided in the opera) revealed these things to her, a mere woman, instead of to them, Mary weeps before responding; the tears, which presumably are too girly, disappear from the stage action. And it's very possible that in the cultural context of the original writer, the point of the confrontation is not that Mary is Peter's equal but that he should listen to her exactly because she is not his equal - that, in the spirit of "suffer the little children to come unto me"and "the last shall be first," even a man favored by Jesus should have the humility to learn even from a woman. Again, let me emphasize that the problem is not that Adamo has changed, adapted, and added to this or any other source, it's that if you're going to do that, it seems a bit disingenuous, not to mention smug, to present your version as, at last, The Truth.

The libretto relies heavily on rhyme. I feel this is a mistake. It's not that Adamo is bad at it; there is little that seems padded or twisted for the sake of the rhyme. But he's not particularly good at it either; I frequently found myself anticipating what the next line would be, based on the rhyme, and over the course of a three hour performance it gets to sounding a little jingly, rather than elevated and formal in tone, which I assume was the intent. Some of the word choices seem too modern or flat; I was a bit surprised when Yeshua said that John the Baptist was his "mentor," which makes Yeshua sound like a junior executive trying to rise in the ranks. (Also, Mentor is from the Iliad, so I was distracted into a different story.) Adamo also uses repetition, which is a more Biblical form of poetic structure, though sometimes its use is puzzling; for example, after the crucifixion Peter, the long-time antagonist of Mary Magdalene, repeats some earlier lines of hers, which seems to indicate he is finally accepting her, but in fact his antagonism not only continues but deepens. These things - the rhyming, some of the word choices, odd use of repetition - are minor, but they add up.

The opening chorus gives way to a crowd in ancient Galilee, and we meet Mary Magdalene. She is not exactly the prostitute of legend, but she is clearly open to love affairs. She seems interested in sex mostly as part of her search for larger, vaguely uplifting spiritual currents. Her boyfriends keep letting her down. She is plucky and independent (she has a lot of money, though its source is unclear, since as I said she is no longer a courtesan). Nowadays she would no doubt describe herself as "spiritual but not religious." She is basically Thais for the NPR set. Early in the opera and again towards the end she makes brief reference to "demons" that trouble her, but they have no real effect on any of her actual deeds or words; they slide thoroughly off the representation of her, and it's difficult to picture this woman having a dark night of the soul. Mary Magdalene is performed by Sasha Cooke, whom I've loved in everything else I've seen her in, and she does what she can here, in particular managing some very touching moments at the end, when she communes with a vision of the dead Yeshua. But the character is in many ways a plaster saint, much more so than the repentant courtesan of legend, with her fascinating historical accretions of story and significance.

We see Mary Magdalene with Simon (Hadleigh Adams), her boyfriend, who has to leave - he needs to return to his wife. The sudden mention of the wife is an interesting and effective little shock, and when Tamar (Marina Harris), the aforementioned and very angry wife, appears with two Roman guards, demanding that both the adulterers be stoned according to the law, we head into the famous episode of Christ and the woman caught in adultery, or rather into Adamo's version of it. There's no suggestion here that whereas for us adultery is mostly a matter of personal betrayal, it might have a different significance in a small, tight-knit, besieged community guided by deep clan loyalties and religious rules of conduct.

Mary Magdalene announces that she the meant the wife no harm, which is a comically stupid thing to say, whether in ancient Galilee or modern America, but I think we're supposed to accept it as essentially well-meaning, especially since Tamar is presented as vindictive and spiteful. She is also a hypocrite, as we discover when Yeshua the street preacher suddenly appears and confronts Tamar with the accusation that she has had five husbands and is also herself having an affair. He asks if she still wants to stone the two. Rather unconvincingly, she does not, as if people were not deeply skilled in condemning others for faults they share (there's always some self-excusing distinction that can be made). Anyway, Tamar and her husband (both fine performers) disappear from stage to sort out their business, and Mary Magdalene is grateful to Yeshua for saving her life, but is skeptical when he invites her to come hear him at the local synagogue.

It's always emotionally satisfying to see a hypocrite unmasked, but dramatically it seems too easy. Why not complicate our reactions by having Tamar be a good wife, or a good person? It's a sort of emotional bookkeeping, in which we excuse our main character's adultery with the husband because the wife is a bitch. If I'm remembering correctly, it's a different woman in the canonical gospels who is shaken when Jesus knows all about her several husbands even though she is a stranger. (In the operatic version, he might easily be repeating common gossip.) In the canonical version, it is a crowd (that is, the whole community, not just one angry wife) that is planning to stone the woman caught in adultery. Jesus says that those among them without sin (not specifically sexual sins, but sin) should throw the first stone. No one in the crowd has the arrogance to claim sinlessness (a condition belonging only to God), and they drift away, and Jesus tells the woman to sin no more. So in the opera, we have a single hypocrite unmasked and thwarted; but in the gospel version, we have an entire community challenged to a personal examination of conscience, which leads to a re-examination of the customary laws in the light of compassion for shared human weakness. So in what way is this revised version superior to or more daring than the canonical version?

Mary Magdalene does go to the synagogue to hear Yeshua, where he is announcing that he has come  with a sword to divide, to set mother against son. . . . The rabble-rousing attracts the interest of Roman guards, but his mother Miriam, accompanied by two other sons, intervenes, begging them to let her oldest boy off because he's mentally disturbed. (Maria Kanyova is Miriam, and does a good job with what she's given to work with.) When they agree to let him go, she warns Mary Magdalene repeatedly to run from her son, because he's so messed up (hey, thanks Mom!) and just look at how he treats her!

In fact she's pretty much the stereotype of a nagging Jewish mother, obsessing over and berating her oldest son in equal measure (first Tamara, now this - women not named Mary Magdalene don't come off very well in this opera, but then in all fairness neither do any of the men). Here's where she confesses to Mary Magdalene the whole story of the illegitimate birth and so forth (which is actually kind of an odd overly personal story to tell someone you've just met; wouldn't a woman at that time try to hide such shame?). And that's the reason Jesus is always going on about his Father in Heaven, and why he rejects his mother and (legitimate) brothers - his earthly father didn't stick around, so, clearly: Daddy issues!

And that's typical of this work: everything is reduced to personal "issues" (all understood in the cultural context of 21st century America, not ancient Galilee). As mentioned earlier, all references to the miraculous or supernatural are shorn away. But more than that, all need for the miraculous or supernatural is removed, to such an extent that it felt odd when God was occasionally mentioned - what does He have to do with any of this? Yeshua is allowed the first half of his famous quip about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but not the pointed second half: "and to God the things that are God's." There isn't much here that seems to be God's, and that's fine, but in that case you have to wonder why anyone is paying attention to any of this. It seems beyond belief that any of these people could be motivated by a moral necessity that lies outside themselves, and we don't actually see much of what lies outside the main characters, except for the occasional reference to the yoke of Rome; where is the febrile and tense religious atmosphere of the time that led so many to expect a Messiah? It's reduced to a man shamed because he's illegitimate.

There are references to God's (or the universe's, or something's) "design" (characters often mention that they interTWINE in a deSIGN), but no explanation is given of what the design is, or why there is one. There is no reference to Original Sin, or the death of Jesus as expiation to redeem fallen humanity through God's love, and no reference to Israel's special covenant with God (the Jews here seem to be a group bound together by Roman oppression rather than Mosaic law). At one point Yeshua is asked about circumcision, and there was some laughter in the audience. But this is not a trivial question. Are people unaware that circumcision is the physical sign of Abraham's covenant with Jehovah?

Yeshua is pretty much just another street preacher, and not a particularly effective one, judging by what we see here. For one thing, he is unable to reconcile his good friend Peter to his new friend Mary Magdalene. In this version Peter takes the role usually held in Biblical epics by Judas (who is written out of this version) as the disciple who mistakes Jesus's message as a call to arms for independence from Rome, whereas Mary Magdalene is more about personal spiritual growth. And she asks a lot of questions, which annoys the guys. (The gender roles here are quite traditional: men are immersed in the business of the world, including fighting, while the women are intent on the domestic and the intimate.)

Mary Magdalene rather cynically uses her money to buy acceptance from Peter, who rather cynically accepts the money. Neither they nor Yeshua seem disturbed by the cynicism or the basic disagreement on the purpose of their group. Yeshua ambles in on the money changing hands and seems mostly impressed at his new girlfriend's ability to work the system. Where is the man who drove the money-changers from the Temple? Where is the gospel Jesus, who consistently condemns the rich and demands that they give their money to the poor? That message would be far more challenging to the opera audience, and to current American society, than the anodyne messages we get here.

The rest of the story is shocking only in its banality: you see, Yeshua is pretty messed up and angry, but no wonder 'cause have you met his Mom, she's a piece of work, but he met this great woman and she's really smart and together, and honestly I don't know what she sees in him he doesn't even have a job, but his friends don't like her and really she's just too good for them anyway so they resent her until finally wedding bells break up that old apostolic gang of mine. We all know guys like that, saved by the love of a good woman, but it seems unlikely they would be studied and worshipped and argued over  2,000 years later.

The apostles throw Yeshua a bachelor party, but talking about Jesus's bachelor party makes the whole thing sound too frisky, even with the Song of Solomon-style verses about her breasts being like gazelles ("Stop talking about her breasts, " Yeshua finally announces). Maybe John Waters or Luis Bunuel or Flannnery O'Connor should have handled this material: when Mary talks about considering an abortion or Jesus has a bachelor party, shouldn't there be some sort of frisson, some sort of shocked amusement that maybe takes us deeper into what we really feel about this story? Should it all really feel so much like dutiful uplift?

Anyway, Yeshua clearly has some issues with women because of the whole thing with his mom, and Mary Magdalene overhears him telling Peter that she's so good she's practically a man anyway so Peter should relax, and though Yeshua tells her he was just saying that because you know what Peter is like, she almost calls off the wedding but then he learns to learn from her and after the intermission which ends the very long first half they start appearing in public in flowing white robes as co-preachers, with Miriam radiant at their side (Mary Magdalene has been so good for him!) and Peter tagging along. They start talking a lot more about love, in such general terms that it's really not clear why the Romans decide Yeshua needs to be eliminated for these bromides; it's as if an angry mob wanted to crucify one of Hallmark's more sentimental versifiers. (And why do they not crucify his wife and co-preacher as well? it's not as if the Romans were shy about torturing women.) There is no resurrection, but Yeshua rises up like Erda and tells Mary Magdalene to carry on, even though they both know Peter is going to write her out of the story (much as most of the apostles are written out of this story, I suppose).

Many years ago I read Gershom Scholem's book on Sabbatai Sevi, and one insight which has stuck with me over the years is his suggestion that the Sabbataian movement did not outlive the false messiah for more than a few years because Sevi himself was too much of a cipher for belief in him to take strong root, lacking as he did the powerful personality and philosophy of, say, Jesus of Nazareth (who is, of course, in some eyes just another false messiah). I thought about Scholem's words during this opera, because what we have here is an absence at the center. I am a long-time fan of Nathan Gunn; he is a charismatic performer, and I've seen him give powerful performances as conflicted men and (even more difficult) as radiantly good men (his Billy Budd is famous). So I'm puzzled by his recessive, overly affable performance here.

And I have to blame the way Adamo has structured the role. If you're ruling out entirely, as the opera does, that Yeshua is in fact the Messiah, or otherwise linked with the divine, you are still left historically with a powerful teacher and preacher whose influence has long outlasted his time on earth. Whoever wrote the Gospel of St Matthew knew you need to start with your strong material: in that book we go almost immediately to the Sermon on the Mount. In this opera, the subversive and actually perverse and essential words of the Sermon are not heard. When we finally hear some specifics about what "loving your neighbor" might mean, we're already two or possibly two and a half hours into the performance (I actually checked my watch to see how long we had to wait before hearing that we should feed the hungry or care for the sick, but frankly I was checking my watch fairly often so I can't be more specific about the timing). But important as it is to feed the hungry and care for the sick, nothing in those actions is a potential threat to existing society; where is the Jesus who not only associated with but sought out the low-class, the fishermen and tax gatherers, the foreigners and the lepers and the weak, and denounced the rich and powerful? The Jesus who announced repeatedly that the last would be first, that the meek would inherit the earth, that the selfish rich man would burn in Hell while the scabby beggar outside his door was basking in Abraham's bosom?

William Burden as Peter gives an impassioned, vocally distinguished performance, probably the most memorable of the evening, and his achievement is even more impressive when you consider how Adamo has stacked the deck against his character. We don't really know why he objects to Mary Magdalene so strongly, though it's hinted at one point that he has some unresolved feelings for her as well as for Yeshua; it's mostly because he's kind of a jerk who is too arrogant to listen to a woman. I assume he is a stand-in for institutional religion, particularly the Roman Catholic Church that claims its authority from him as the first in a long line of direct apostolic succession from Jesus himself. As such Peter is the villain of the piece, and though he is not actually made responsible for the betrayal of Jesus to his executioners, his good or endearing moments are jettisoned while Adamo gleefully seizes on his canonical denial three times, because in this version the Peter who wanted to fight against Rome is also a coward who runs when the real fighting starts. Mary Magdalene, of course, boldly goes to seek the body, even though Peter practically whimpers as he warns her of the danger. (Jesus does get his line about those who live by the sword dying by the sword, but since Mary Magdalene said it earlier, it is presumably one of the many things he's learned from her.)

Contrast the treatment of Peter here with that of the chief prosecutor in Shaw's Saint Joan (Cardinal Beaufort? apologies if I get some details wrong here; I'm working from memory). Though Joan is clearly an extraordinary person - so extraordinary that she is one of those few who manages to move the heavy mass of humanity forward, however slightly - Shaw treats her enemies with understanding and respect. Far from being a corrupt, cowardly hack, the prosecutor is a man of integrity and intelligence - you believe that people would believe in him. He has cogent, insightful arguments to make about why Joan is a dangerous example. And though ultimately we side with her, it's not a cheap or foregone conclusion. Her stature is increased when her opponents are not straw men. The exaggeration of bad qualities - and I see this sort of thing way too often - deadens the drama by removing the debate and the ambiguity. It's all too clear which person we're supposed to side with, and which reject.

And the fact is that it is Peter's church that has lasted, and not Mary Magdalene's. However admirable you find the free-form spiritual seeking of the gnostic movements, it is of its very nature too vague and shapeless to have a long institutional life (Elaine Pagels makes this point in The Gnostic Gospels). And many of the gnostic movements, with their emphasis on arcane knowledge passed down only to a select few, were far more elitist than the official Church, which held (however inconsistently or with whatever hypocrisy) that all souls are the same in the eyes of God, a potentially dangerous and certainly radical doctrine of leveling.

The main point of the evening seems to be that women were cut out from the development of Christianity. But, pace Adamo, such is the deep human need for both masculine and feminine energies, and such the dynamics between men and women, that women have had a powerful and continuing presence in Christianity, in ways both official and unofficial, real and symbolic: the Church itself is referred to as "Mother Church"; Wisdom is traditionally seen as a woman (Sancta Sophia), as are other virtues; Mary the mother of Jesus has a powerful continuing presence, particularly in the Roman Catholic church; many parishes from the first century to today are run largely by women; abbesses and nuns often had great power and influence. In the spirit of George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke, there were many remarkable women (as well as men) whose names are forgotten though their beneficent spiritual influence ripples on. It's a loss that women were excluded from the priestly hierarchy, but the hierarchy and its earthly powers are, from a spiritual point of view, ultimately irrelevant; the purpose of the Church is to help the believer into the divine presence, which is open to all (as is the meritocracy of the sainthood, and the many female saints outrank mere priests). And certainly many Renaissance popes had mistresses who helped them rule, as Mary Magdalene does Yeshua in the opera, but I think nonetheless that few of those men were renowned for piety and virtue.

As I got up from my seat at the end of the long evening, feeling downcast and disappointed, I heard a white-haired matron behind me say with a bit of self-satisfaction, "Well, I liked it." Well, why wouldn't she? The main message here seems to be that men should listen to well-off women, at least when they're as intelligent as Mary Magdalene - in other words, when they're (presumably) like the satisfied white-haired matron. Who can disagree? But shouldn't a convincing representation of Jesus make us pause and examine and re-evaluate our lives, not just pat ourselves on the back for our advanced understanding and spiritual superiority?

Flute finale

Last Sunday afternoon I was at the final performance of The Magic Flute, which was also the final performance of San Francisco Opera's 2011-1012 season. I had hesitated before buying a ticket to yet another Magic Flute. On the plus side, I do enjoy the opera, and I was curious about the new production design by Jun Kaneko, and I had never seen Nathan Gunn's Papageno in a live performance. On the minus side, I was dubious about the plan of performing it in English (in a new version by SF Opera General Director David Gockley), and I was generally feeling pretty Fluted out.

I found Kaneko's designs delightful. There are lots of projections, starting as soon as the music starts, usually of shifting abstract patterns involving stripes or polka dots or triangles or some combination thereof, done in glowing blues and greens and crayon-bright reds and yellows and pinks. It all has the purposeful naivete that only great sophistication can produce. The total effect is vivid and even hallucinatory and puts you suitably in another world. I was reminded of the controlled profusion of color and pattern found in kabuki theater. Some of the costumes also looked Japanese-influenced, particularly that of Sarastro (Kristinn Sigmundsson), which in that case was a bit unfortunate since his look reminded me of the Mikado and I kept expecting him to burst into "My Object All Sublime."

If the setting moved me to a different world, the translation kept pulling me back to this one. I suspect one reason for performing The Magic Flute in English is that it is now considered the gateway opera par excellence and performing it in translation seems more family-friendly (though parents please note: when people talk about The Magic Flute as a great opera for children, they aren't talking about your average five-year-old; seriously, what is wrong with you people?). This version wasn't bad; a lot of it fit the music quite well and during the intermission I heard many audience members assuring each other that though of course they would prefer the original German, they found it worked surprisingly well in English. The dialogue scenes are always awkward in German, so doing them in English makes some sense, though (for me at least) making these scenes more comprehensible doesn't make them more entertaining, and I would prune them ruthlessly, instead of adding jokes about drag queens, carb intake, and other obligatory local and topical references. Lots of people did seem to find the jokes more amusing than I did, but for me they were more along the lines of jokiness, and that's the difference between creating a fairy-tale and a vaudeville. My major criticism of the production was that it was a bit too cheerful; there could have been more darkness and danger, more of the threatening undercurrent found in most fairy tales.

Most of the demotic tomfoolery fell on the broad shoulders of our Papageno, and Nathan Gunn, who has performed the role many times, was in warm and fluid voice and as an actor of considerable skill and charm managed to pull off the jokes, even though I would have been happier without them. Even though, like everyone else, I love Papageno, there is a point in every other performance I've seen where I get deeply irritated with him: that would be when he finally manages to stop talking at exactly the wrong time, when his chattiness might be useful in reassuring Pamina, who's been left in the dark. This time I not only wasn't irritated with him, I was actually touched by the abashed and awkward manner in which he reassured Tamino afterward that he could actually keep quiet once in a while. So that is my tribute to Nathan Gunn's performance: he kept me for once consistently on Papageno's side. As usual with Gunn his diction was excellent, rendering the surtitles unnecessary. In fact most of the cast, even those who were not native speakers of English, could be understood without reference to the surtitles, which is not always the case. And like everyone else I love the scene with Papagena at the end, and Nadine Sierra was a delightful Papagena. Instead of the usual "old woman" costume for her first appearance she was disguised as a large vulture, which was amusing.

Sigmundsson as Sarastro was the weakest of the leads; his low notes got very croaky and raspy; he behaved but did not sing with the requisite warmth and nobility. Albina Shagimuratova as the Queen of the Night spun off her two flashy arias with considerable style, though I would have preferred a crueler edge to her performance, because most of the characterization in this opera is simply asserted so every little bit helps. (Indeed, she does command her daughter to kill Sarastro, but given that he's kidnapped that daughter, taken the sevenfold disk of the sun or whatever the hell it is, and been badmouthing her all over town, I can't really blame her for holding a grudge.) The usual racial awkwardness with the villainous Moor Monostatos (Greg Fedderly) was avoided by dressing him like a kabuki warlord or demon, but he was for me a bit too straightforwardly comic, and as with the Queen there should have been more of a sense of real menace from him. (The translation also should have just jettisoned the occasional unnecessary reference to him as a Moor, especially since he really wasn't. If you're going to translate, you might as well take advantage of it.) Lovely Heidi Stober was a lovely Pamina.  She's been consistently fine the other times I've heard her and she stood out this time as well. Her suicide aria was particularly impassioned and heart-rending. With her shoulder-length blonde hair and her angular blue and white dresses she looked like Alice in a Mod World Wonderland.

I've started hearing a lot about Alek Shrader, the Tamino for most of the run, but he was not scheduled for the last two performances, which were the ones that fit my schedule, so I guess I won't hear him until his San Francisco Performances recital next season. Nathaniel Peake, originally scheduled for the Shraderless shows, withdrew and Norman Reinhardt was the last-minute replacement. He has sung the role elsewhere (though obviously not in this new translation) but I understand he didn't even have a rehearsal of this staging. Under the circumstances, it would have been impressive if he had merely kept from tripping over the other singers, but he also managed to give a convincing and lovely-toned performance. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear he had been Tamino through the whole run. He perhaps tired just a shade towards the end, but then so did I, and I was just sitting down watching instead of singing to thousands in a production I hadn't rehearsed, which sounds like an anxiety dream.

It helped that Reinhardt is tall, attractive, and stalwart, because you need qualities like that to counteract Tamino's actual behavior, since he is probably the most hilariously unmanly of all operatic heroes: he enters crying for help, running from a really big snake, and promptly faints center stage. The big snake is handily dispatched by three ladies, who then take turns singing about how pretty Tamino is. He immediately falls in love with Pamina after seeing her portrait (this is not the last example we'll see of his very suggestible nature), but she is actually rescued not by him but by his goofball companion the bird-catcher while he is wandering elsewhere tootling on his flute. He does manage to keep the vow of silence imposed on him by some people he's just met, though he has no real reason to believe what they tell him, as opposed to what the Queen of the Night has told him. A vow of silence is a fairly perverse vow to give the hero of an opera, and I sometimes wonder if this was Mozart and Schikaneder getting in a little jab at chatty audiences. By keeping the vow he comes close to pushing the woman he loves towards suicide, but luckily once again he is saved from the consequences of his actions. Given all this it's understandable that there's some masculine anxiety underlying the injunctions from Sarastro and Co. against the deceitful wiles of women. The translation should probably have removed said injunctions entirely, since they just make a contemporary audience laugh at rather than with the material, but honestly "beware the deceitful wiles of women" is the only specific step we are ever given towards a somewhat vague and sketchy enlightenment. (And when is Pamina ever deceitful? Does she not insist to Papageno that if Sarastro questions them they must speak only the truth? And is she not a woman? I've always found her the most consistently admirable and sympathetic character in the opera.) Despite my gentle mockery here this really is a beautiful and strange opera with a profound message, but it's perhaps best not to examine the specifics too closely and just to let the music move you toward the embrace of charitable justice and benevolent enlightenment.

So I ended up glad that I had bought a ticket. When the final curtain fell the audience roared its appreciation and behind the curtain I could hear the performers give themselves a justified cheer. I found myself lingering in the aisles and the lobby afterward, reluctant to leave. It's always poignant and a bit difficult leaving the house after the last show of the season, even though I know the new season is gearing up in just a few weeks.

random previews: operatic

I’ll start off with what is sure to be a highlight: Ensemble Parallele is premiering a new chamber-opera reduction (prepared by Jacques Desjardin) of Harbison’s The Great Gatsby, 10-12 February 2012. I saw this opera at the Met and generally liked it quite a bit, though there was some major miscasting of the leads. So even without Ensemble Parallele’s dazzling track record, I’d be eager to see a different production.

San Francisco Opera made things easy for me this year by having a comparatively large number of operas I’ve never seen before, plus several I’ve seen too often, which made the choosing easy:

Heart of a Soldier, by Christopher Theofanidis (world premiere, so of course I haven’t seen it) – honestly I’m a bit dubious about the concept of a “9/11” opera, but we (meaning I) shall see.

Lucrezia Borgia by Donizetti, starring Renee Fleming.

Xerxes (Serse) by Handel: a lifetime of loving baroque opera, and I’ve never seen this one live! I missed last year’s production at West Edge Opera (formerly known as Berkeley Opera). I was busy with too many other performances, and then I lost the Internet and phone service for several days, making it difficult to buy tickets. Anyway the cast here is very good so I’d probably go again anyway: Susan Graham, Lisette Oropesa, David Daniels, Sonia Prina, Heidi Stober, Michael Sumuel.

Nixon in China by John Adams: I love this opera, and have never seen it live.

Attila, by Verdi.

As for SF Opera’s other offerings: the clear light of economic necessity restrained me, as it occasionally does, but of course I might get tickets if I hear a particular production is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or whatever the last great thing was.

Turandot is probably my favorite Puccini opera, but I’m tired of the Hockney production and I've seen too many weak casts in it; this Don Giovanni just doesn't spark me; Carmen has an intriguing cast (Kate Aldrich, Thiago Arancam, Sara Gartland, Paulo Szot) but, as with Turandot and Don Giovanni, I don’t know if I need to see another Carmen at this point.

I’m not sure what to do about The Magic Flute; as with the three operas I’ve just mentioned, I really have experienced it enough to last me for quite a while. Also, for some reason it will be sung in English; frankly it might be better to obscure some of this particular opera’s libretto. On the other hand, it does have Nathan Gunn as Papageno, one of his great roles, and I’ve never seen him in it live.

There’s also a Carmen for Families. The concept of a “family” Carmen has been making local opera fans (well, the ones I know) chuckle – personally, I’m holding out for the “family” Moses und Aron – and the squeaky-clean plot summary provided by the opera doesn’t help (“featuring the alluring Gypsy girl Carmen, the Spanish soldier who loves her and the brave bullfighter who wins her heart” – uh, I guess that all is, in some sense, accurate, but it does make it sound like a wholesome Danish ballet), but I think what’s really going on here – the dirty little secret at the heart of Carmen for Families – is that most nineteenth-century operas are simply too long for – I won’t say for modern taste, but for the exigencies of modern life.

The Unfamily Carmen runs about three and a half hours, which might be daunting for someone who isn’t already a devoted fan of the form, or even someone who just has to work for a living. (I mean, I love Carmen, and am particularly fond of the dawn music that opens the fourth act, but when considering whether to see it again I have to admit its length gave me pause; there are plenty of other new and unseen things going on to which I could give that chunk of time.) But in these days of restored cuts and scholarly revised editions, it really isn’t artistically respectable to say, “Look, we’re going to cut this because it drags and half of you have already seen it a dozen times anyway and you need to get to work tomorrow morning.” Carmen is done often enough so that it's safe to experiment with it, but the bulk of the San Francisco opera audience is clearly too dull and conservative for a radical re-imagining in the style of Peter Brooks’s Tragedie de Carmen. Hence we have Carmen for Families. That’s my take on it, anyway.

Speaking of radical operatic revisions and the clash between old art forms and modern needs, the afore-mentioned West Edge Opera has scheduled three productions centering on those tensions: Ariadne auf Naxos in late October-early November, a manga-style Magic Flute in March 2012, and in late July-early August 2012, the west coast premiere of Ezra Laderman’s Marilyn, which is about Ms Monroe, not Ms Horne.

I did have some thoughts about another trip to the mighty Met, but they’ve spaced out the things I’d like to see – basically, Satyagraha, Khovanshchina, The Enchanted Island (which sounds delightful), and Ernani – in a really inconvenient way. There’s also Nathan Gunn in Billy Budd, for only three performances, and Karita Mattila in The Makropolus Case, which she sang in San Francisco last year (blowing the rest of the season out of the water; my post is here).

Though I’ve seen both performers in these roles (Gunn sang Billy here in I think 2004; I tried to see him in Pittsburgh but he was sick for the performances I attended), they’d be worth seeing again – and can I just say I’m stunned that the Met hasn’t scheduled both these operas for livecasts? Both performers are approaching legendary in these roles, both are incredibly photogenic, both are fine actors, both operas are widely considered twentieth-century masterpieces and neither is well-represented on DVD, and . . . no plans to film either, apparently. I really don’t know who makes these decisions, and why. But then there are so many things veiled from me.

The Gunns perform Schubert

Last Tuesday San Francisco Performances presented Nathan and Julie Gunn in what turned out to be an unexpectedly controversial performance of Schubert’s Die Schoene Mullerin.

I’m on the pro side; I found it absorbing and moving. Initially, given Gunn’s considerable skill as an actor, I was a little surprised that he seemed a bit distant from the character; I had expected a more fervent acting-out. As the performance progressed, though, I came to think it was a deliberate and psychologically astute move: what kind of young man kills himself because the girl he fancies rejects him for another? Not someone who’s strong, vibrant, and self-confident. He is recessive about expressing his deep inner emotions, until his rejection in favor of the huntsman (which I guess is the Beidermeyer equivalent of dumping the sensitive boy in favor of the jock) leads to his suicide in the millstream. Clearly there was characterization going on, since even without following the words line by line, I could tell when Gunn was voicing the Miller Girl or the stream. I’ve always found Gunn to be a singer sensitive to words and characterization, so if my initial impression is puzzlement I’m willing to wait and see where he’s going with his conception.

One of those who disliked the performance described Julie Gunn’s playing as “banging,” but I know exactly the moment he was referring to – it’s when she’s imitating the millstones; in other words, “banging” is not only suitable but demanded by the context, and if it doesn’t sound pretty then so be it. I don't mind a little muscle in my Schubert. I found her flowing and lyrical when the stream runs through the songs, and the final song, Des Baches Wiegenlied, where the river speaks to the young man now dead in her depths, I found deeply moving, like a mother rocking her child to sleep. The very end reminded me of the end of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, when the soul of Troilus ascends the heavens and looks down and laughs at his earthly pains and finds peace.

The only other time I had seen Julie Gunn was at their Cal Performances recital maybe six (or ten?) years ago. That was an afternoon recital so maybe she was in less formal attire. She sure glams up nicely! Let me go all Captain Obvious here and say that the Gunns are a remarkably attractive couple. He was wearing a tuxedo, and the only performance-related comment I overheard walking up the aisles afterward was one guy saying to another, “I really like his tuxedo!” The pornstache is gone, by the way.

Back to the performance. I was put me in mind of Erwartung several times, which is fine with me. For my taste, a perhaps more traditional reading, with a wholesome lad smitten by a pretty girl, and then unhappy in love, all set on the green banks of a picturesquely burbling stream, is just a little too close to kitsch, or at least is just a little too distant from anything I experience in the world around me. I enjoy Currier and Ives, but mannerism and neurosis I feel and understand. Having said that, I don’t want to exaggerate any possible eccentricities of interpretation in the performance. I found it a psychologically plausible approach to what the words and music hold.

It was over the next few days after the concert I heard from some who were unhappy with it. Normally I don’t really engage (at least here in the Hills) with other people’s reactions because people are entitled to their diverse experiences and opinions, and this is the one place where I can try to express mine freely. I value the exchange of opinions, but it’s surprisingly rare to find people who can do that without arguing, and I never argue; what’s the point? Arguing is about scoring points off your opponent – in other words, it’s about power, and I’m all about the love. But in this case there were enough objections from people whose opinions I respect so that I felt I needed to think through what they were saying or implying. The basic objections seemed to be a lack of dramatic involvement (which I talked about above) and a feeling that the performance wasn’t in appropriate lieder style.

It’s possible that being steeped in a tradition can give you a deep but not always wide view of how something should be approached. It’s possible that the more you know about something, the more conservative become your views of how that something needs to be approached; or maybe "conservative" isn't the right word; maybe it's more how I feel about Shakespeare, where I am so familiar with the plays that I have ideas about the points that should be made in every scene or even line. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised by a new insight, but more often I'm thinking about what I feel was missed. I realized years ago that I would never see a production of Shakespeare that I thought hit every mark.

I don’t have any pre-set ideas about how this cycle should be performed. To me the Gunns' performance was well within the range of plausible interpretations. I don’t want to give the impression that the audience generally seemed unhappy with the performance, but there did seem to be a respectable contingent who were.

People are free to ascribe my enjoyment to my ignorance of true lieder tradition or personal messed-upness or whatever. I say all this honestly in a spirit of complete respect. Certainly many’s the time I’ve given someone a list of objections to a production or movie only to be told, “Yeah, you’re right about all that, but I still enjoyed it.” And I’m fine with that. People value different things and they can take what they want from what I say but it’s what they experience that they need to go with. And I always figure, well, they enjoyed their evening, and I didn’t enjoy mine, so good for them. I’m kind of liking being on the other side of that fence for once.

And here’s my little opera news semi-scoop, probably the only one you’ll ever find here: After the performance the Gunns were signing programs and CDs in the lobby. I have a slightly silly love for having signed books and CDs, so knowing SF Performances often has artist signings after these events, I came prepared with my copy of Gunn’s Billy Budd recording. We spoke briefly about the opera and he told me that he would be singing it at the Met, not next season but the one after. So there you have it. I know companies are often weird about keeping these things hush-hush but I assume it’s OK to repeat this since he was pretty casual about mentioning it. That bit of casting wasn’t even on Brad Wilber’s Met Futures page, last time I checked. So I'll see you in New York in two years!

Tarquin's ravishing stride

My main reason for going to Philadelphia last June was to see Britten’s Rape of Lucretia, which the Opera Company of Philadelphia performed in the Perelman Theater, a beautifully suitable small theater in the Kimmel Center, next to Verizon Hall where the Philadelphia Orchestra plays. Last time I was in Philly, to see The Pearl Fishers, it was performed in the Academy of Music, so this was my first time in the Perelman, which is perfect for an intimate and intense chamber opera like this one. I’m not sure there’s an equivalent theater in the Bay Area. Too bad I had to fly across the country for my two best operatic experiences this year (this one and From the House of the Dead at the Met).

The story of Lucretia is one that lends itself to the emblematic. It’s both formal and deeply emotional. A good example is the end of the first act, when Tarquinius (Nathan Gunn) bids good night to Lucretia (Tamara Mumford) and her ladies Bianca (Allison Sanders) and Lucia (Rinnat Moriah). The ladies are lined up, and he says “Good night” to each of them, and each responds, “Good night.” It’s all very formal and ceremonious, and a simple moment, but thanks to Britten’s music, one freighted with anxiety and foreboding.

The libretto by Ronald Duncan puts the story within a Christian context, as the Male Chorus (William Burden) and the Female Chorus (Karen Jesse) comment on the unfolding events from the viewpoint of a Christianity that didn’t exist in Lucretia's world. This somewhat puzzling double-framing ironically increases the dramatic tension, since the problem arises of connecting the parts. My feeling is this: both the Christian love and compassion expressed by the Choruses and Lucretia’s sense of honor and love are attempts to live the good life, that is, a life guided by a sense of the virtues, a life your conscience can look back on with satisfaction. This impulse regularly and often tragically can run up against the usual definition of the good life, a life guided by emotion and sensation.

For Europeans and their descendants, Christianity and the classical world are the two major paths in their history. Both offer the possibility of morally good lives, but attempts to live that life in either philosophy often smash into the nature of the world and of people, so both try to offer some consolation to the grieving. The rape and subsequent suicide of Lucretia led to the overthrow of Rome’s tyrant kings and the establishment of the Republic. Christianity assures us that suffering in this world is replaced by joy in the next, and that sin and evil ultimately and in spite of themselves produce their own defeat, also in the long run. The problem is that we don’t live in the long run, and in the face of immediate pain and suffering the promise of future happiness can seem empty or even cruel. This is true of both philosophies and it's what joins them: the challenge of getting us to accept their ultimately optimistic views in the face of the needless suffering we have just watched people inflict on each other.

I think the only serious though minor mis-step in this production was dressing the Male Chorus as a sort of TV preacher, complete with fish cufflinks (the Female Chorus was more in general choir-director garb). TV preachers offer a parody and perversion of Christianity, and the opera attempts to deal with Christianity in a serious way. There also seemed to be some emphasis on a male/female divide as well as a Christian/classical divide, at least judging from the way the Female Chorus would at times glare (sometimes to unintentionally comic effect) at the Male Chorus as he went on. Other than those quibbles, this was a beautifully done production, very simple but with any necessary effects nicely done, like the flowers Lucretia scatters before her suicide.

This opera should be seen by anyone who feels that Britten’s obsessive theme of the corruption of innocence is just a fancy version of his longing for youths (on a linguistic sidenote, it’s interesting that “youths” always means “male youths”). Here it is a wife who represents threatened goodness. So Tarquinius was an interesting role for Gunn, famous for his Billy Budd – this time, he’s essentially playing John Claggart, only Tarquinius is given the complexity that the operatic Claggart could have used more of. Gunn captured the self-loathing as well as the pride of the prince’s privileged and useless son. There’s a streak in him of that feeling captured in the line from Fight Club: I wanted to destroy something beautiful.

The whole ensemble was outstanding (to complete the cast: Ben Wager was Collatinus and Eric Dubin was Junius). I saw it twice and would happily have seen it again. I find that the operas and the productions that I can watch over and over are the ones that give you something to think about once the immediate emotional immersion has passed. Too bad we don’t get as many opera DVDs from American companies (outside of the Met) as we seem to from European companies: this was one to watch over and over.

PSA

To all those people coming here looking for the translation of the Baudelaire line I used as an entry title, here is the translation of “Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frère!”:

Hypocritical reader – my likeness/my double – my brother!

It’s the last line of Au Lecteur (To the Reader), the introductory poem to Les Fleur du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). You can go finish that paper now – it’s due tomorrow morning, isn’t it? And here I thought knowledge of Baudelaire was taken in at the breast with mother’s absinthe.

To the person from Pittsburgh who keeps coming here searching for pierogie lights: Gift shop, the Andy Warhol Museum. Enjoy!

To all the narwhal folk (or to the one person with a really oddball obsession): Sorry your trip here has been futile, but check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narwhal, though I fear even that won’t help those who searched for “origami narwhal” and “narwhal drinking game” (if you find out what that is, by the way, I'm curious to hear). And it definitely won’t be a help to the person searching for “narwhal porn.” In fact, unless this is a desperate move on the part of an otherwise scientifically respectable narwhal breeding program, I’m thinking there’s pretty much no one who can help someone searching for narwhal porn. I mean, you know . . . um . . . ouch? (And to Ms S of DC: you realize this is all your fault, right?)

The search that really fascinated me recently, from I think Columbia Medical Center in New York, was “Barry Zito Nathan Gunn” – no other terms, even the inevitable but tasteful “shirtless” or the engagingly candid “naked pics”. It turns out I’m apparently the only inhabitant of the entire webosphere that has written about both of them. Does someone else just share my combo pack favorite current baseball player and favorite baritone? See, no matter how obscure the niche, there’s someone else out there looking for it. So maybe narwhal porn guy should take heart and voyage on, the Captain Ahab of man/tusked sea mammal relations.

let me entertain you

Just like Tax Day or Christmas, which always show up punctually at the same time each year yet catch some of us unprepared, the beginning of the autumn theater season is barreling right on down and I keep having to remind myself that it’s coming. Well, maybe it’s more like Easter, which is a moveable feast and therefore provides an excuse for lack of preparation. There really isn’t any preparation necessary, of course, other than keeping an eye on the calendar and the tickets. I’m not going to blame San Francisco Performances, either, or even mention that they sent my tickets a month after they said they would (you’ve heard the expression “being inefficient doesn’t make you artistic”? It should be blazoned on the walls of every arts organization). Anyway, David Gockley was nice enough to send a double-disc CD set reminding me of what I paid for last February. This is the second year the Opera has sent out CDs, in place of the lavish booklets they used to send. Initially the CDs took me aback, but then I decided that since I listened to the CDs and rarely ever looked at the booklets (though I've kept them all and they keep popping up during the clean-up/organization thing I’m doing and I can’t decide what to do with them), the CDs were fine. This year’s CDs are better than last year’s, which were heavy on plot summaries and such insights as “Did you hear about Deborah Voigt and the little black dress?” (yes, way too many times, and I’m sure Ms. Voigt would agree) and “That Nathan Gunn sure is a looker!” (noted). I don’t really understand the persistence of operatic plot summaries in program books – sure, they were vital before surtitles, but now that anyone coming in cold can follow the action as if it were spoken theater, must we persist in draining any possible surprise out of the evening? There’s a little more cultural context in this year’s set; for example, the Samson discussion has a whole lot about fin-de-siecle femme fatale fantasies as a projection of male anxieties, which I suppose is true as far as it goes, which isn’t quite far enough – the funny thing about such discussions is that they’re meant to illustrate the speaker’s insight into and distance from a purely male perspective, but they rarely step outside of the male-centered perspective and make the obvious corollary point that such fantasies may have been enjoyed and promoted as empowering by women themselves. If you were a woman living under the restrictions of upper- and middle-class life in late-nineteenth century Europe, wouldn’t you enjoy seeing yourself as Salome or Dalilah? (Just as you can easily see why some poor Jewish boys in Depression America could come up with Superman.) It’s worth listening to both discs to find out why the Opera switched from the Sendak production of the Magic Flute (water damage – I really love water but have been more cognizant of its destructive side ever since the year in which first the rains caused my kitchen ceiling to collapse and then the water heater failed and flooded the basement) or – and this is quite exciting, I think – Nixon in China will finally be staged here in some unspecified future season. This latter tidbit comes up in a discussion of Madama Butterfly, of all things – even Gockley sounded bored at its return and went off on various tangents, such as the source of La Scala’s name. I’m not criticizing that – I’m easily distracted myself. (Though just when I figured I could skip Butterfly despite the undoubted appeal of Racette in the role, he reveals that instead of the inadequate Franco Farina we saw last time Pinkerton will be played by up-and-comer Brandon Jovanovich, whom I’ve heard good things about and would love to hear in person – like another Italian-founded organization, they just keep pulling you back in.) But it’s a little hard to know quite what to make of these CDs, ultimately, both because I’m not sure who exactly the audience is and because I’m not sure how much is Gockley trying to position himself with an allegedly disgruntled public. When leaving Titus Andronicus with Ms. S last spring, I expressed my surprise that people who cared enough about theater to have subscribed for years didn’t know the basic plots of what I would consider fairly standard works. I had to explain to her that I wasn’t criticizing those people – if anything, I was praising them (and why do people always think I’m being critical? I, who have a heart that is filled with love!); it was more that I didn’t understand how they could keep from knowing these things, at least osmotically. (Which is as good a place as any to point out that Gockley, in his discussion of Verdi’s Macbeth, seems to think that Verdi and Piave changed Shakespeare’s characterization of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; actually, the whole criss-cross pattern in which the ambivalent Macbeth becomes more cold-blooded and cruel and his fierce wife descends into confusion and madness is faithful to the play.) The moment that really irritated me was in the discussion of Tannhauser, when we are treated to a smug conversation between Gockley and the director in which both agree that “no fedoras” will appear in the production. Throughout, Gockley has said all the correct things about Runnicles and Rosenberg, but I think he’s showing his claws here, since “fedoras” seem to have taken on a Magritte-bowler-hat level of significance in what passes for the minds of the Opera audience. It’s a coded way of assuring us that whatever we see will not ruffle us up too much, which shouldn’t really be the aim of a theater. I just can’t cite any really inappropriate Rosenberg-era productions (with the possible exception of the atrocious and entirely traditional Nozze di Figaro she inherited from Mansouri), which is not to say they were all incredibly successful, but I’m still puzzled at the depth of the hostility. Contemporary American culture generally is very reactionary and anti-intellectual (both symptoms of a fearful culture) and I hate to see an opera company join in, especially with such smugness. I hear the same tone when people talk about how “at last” the terrible reign of the twelve-toners has been overthrown and composers need no longer tremble with fear if they write “beautiful melodies that the audience wants to hear.” Setting aside possible music-world (or academic-music-world) politics, which don’t really concern me as an audience member, I have to say that in my decades of concert-going I haven’t exactly been drowning in the dodecaphonic, and I’m someone who seeks it out. It’s like those articles in which we’re assured that (again, at last) people can ignore the food police and finally resume eating butter, as if all those puffing Americans waddling to their cars had actually ever given anything up instead of just thinking they should. It’s a projection based on guilt. But why not avoid guilty feelings by being open to and trying a variety of things? Isn’t it clear by now that anyone announcing the one true music of the future is only trying to encourage him- or herself to find a path? Why should the audience buy into the thought that one particular style must win? Given that most of us, even inveterate concert-goers, experience music most often through recordings, why limit yourself? Why not try something new and then just sell it to Amoeba if you genuinely hate it (or simply don’t respond to it)? Speaking of recordings, what really springs out at me from both sets of CDs is that the opera has good-quality recordings of their past performances – I realize there are artist permissions and royalties and such things to hammer out, but if they’re not looking into this as a possible revenue stream then they’re crazy. I’d hit that. Well, as I said, I’m easily distracted – back to the new Opera season. It all looks pretty promising to me, at least at this point. I’m partial to The Rake’s Progress, of course, and I’m always happy to hear Wagner (with the possible exception of Meistersinger), and a world premiere is always good, but the one work that keeps recurring to me when I think of this season is Ariodante, with a kick-ass cast (Graham, Swenson, and Podles). But that’s not for many evenings yet.

always some flaw, some imperfection in the divine image

Actual dialogue overheard in the lower lobby of the Pittsburgh Opera House during a Billy Budd intermission:

Wife: What was that other Billy musical we saw?
Husband: (after a pause) Billy Elliott.

I hope they managed to keep from confusing the two.

After seeing Nathan Gunn as Billy Budd at SF Opera a couple of years ago, I somewhat perversely wanted to see someone else in the role, because he was so good I couldn’t imagine a better Billy. So I had another little lesson in being careful what you wish for when, about 15 minutes before the curtain rose in Pittsburgh, I glanced at the program inserts and saw that Gunn had withdrawn from the final two performances (the ones I had flown in for) due to acute laryngitis. David Adam Moore had flown in to save the day from La Scala, where he was playing Maximilian in Candide. I give him a lot of credit for an excellent performance under the circumstances, and I would have been perfectly happy with him if I had never heard Gunn’s profounder take on the role. Thursday night Moore initially was drowned a bit by the orchestra but I think that was partly jet-lag and partly unfamiliarity with the house (which has very good acoustics, I thought, from my front-row seat; the Benedum Center is a converted silent movie palace, and unlike some others I’ve been in, it’s not just a vast frou-frou barn where sound goes to die – but it’s certainly ornate; everything that isn’t rose and gold is soft green and silver, and every spare surface that doesn’t hold a cherub, rosette, or garland is be-griffined and hippocampus'd). Moore had no problems on Saturday singing over the orchestra, and his performance was a bit more detailed (he had sung in this Francesca Zambello production elsewhere). But here’s an example of why I prefer Gunn: for Billy’s last line (“Starry Vere, God bless you!”), which became my touchstone for the role after Gunn’s San Francisco performances, Moore gave the forthright manly reading that I had always expected; but when Gunn sang it in San Francisco, it was a weirdly supernal benediction that deepened the character spiritually for me in ways I hadn’t even contemplated (and I’ve heard the bootlegs, and they don’t quite capture what he did with the line). Basically, I went to Pittsburgh to hear him sing that line again.

Gunn also just seems to have more of the inherent charisma that Billy needs; again, nothing against Moore, but Billy has to embody goodness and beauty in a way that goes beyond most of his actions, and Gunn is just a very magnetic performer on stage (which is one reason his Clyde was less passive, less of a tabula rasa, than Dreiser’s). I was disappointed by the cancellation, but I actually felt worse for Gunn than for myself: I still got to see a solid production of a great opera (plus the delightful city of Pittsburgh), but he had to cancel a fairly rare chance to do one of his favorite roles. I get the impression Billy Budd is still considered a bit of a hard sell, though I have recommended it to non-opera-going friends who are fans of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, or just of morally complex dramas. But during the intermission Thursday, while I was thinking about how haunting the saxophone melody is, I heard an old woman, who was, alas! probably a more typical opera-goer than I am, announce that she “likes operas with tunes,” which of course is just a way a saying she likes things in which she already knows every note. I resisted the temptation to punch her, because I was raised right (thanks, Mom! Please accept this tribute in lieu of not calling you on Mother’s Day, which you hate anyway). But even if you know every note of Billy Budd, you can never resolve it, which is why I think it can be tricky to balance the staging. On the whole, I liked Zambello’s production, but ultimately I preferred the one for San Francisco Opera, which I think was a little less overwrought and therefore a little less obvious about directing the viewer’s reactions. I felt that the Pittsburgh production emphasized moment-to-moment drama at the expense of the opera’s overall sense. Despite the undercurrent of the recent Nore mutiny, and behind that, the fear of the miasmic ideas of the French revolution (hence the officer’s anger at Billy’s farewell to his previous ship, the Rights of Man), you need to feel that, within the more brutal standards of the eighteenth century, the Indomitable is basically a well-run ship. Otherwise there’s no way to see Vere (Robin Leggate in this production) as an able and admired commander, or to understand why the sailors think they’re better off under him than under the French. Unless there’s a basic order and stability within the class system on the ship, you can’t see why the intellectual Vere would hate the disorderly French and prefer the British system. Vere may puzzle his officers, but they respect him – but in this production, in every scene they’re openly skeptical of him and practically rolling their eyes in a way that undercuts the sense of the ship’s hierarchy, and without understanding that power and order on the ship derive from the hierarchy, you can’t understand why Vere has to protect the hierarchy by hanging angelic Billy for inadvertently killing his unjust accuser, Claggart. Also, the opening scene with the crew (and, on Thursday night but not Saturday, the scene in which the sailors assemble to see Billy hanged) exhibited a level of exaggerated brutality from the officers and resentment from the men that, though it made for dramatic punch, also made mutiny seem like the only logical and appropriate outcome, in which case why does the crew want to fight the French instead of joining them? The crew’s unrest after Billy’s hanging also went too far – they were a Fritz Lang crowd groping relentlessly forward, and it seemed more like actual rebellion than muttered resentment. I did like the set, which contains the essential: there is a self-contained unit (a sort of jutting triangle that could be raised hydraulically) isolated in a pleasingly abstract blue element. The deck would usually rise when there was a need to show below-decks, but it did also rise to give a physical and emotional lift to Captain Vere’s last soliloquy, when he reflects on the peace that Billy’s forgiveness has given him – to me, this made the finale, though theatrically striking, too triumphant and affirmative, and I lost the meditative mythic quality of the phrase “long ago now, years ago, centuries ago” that struck me so powerfully in San Francisco. One small fault: after Billy’s hanging the safety harness was too visible (it’s hard to gauge, but I think Moore is shorter than Gunn, so the switch in singers might have made the difference). I was amused to see that at least one prominent sailor appeared to have used make-up to give himself six-pack abs. You gotta love sitting in the front row.

But these objections are mostly of degree rather than substance. Billy Budd, like Cosi Fan Tutte, another work in which Gunn is outstanding, is one of those opalescent operas that flash different colors from moment to moment and from viewing to viewing, and there’s no ultimately right way to stage them. Zambello did by and large avoid the more reductive approaches to the work. One is to present Billy as a Christ figure, which I can’t quite see – he’s more an exemplar of innate goodness than a moral teacher; you can’t quite imagine Billy delivering the Sermon on the Mount – which is the tricky part, and why the baritone has to seem like someone with more going on than just a well-used gym membership. He undergoes his own spiritual journey after the murder, from begging his Captain to save him to accepting and willing his own fate (like Wotan), to understanding and forgiveness. I wouldn’t go too far in citing Melville to explain the opera, since Britten and Co. made some significant changes to his work, but it’s worth noting that it is Claggart whom Melville compares to the Man of Sorrows. He also describes Claggart as good-looking, though without the noble quality of Billy (much as Gunther is a warrior and king, but still not quite at the inherent heroic level of Siegfried). I do find the opera’s version of Claggart less satisfying than Melville’s, though perhaps more suited to the stage. I think Forster and Crozier were trying for an Iago-like blackhole of evil, but he seems more like Scarpia, striding around saying nasty things (“then let him crawl”). Greer Grimsley was fine, but for reasons out of his control it’s very difficult not to seem like a stage villain in the part. He (and the production) handled the sexual undertones in a fairly restrained way, though I still found him a bit too openly sadistic and too physical with some of the men. These days it’s fairly commonplace to assert that Claggart’s motive is sexual longing for Billy, and I certainly wouldn’t rule that out, at least as part of it, but I think it’s a mistake to narrow his motive in that way, for several reasons. Claggart’s envy could be based on sexual longing for Billy, but it could also be based on sexual jealousy of a man superior in appearance and appeal. It could be the hatred the conventional and rule-bound have for freer spirits. Also, Captain Vere has a similar reaction to Billy: unmistakable parallels are drawn between Claggart (“Beauty, handsomeness, goodness, I will destroy you”) and Vere (“Beauty, handsomeness, goodness, it is for me to destroy you”). There are also what one might call “political” objections to reducing all emotions between men to the sexual, or simplistically identifying homosexuality (or repressed homosexuality) with evil. But the main problem with reducing Claggart’s motivation to repressed longing for Billy is that it enables a contemporary audience to assume that if only Claggart lived in a more accepting urban area in our enlightened times, there would be no problem – it reduces the dilemma to one of temporal sexual mores, no longer relevant to the enlightened, instead of a timeless dilemma of justice versus right, or of the divine versus the earthly. This opera seems to me to be more like Das Rheingold, a work examining the problem of what is just in a corrupt social order, and the dilemma of those who must maintain that order even while realizing its corruption (with the erotic as just one quicksilver factor among many), rather than, say, Carmen, a work examining the destruction of an orderly life through erotic obsession. But it’s always a mistake to single out a sole profundity from Melville’s oracular fables and feel that you’ve solved their puzzles.

And as for you, Barber. . . .

I was of course thrilled that Nathan Gunn returned to the SF Opera House this season, though I would have preferred a revival of Billy Budd rather than Barbiere. But like the modest opera fan I am, I am content with what I’m given, more or less. This production is one of the Rosenberg updates, and it was instantly controversial in conservative San Francisco because it didn’t come with dust already caked on the costumes. But in all honesty I don’t think the production works all that well.

It’s set in a huge, rotating house done in a stripped-down modernist style (it’s sort of amusing to think that the stodgy Dr Bartolo would be a modernist these days, just as I can tell my taste for the 12-toners puts me a bit out of musical avant). There are lots of sight gags, most of them fairly clever, though some people object to the frenzy. But overly abundant shtick is inevitable when anything derived from commedia dell’arte is staged, as witness just about every production of Moliere ever done. And the Opera’s previous staging, which was extremely traditional in style, was also criticized for an excess of irrelevant sight gags, as many seemed to forget in their rush to attack Rosenberg. I think the big rotating house affects the acoustics. I’ve now seen this production three times (twice when it was new and then again this season) and I’ve noticed this each time. I think its odd open shape keeps the sound from bouncing out the way it usually does. It also affects the sightlines, which is kind of a sore point to me since I sit a bit off to the side and I think directors should keep the side-folks in mind.

The cast was very strong. I particularly liked the rich voice of the attractive Allyson McHardy, and I was glad to see that Catherine Cook recovered her reliable form after her caricature of Marzellina in last summer’s Nozze di Figaro and brought some poignancy to Berta’s aria about how no one wants to marry her, though she does plop down on a hatbox at the end of it. As for Gunn, well, you didn’t think I was going to say anything negative about Nathan, did you? I did notice that, compared with two years ago, his performance and voice seemed bigger and more in charge of the stage. We’ll see if this production gets jettisoned for the next revival, which I hope will not be all that soon. I like Barbiere, but there's a lot of other stuff to fill the Rossini spot in the rotation.

Poppea in Houston

I offer the subject line to Adams or Ades or anyone who wants a good subject for a contemporary opera, possibly featuring a tie-in to the recent conviction of Ken "Bad" Lay.
I saw L'Incoronazione di Poppea twice. If this is typical of David Gockley's productions then I feel reassured about the upcoming years at SF Opera, though I have to say I'm getting really tired of the Pamela-bashing that's been going either directly or subtly around here, though perhaps I should save that up (throw it on the pile. . . . ).
This is a wonderful opera, more Shakespearean than almost all of the operas based on his work (except for Verdi's sublime Falstaff). Every character is rich and complex, from the Emperor down to his guards. This production was better than the three DVDs I watched before the trip in just about every way. The amazingly beautiful set (the only direct evocation of the Renaissance) was based on the inlaid wood studiolo from Gubbio now in the Metropolitan in New York and featured a tower to the right that opened and moved to become a staircase, a niche for visiting gods, a closet, and various other settings. The wall on the left curved around to the back and for Ottavia's entrance and Seneca's suicide beams slid out forming a staircase made up of disconnected steps, which was possibly too dramatic since apparently I wasn't the only one in the audience with a panic about heights and it was hard to concentrate until the singer had made it safely up or down (this was especially true of Seneca's suicide, when the beams were withdrawn one by one as he ascended). I hope they gave von Stade and Aceto hazard pay. The costumes were from the 1930s. I saw a review that said they were meant to evoke the fascist period in Italy. If that's true, then I'd have to say they were a failure, evoking for me Hollywood more than Mussolini: most obviously, there were no blackshirts. The emperor's retinue was either dressed formally like servants or like ordinary carbinieri. The coronation itself was distinctly Napoleonic and very reminiscent of David's painting of Napoleon crowning himself while the Pope looks on helplessly. The final duet (Pur ti miro) was sung by Graham and Burden seated on their thrones and staring straight ahead. I can't even describe why I found this so moving and so perfect. I liked Venus as a Jean Harlowe/Veronica Lake-type, surrounded by fat cherubs in sailor suits, but was a bit less convinced by Mercury as a Ralph Lauren model (though I did enjoy the little wings on his shoes; being able to notice these details is an advantage to front-row seats). They omitted the prologue, which was a shame. I like the perspective it gives to the whole work. Perhaps they felt the evening was already long enough. The cast was outstanding. There were a few moments when von Stade's voice sounded a bit worn to me, but it actually just added poignance to her portrayal of the abandoned Empress and she came through in the big moments (though she didn't quite leave scorch marks on the stage, the way Hunt-Lieberson did at SF Opera few years ago). Nathan Gunn as usual acted deeply and sang beautifully, but I did feel the staging failed in his key scene. Ottone loves Poppea but is dumped by him in favor of the Emperor Nero; the abandoned Empress orders him to kill Poppea or she will accuse him of attempting to rape her (either way he could be put to death); he is trying to convince himself that he no longer loves Poppea, but only Drusilla, who has loved him all along; he's torn among three women in a way that makes Clyde's problems in An American Tragedy look run of the mill. He feels paralyzed and trapped. The Empress's suggestion is that he borrows Drusilla's clothes and kill Poppea that way, to avoid immediate detection. He wears Drusilla's dress, but it's sleeveless and backless and though I can respect Gunn's probable reluctance to take his shirt off in every production, as worn over his white shirt it looked like one of those "Kiss the Cook" barbecue aprons they used to sell for men. A hat with a veil would have helped the illusion. There are two problem with the scene as staged: first, no one, even if she were half asleep and startled by the sudden sight of a sword right above her neck (she is awakened by Amor, who will not permit Ottone to kill the woman he still loves), could possibly think he was any woman, much less one about a foot shorter with curly blonde hair down to her shoulders. And as he runs off, since the dress is backless, he looks even less like Drusilla, rendering her subsequent arrest a bit forced. So it's unconvincing, and the second problem is that the subdued gown doesn't convey visually that his situation has unmanned him. Perhaps they were afraid it would make the scene ridiculous, but though Ottone's anguish is real (and Gunn conveys that well) the situation is slightly ridiculous. (That's one of the things I meant by the opera's Shakespearean richness.) In this production in particular it would have made an interesting contrast with the very different drag scene featuring the emperor in a scarlet dress and boa flirting with the courtier Lucano (William Burden played this scene and the whole role of the unbalanced Emperor superbly) and also with the pantomime dame role of Arnalta (Joseph Evans), Poppea's old nurse. Too bad this production wasn't recorded on DVD, as I would then have a clear favorite. I assume a recording will start circulating once NPR World of Opera broadcasts it (though not in this area); but a DVD would be better. Fans are just never satisfied, are we?

It didn't fall in a day, either

As part of my Nathan Gunn tour of America, I am going to Houston in a month for L'Incoronazione di Poppea (with an Astros/Cardinals game in between performance dates). I have seen it once before, in a po-mo production at SF Opera, which I liked better than some reviewers did; I think it suffered with comparisons to the Mark Morris production of Rameau's Platee that was running in Berkeley at the same time (is that the first mention of the genius Morris here? It won't be the last!) but it had a lot going for it, not least a performance of the Empress Ottavia by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson that was so intense it frankly threw the opera off balance. But I decided to watch the three available DVDs to prep for the trip. The original plan was to watch them all in one weekend. It's probably just as well that it didn't happen that way, though all three are different enough, not just in staging but in music (given the various controversies over the score and historical performance practices). Not only was the scoring different, but two had Nerone played by tenors and one by a mezzo, while two had Ottone played by countertenors and one by a baritone (this is Gunn's role in Houston).
First was a 1993 production from the Schwetzinger Festspiele, with Patricia Shumann as Poppea, Richard Croft as Nerone, and Rene Jacobs conducting. This was a good standard production, I thought, but for some reason they omit the prologue in which Fortune and Virtue argue over who has the power, only to be interrupted by Love, who points out that she (or he, in the form of Cupid) does. For some this omission will knock this one out of the running, and indeed I'm puzzled as to why they left it out. It may seem like an outdated bit of Renaissance allegory, but (1) it sets up a larger framework for the rest of the story and (2) if you don't have at least some taste for Renaissance styles you're probably not going to go for this opera anyway.
Next was the Raymond Leppard version with Maria Ewing and Dennis Bailey from Glyndebourne. I understand from those more steeped in musicology than I can claim to be that Leppard's version is controversial. I found it enjoyable, not being too caught up myself in continuo arguments and sackbut controversies. It is probably the one least likely to freak out the regular opera goer (that is, someone approaching it back from the nineteenth century works, rather than someone moving forward in time from early music), what with the absence of countertenors and, if my memory is correct, the nurses played by women instead of en travesti. I don't consider that a recommendation, but I'm not perverse enough to rule it out on those grounds either.
Third (and this was last night's viewing, so it's fresher in my memory) was Christophe Rousset's version with Les Talens Lyriques, with Cynthia Haymon as my favorite of the Poppeas and Brigitte Balleys as Nerone. This is the longest of the DVDs, and is probably the fullest and most "authentic" musically. But if you're looking for spectacle, this bare stage version is not the place to go. Also: what's with the incredibly butt-ugly costumes? Why would you hire a gorgeous woman like Haymon to sing the seductive Poppea and then dress her like Raggedy Ann? Why were they all in baggy fuzzy caftans, some festooned with what looked like carpet samples or failed macrame projects? And why was Poppea's nurse Arnalta dressed like a refugee from a Russian Constructivist version of Alice in Wonderland? This is more a version to be heard than seen, I guess.
I've heard rumors there's another version forthcoming, with William Christie conducting, but so far no sightings on the Amazon. . . .

Good Old Reliable Nathan

From June 2005: I went to the first two performances of Cosi at San Francisco Opera. I had seen the production last fall but had to go again when Nathan Gunn joined the cast. I really liked this production. It's set at the onset of World War I, so it captures the last gasp of an orderly European society, one in which people could talk casually of war, before it slides into 20th century chaos. The reminders of the war went from the obvious (the women are in Red Cross nurses's uniforms when they take care of the "poisoned" sailors) to the subtle (one of the flower vases was filled with red poppies of the sort they used to sell on Veteran's Day). At the end, the men are with their original women, then they switch off, and then they are actually called off to war. Some reviewers objected to the call to war, but I thought it was appropriate -- after all, it just hurries up the risk of death, which is inevitable, and it makes suddenly real what had been a jape. I also loved Frederica von Stade as a more experienced, worldly wise Despina -- so much more satisfying dramatically than the overly cute soubrette we usually get. By the way, total props to Gunn and Katherine Rohrer (Dorabella) for maintaining their composure the first night when a lounge chair collapsed beneath them. Here are Gunn-centric excerpts from a couple of the local reviews, which for once I agree with. It's interesting that both agree on Gunn, since the first reviewer blasted the conductor (Anne Manson) for her "sluggish tempos and lax ensemble" and the second one praised her highly, singling out her ensembles. What different people hear at the same performance is one of the enduring fascinations of the theater. Joshua Kosman in the SF Chronicle: "The other new face in the cast was baritone Nathan Gunn, succeeding Hanno Muller-Brachman as Gugliemo. His performance was marked by his trademark amiability and charisma, though the sunny strains grew more glowering in time for the Act 2 aria 'Donne mie la fate a tanti.'" Now Robert Commanday, from the e-mail newsletter SF Classical Voice: "Secondly, the youth who played Guglielmo cluelessly in the fall was replaced by a man, Nathan Gunn, admired here for his Figaro (Rossini) in 2004 and his Billy Budd last fall. His intense manner and presence made Guglielmo a keen opposite to the Ferrando of Paul Groves. This Guglielmo had the confident, swaggering bearing that's called for and sets up his comeuppance. Towards the end of the opera, when he has to swallow his anger and jealousy and face the consequences of the game he has been playing, the climax is splendid."
The day after the second performance I heard Gunn sing the Bernstein Arias & Barcarolles with the SF Symphony, as part of their festival celebrating the Jewish influence on American music and theater. Candide is one of my favorite musicals but other than that I tend to have mixed feelings about Bernstein. I can see the appeal of this cycle, since it deals with a broad range of experiences in a man's life and a married couple's life that maybe don't get that much coverage in the song literature, but I have to say it's hard for something like that to stand up after you've just seen Cosi twice, though of course that's not Bernstein's fault. I did enjoy the performance and enjoyed Gunn acting out some of the songs.
I also saw The Pearl Fishers at SF Opera. It was a more opulent production than the one I saw in May 2004 in Philadelphia (it was designed by British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes -- I loved the colors but found some of the sets too cartoony for my taste). No offense to the guy here who sang Zurga, since he was fine, but he just wasn't Nathan Gunn. I guess what it comes down to is that in Philadelphia the opera to me was about Zurga's emotional dilemma: betray his friend or take revenge for his rejected love? Whereas in SF it was more about the two lovers finding each other and escaping. Still satisfying, but it didn't have quite the emotional impact on me. I don't know if it's Gunn's greater skill as an actor (I remember clearly specific looks and gestures in his performance) or just charisma, but he just brings an extra dimension to these roles.

American Tragedy

In December I was at the world premiere of Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy at the Metropolitan Opera. This is an adaptation of what I wrote to someone who sort of liked it but thought that, accomplished as Nathan Gunn was in the lead role, he didn't project anguish:
Thanks for the interesting thoughts. I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on Gunn's ability to project anguish. In thinking over the roles I've seen him in, I think he did that amazingly as Zurga in the Pearl Fishers, and I also felt his anguish as Clyde at the very end of the opera. Before that I don't think Clyde, as presented in the opera, is anguished, but more of a restlessly yearning, craving young man. After all, he's doing pretty well until Roberta is pregnant -- he's getting better jobs, he has two beautiful women in love with him, he's on the way up. He seems like someone whose life is guided by wishful thinking, and when reality in the form of pregnancy intrudes, he's unmoored enough to think of elimination as the best result. What Gunn wasn't, in my opinion, was the more hollow, passive character of the book, though this may have been a change in the character due to the more dramatic nature of the stage.
What I found fascinating, and risky, about the opera, is that the center of it is Clyde, and he's an enigma. I go back and forth about him, as I did in the book (this to me is why A Place in the Sun is different from the opera and the novel, since it's set up as a doomed romance; in the other two the women are much more evenly balanced). To me the most amazing thing about Gunn's performance is that he manages to maintain audience sympathy at all, especially given the power of Racette's performance. When he comes bounding on stage in his singlet-style swimsuit right after Roberta's heart-breaking letter it's hard not to want to kill him. (Hmm, I guess that's the Clyde in me coming out. . . .).
I also had some reservations about the end. I thought Gene Scheer (the librettist) on the whole did an amazing job compressing and dramatizing a complex set of incidents, but removing Orville Mason's class hatred for Clyde (a slightly misplaced hatred, since he assumed Clyde was rich) and making him a political client of the family removes Mason's motivation for his extreme hostility to Clyde (shoving him while arresting him, repeatedly referring to him as "boy"). And though Dolora Zajick was powerful as the mother, I felt that in the final scene (I felt this especially the second time I saw it) her acting was a little too much the generalized anguished mother (she had one final gesture with an outstretched arm that was beautifully DW Griffith, but perhaps not the more restrained gesture of a woman whose strong Christian faith had rendered her more stoic when faced with the evils of the world). That's another interesting difference I felt the opera had from the novel: in the opera there was no reason to see the mother's Christian faith as shabby or fanatical or narrow-minded. It seemed like a powerful and possible alternative to the gospel of prosperity preached by the rest of the Gilbert clan. So I had different reactions to the end each time I saw it. The first time I felt, with the appearance of the hymn-singing boy, that Clyde had achieved some sort of inner peace. The second time, his anguish seemed greater, and I read it as Clyde experiencing utter despair, since even turning back to the faith of his childhood hadn't saved him. I have to say I sort of preferred the second reading. I had no moral or aesthetic objections to the first; it's just a matter of personal preference. I preferred the novel's slow fade into obscurity to the movie's more glam conclusion. (The novel, by the way, I found sensitive, powerful, and moving; I had avoided Dreiser for years, thinking he would be clumsy and overly earnest; his prose is clumsy but his insights are not.)
I keep thinking of this opera in relation to several others: Billy Budd, because both deal with inadvertent killers and bring up profound issues of justice and society; Dead Man Walking, because of the struggle towards redemption and death; and Madama Butterfly, because so much of it is like Butterfly told from Pinkerton's point of view. (These associations were jogged by the artists, of course, since Gunn is a celebrated Billy, Graham created the role of Sister Helen, and I'm hearing Racette as Butterfly in June.) To me the emotional specificity of music tends to come with repeated viewings/hearings, so this new opera faces the same problem as other new works: it's competing with moments seared into my consciousness. I would happily see it again, which is not something I can say of some other operas (for instance, Dr. Atomic, and I have to say I'm annoyed at some of the reviews of An American Tragedy which cite Dr. Atomic as a more daring work -- it has more obvious avant-garde credentials, but dramatically it not only is largely unsuccessful in my opinion but it offers no structural innovations for anyone who has heard Messiah or the Bach Passions and few musical surprises; though I liked the music, during most scenes I thought, well, it's X type of scene, so Adams is writing X type of music. To me making the ambiguous figure of Clyde the center of the work represents a subtler challenge to conventional dramaturgy than anything in Dr Atomic).

All for Love

About a year ago I went up to Seattle to hear Florencia en el Amazonas. I had been up to Seattle twice before, both times for the Ring Cycle; this time I just went for the weekend, drawn by the casting of the redoubtable Nathan Gunn. I saw the first two performances. Nothing was on at the theaters that I wanted to see and it was too early for baseball, so then I came home. The opera (Florencia en el Amazonas by Daniel Catan, a contemporary Mexican composer) is sort of "inspired by" Marquez rather than "based on". Apparently he generally opposes putting his stories into other media (such as film or the stage) but he allowed them to borrow characters and situations as a starting point and the librettist is a pupil of his and was recommended by him (though since I saw Florencia I have heard an opera based directly on The Autumn of the Patriarch, so go figure -- maybe Marquez changed his mind; he's entitled to). The basic story is that a famous singer travels up the Amazon to sing at an opera house in her native place but also to find a butterfly hunter she had loved years before. It turns out he has died in the meantime but she realizes at the end that she is still singing to him and she mystically turns into a butterfly. This is right after a cholera epidemic is announced, so I think it's up to individual interpretation whether she lives and has had a spiritual moment, or dies and is reunited with her love, or even actually turns into a butterfly of the rare type he had been searching for. There's also a young couple (the captain's nephew and a woman writing a biography of the singer though she doesn't realize until late in the voyage that she has been traveling with the diva all along) who end up falling in love with each other and a quarrelsome middle-aged couple (to my amusement, the audience at both performances I heard clearly related best to them) that ends up rediscovering their love after he is swept overboard -- the wife realizes she did love him and the river returns him. And there's also a sailor, Riolobo, on board ship (Nathan Gunn), who functions as sort of a combination of Figaro (always arranging and commenting) and Ariel (a spirit connected to larger elements of Nature). He does get a kick-ass entry and exit during the storm that ends the first act, when he descends from the skies as a river god (dressed in a sort of Aztec loincloth and wings -- Gunn is very goodlooking and gets asked to strip a lot, something Pavarotti never had to do -- wow, I'm just trying to picture Luciano descending from the air -- that would be some harness -- talk about Supersize Me!), sings his aria, and then flies (literally) off stage. Pretty spectacular. But as beautiful and even moving as the work is, I can't help feeling the libretto has a major weakness: it's all about Love and how it affects the characters' lives, but Love is only presented as a positive force. The love affairs are happy, the quarrelsome get a second chance, even death can't divide lovers as they unite mystically. There's no one there who is destroyed or hurt or ignored by Love. This is where magical realism turns into wish fulfillment and becomes kind of a prettiness -- look! pink rain! and everyone's in love! The diva has a mystical reunion with her love, of whom she has only happy memories; the young lovers decide they will fall in love after all (as if they had a choice!); the quarrelsome middle-aged couple realizes in the face of death and separation that they really love each other -- and then death and separation are annihilated and they're reunited happily and magically. Everyone is happily united at the end except Riolobo, who's the best-looking guy anyway and also gets to be a river god. Where are the people destroyed by love? or even just ignored? What are probably my two favorite operas, Tristan and Nozze di Figaro, are both all about love also but it's very clear there's a price to pay. And you may feel it's worth paying, but you do pay. And even though characters like King Mark and Marzellina may enlarge their spirits by forgiving those in love who have betrayed or ignored them, it's clear Love hasn't given them what they wanted. So I couldn't help feeling that Florencia, beautiful and truly moving as it is, ends up avoiding the darker aspects of its subject. It's as if Das Rheingold ended just with the gods marching into Valhalla -- it would be beautiful and stirring, but when you also hear the cries of the Rhine Daughters and see Fasolt's dead body, it gives you a more complex view of the gods' triumph. But I would certainly be happy to hear Florencia again, which is not true of all other operas. The music is very attractive, but unfortunately it is the sort that gets described as "accessible," which is code for "no dissonance or other unseemly innovations will shock your 19th century ears." But I liked it anyway.