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lagilmanHrm. One, count 'em one "yay" on yesterday's Very Nice Review for PACK OF LIES. You guys really know how to give a writer a complex....
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Last Saturday I went to see Puccini's La Fanciulla Del West. Or, as I like to call it, "Happy Times in the Old West" (one of the few operas with an actual happy ending).
The set was, as expected, perfect. The costumes were very good. I had the expected momentary lust over the villain's coat, and my brain was noting all the details and enjoying it, but it was Old West and my brain knows Old West, so nothing particularly hijacked me ooo shiny! sense. (Okay, I am shallow, I noticed when the captive bandidto was brought in, that he was wearing leather chaps. Nicely. Moving on...)
The score is gorgeous. Truly - normally I hear the music as the plating for voices, but here I kept becoming aware of it the way you can't help but notice a particularly gorgeous color of a bird's feathers, or texture of a coat, not distracting exactly but drawing your attention to it. I kept thinking that I could write to that music, and no wonder the conductor was so excited about it.
Deborah Voigt (Minnie) has a lush, lovely voice. There is no denial of that. I rather liked Marcello Giordani's (Dick Johnson*) voice as well. Lucio Gallo as Sheriff Jack Rance was... he was ok, I wasn't entranced or anything the way one should be, by the villain. The bartender delighted me, stealing his scenes with comic timing. And yet...
At the first intermission, some people left. And I could almost understand why. Opera needs to captivate. It needs to sweep the viewer into its performance and not allow it to escape long enough to think about the simplistic plot, the implausible actions, the silliness of it all. The magnificence of the performances have to overwhelm everything else, that's the joy of it.
And that...wasn't happening (at one point, as Minnie and Jack play cards for Johnson's fate, I turned to my companion and said** "it's a good thing it takes people a long while to bleed to death in opera.") At first I thought that it was because the Old West, unlike other settings, wasn't enough of a 'fairy tale' for my brain to fall into, that I knew too many details and was starting to think like a story editor (I thought "oh no, we should have known Johnson's history at the beginning, to set him up as a deeper, more complex and tragic figure"). But since I know the history of many other operas quite well, that didn't feel right either.
I think - and this is just me thinking out loud - that La Fanciulla Del West is a play masquerading as an opera. And by that I mean that the voices are not carrying the bulk of the story, the actions/use of props are, just as in a musical or play. That means more is required of the singers than glorious and emotive voices. And the leads simply weren't able to produce it.
For me, anyway.
Pity. I'd really had hopes for this.
*sigh. Yes, the bandito/hero is named Dick Johnson. Yes, at one point there is a line that is more or less "your perfect Johnson from Sacramento." Yes, I snickered. There's only so much a punster can take....
** for those who have Low Expectations of me, for "said" insert "low-pitched whisper in my companion's ear during a break in the singing, with full awareness of the people around me.
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Last Saturday I went to see Puccini's La Fanciulla Del West. Or, as I like to call it, "Happy Times in the Old West" (one of the few operas with an actual happy ending).
The set was, as expected, perfect. The costumes were very good. I had the expected momentary lust over the villain's coat, and my brain was noting all the details and enjoying it, but it was Old West and my brain knows Old West, so nothing particularly hijacked me ooo shiny! sense. (Okay, I am shallow, I noticed when the captive bandidto was brought in, that he was wearing leather chaps. Nicely. Moving on...)
The score is gorgeous. Truly - normally I hear the music as the plating for voices, but here I kept becoming aware of it the way you can't help but notice a particularly gorgeous color of a bird's feathers, or texture of a coat, not distracting exactly but drawing your attention to it. I kept thinking that I could write to that music, and no wonder the conductor was so excited about it.
Deborah Voigt (Minnie) has a lush, lovely voice. There is no denial of that. I rather liked Marcello Giordani's (Dick Johnson*) voice as well. Lucio Gallo as Sheriff Jack Rance was... he was ok, I wasn't entranced or anything the way one should be, by the villain. The bartender delighted me, stealing his scenes with comic timing. And yet...
At the first intermission, some people left. And I could almost understand why. Opera needs to captivate. It needs to sweep the viewer into its performance and not allow it to escape long enough to think about the simplistic plot, the implausible actions, the silliness of it all. The magnificence of the performances have to overwhelm everything else, that's the joy of it.
And that...wasn't happening (at one point, as Minnie and Jack play cards for Johnson's fate, I turned to my companion and said** "it's a good thing it takes people a long while to bleed to death in opera.") At first I thought that it was because the Old West, unlike other settings, wasn't enough of a 'fairy tale' for my brain to fall into, that I knew too many details and was starting to think like a story editor (I thought "oh no, we should have known Johnson's history at the beginning, to set him up as a deeper, more complex and tragic figure"). But since I know the history of many other operas quite well, that didn't feel right either.
I think - and this is just me thinking out loud - that La Fanciulla Del West is a play masquerading as an opera. And by that I mean that the voices are not carrying the bulk of the story, the actions/use of props are, just as in a musical or play. That means more is required of the singers than glorious and emotive voices. And the leads simply weren't able to produce it.
For me, anyway.
Pity. I'd really had hopes for this.
*sigh. Yes, the bandito/hero is named Dick Johnson. Yes, at one point there is a line that is more or less "your perfect Johnson from Sacramento." Yes, I snickered. There's only so much a punster can take....
** for those who have Low Expectations of me, for "said" insert "low-pitched whisper in my companion's ear during a break in the singing, with full awareness of the people around me.
