It’s fair to say that musically, I’m a philistine. Well known around these parts for a devotion to heavy metal and the bearer of more than one old injury from pogoing around sundry mosh pits, I’m sure that my occasional YouTube ventures contrast in an earsplitting way with Jason’s far more cultured selections.
Nowhere is this effect more profound than with opera, an artform I have never understood. And never wanted to understand, either. This is only partly because kids in Logan City never went near anything that looked like fat blokes in dresses singing like Mrs Mac’s cats; it’s also because I came to despise the values and tastes of people who considered themselves my betters. Not only would I – given the chance – defund their artistic affectations, I’d loudly prefer Metallica, Slipknot and Cradle of Filth.
So it was with some trepidation that I turned up in Edinburgh to a very full cultural docket chosen – for the most part – by other people. It included two operas. I managed to trade one opera for tickets to the Andy Warhol exhibition, but the other one wouldn’t go away. Even worse, it was for opening night, which meant I had to dress up and act proper. Yesterday afternoon was not pretty, involving the purchase of items most girls consider par for the course (lipstick, foundation and this sticky gunk designed to flatten the afro so people behind me could see).
It’s hard to imagine anything more spectacularly shitty than having your much loved spouse die the day after your wedding. At its heart, this is Orpheus’ story. One day happily married, the next morning his better half’s dead from snakebite. Wedding guests are still cavorting around drunkenly after the reception and mates are still slapping his back on scoring the prettiest, most talented girl in the district. But Orpheus is good, very good, and he won’t wear it. He’s so good at singing and music he reckons he can persuade death to hand her back by sheer power of voice. And thereby hangs a tale.
The Edinburgh International Festival production of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is ‘deliberately baroque’. That is, the instruments, costumes and staging are as close as possible to how the opera would have looked in 1607. Considered ‘the first great opera’, back in the day people were aware that something different was afoot. Carlo Magno wrote to his brother the day before opening night:
It should be most unusual, as all the actors are to sing their parts; it is said on all sides that it will be a great success. No doubt I shall be driven to attend out of sheer curiosity, unless I am prevented from getting in by the lack of space.
This deliberate refusal to modernise means not only a harpsicord instead of a piano in the orchestra pit, but adherence to the traditional ‘dramatic unities’ (time and action entirely, and to a lesser extent, place). It’s in 5 Acts, like Elizabethan drama. Eurydice’s death does not occur onstage, a rule rigidly enforced in Classical Greek tragedy – and only broken by the Romans, who were fond of public killing. Monteverdi – unsure exactly of what he had created – labelled it favola in musica (‘play in music’).
The singers stand very still for the most part. The chorus doubles up as forest nymphs, underworld ‘shades’ and friends of the bride and groom. Yes, they’re in frocks – the Renaissance idea of how Greeks and Romans dressed, apparently – but the lack of histrionics (something I’ve always associated with opera, probably as a result of having Wagner inflicted on me at school) was wholly persuasive. Orpheus thinks he’s good – and he is bloody good. He sings Eurydice quite literally out of Hell, and it’s only his inability to overcome his own impatient curiosity that brings him undone. He looks back to make sure she’s behind him, and as in the similar Bible story, she is taken from him.
Did I believe?
This is the question I ask of all narrative arts. Samuel Coleridge wrote of the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, and my personal version involves persuasion – in the case of L’Orfeo – that I’m not sitting in bloody uncomfortable clothes watching blokes (and birds, another Monteverdi innovation – women on stage) in funny clothes singing fit to beat the band. Instead, I’m hearing about a gifted man who has lost his beloved, and determines to use his gifts to win her back. And succeeds, too, except when his own disbelief gets in the way.
The answer is yes, I did believe. And was not consoled when Apollo transforms the lovers into stars in the final act to light our path for all time. Yeah, right. He should have got her back. Who wouldn’t look behind in similar circumstances?
20 Comments
Monteverdi is a wonderful composer and a revolutionary figure in the history of music – he was innovative in style and sounds suprisingly contemporary. Melodic, easy. His opera full of fantasy and very gripping.
Opera itself deals with universal human dramas – love, passion, jealousy. It regularly brings me to tears – I never fail in La Traviata for example and, on other occasions, makes me feel joyful.
Monteverdi is one of my favourite composers – I recommend the recordings by Emma Kirkby singing Monteverdi. She is a boyish-sounding soprano – not a big boomer – just fantastic. Try the Parley of Ancient Instruments and:
Confitebor tibi, Domine
and tell me you ever want to listen to Heavy Metal again.
I’ve only watched a small number of Operas and whilst they were okay I’m not in a hurry to go again.
I have never seen any Andy Warhol exhibit but something tells me that it is not much more fun than Opera. Take a tour to see some Castles or an old Roman wall and report back with some news of blood curdling battles and horrific betrayal. If you don’t mind.
I don’t like Opera and whenever I get dragged to a performance there’s always too many fat ladies doing the singing. Why not skinny ladies instead of boofers like this video clip shows who has clearly eaten too many bugers for her own good.
I says Opera would be much better with trim and skinny gals. Who cares about vioce projection and all that crap. As a matter of fact no fat guys either.
I had to laugh at a performance of La bohème. Everyone doing the main singing were absolute porkers. They were so big I was suprised the stage didn’t fall underneath them.
But what made the thing so silly was that the story revolved around half starved bohemian types (older versions of dirty unwashed hippy types you find by the dozen in Byron bay).
Now these people were starved and one big fat gal had TB (in the part). What went through my mind was how on earth could these people be so fat.
I asked my superior 1/2 this question during the performance , got a dirty look and I nodded off to sleep again. Ballet is even worse. Toally boring with gals suffering anorexia. I don’t go to ballet and would never be asked.
Interesting diversity of views already…
I’m still a metalhead, Harry, but found this pretty good. Takes all kinds, I guess
I wrote that with a little in cheek after Harry’s loud and angry outburst, SL.
I once saw the most superb performance of an Opera of all time at the NY Met. I have actually seen a few Operas in my time, but none are so great and so captivating as Puccini’s. I think that one of the most important elements of a good Opera is the stage setting and the sets. Sets make or break the performance and it doesn’t matter how well the parts are sung. You have to feel as though you are there, watching intimately as the drama unfolds and so in a sense it is like a play.
Puccini has it over all the others as far as Opera goes. He is the Shakespeare of Opera. I saw this performance of Turandot at the NY Met and the set created by Franco Zeffirelli was just unforgettable. Zeffirelli creates masterpieces as Opera sets and anyone lucky to have seen his achievements could never forget them. One has to see at least one of Puccini’s Operas (with a Zeffirelli set) to have lived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Zeffirelli
Saw the Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake recently in Tokyo (opening night). I am the sort of bloke who checks his watch every 5 mins during such stuff – but was transfixed for 3/1/2 hours (as were two daughters under 10). Methinks if it’s quality, it works (hence Pearl Jam being the best band in the world).
That is true. If something is really good it rises above genre and just sucks you in. I have to say L’Orfeo sucked me in; I felt so sorry for his situation and could completely understand him trying to move heaven and earth to get round it. He figured he had what it took and damn near pulled it off.
Where I grew up, there was kind of a reverse snobbery operating – I was continually teased at school ‘YOU listen to the OPERA!’ And it was true, Mum and Dad did wean us on to classical music (Mum in particular), though I don’t know how the kids could have heard about it, since the teasing started quite young (Year 1). I think somebody’s parents must have unwittingly started it by talking about ‘That family that listens to the opera all the time’. So if I ever took it onto myself to defy snobbish social conventions, I’d go to the opera every week!
The drive for authentic costumes, sets, and instruments is an interesting one – there are actually whole orchestras using ‘authentic’ Baroque instrumentation and playing in an ‘authentic’ Baroque style, but most directors seem to be more than happy to do one of those ‘up to date’ productions, you know, putting Orfeo and Eurydice in punk outfits, or something like that.
But I’d actually be more than a mite surprised if a harpsichord wasn’t included in the orchestra pit! Monteverdi and his contemparies relied on the harpsichord (with bass accompaniment) to provide something called ‘Basso Continuo’. It wouldn’t sound the same with a piano substitute.
I quite like the harpsichord, and it seems to have had an interesting afterlife of its own, in various rock songs (‘Golden Brown’, for instance. Or was I fooled by a synthesiser?) It could be that in 200 years time, the piano will seem as rare as the harpsichord, since synthesisers are cheaper, easier to carry around, and can produce a greater range of timbres. (That is, if global warming doesn’t drown us all first.)
Anyway!
TimT – no, Golden Brown was definitely a real harpsichord. These days with sample-based or physical modelling synths you can do a pretty good fake one, but the closest thing in 1980 would have been a Hohner Clavinet or a pretty crude pulse-wave-based imitation on a synth.
I’ve tried to make a decent harpsichord on a range of mid-80s synths, but only ever got close to a Clavinet.
SL – I’ve tried, but I can’t “believe” opera, or any musical theatre really. It might be that I’m too interested in the music for its own sake (composition/performance/instrumentation) to treat it as a mere vehicle for story-telling.
Nice post SL. Will miss you greatly if you ever really do abandon us for good.
I don’t suppose Gilbert and Sullivan counts as opera but the lyrics are a lot of satirical fun and the tunes roll along. Snobs turn up their noses at G&S and I suppose young people do as well.
There was a Simpsons episode where Bart held the murderous Sideshow Bob at bay while he did a rendition of Pinafore? that went on long enough for the police to intervene and save him.
Appreciating opera is a little bit like learning another language. Once you get past the incomprehensible stage, it starts to make sense. The more you persevere, the better it sounds.
As with any art form, not all opera is good. But the best opera, in my opinion, is better than practically anything. JC is right about Puccini – Turandot can still give me goose bumps after hearing and watching it innumerable times.
As for fat ladies, they tend to come with the great voices. But it’s not all a turn-off. In Salome, for example, the star flashes her map of Tasmania in the dance of the seven veils. (It wasn’t until then that my wife understood why I take the binoculars.)
I used to get a kick out of rewriting G&S lyrics so that they took the piss out of more modern stuff/people. It’s quite easy to do, to the point where I suspect they were written with easy substitution in mind.
Just on FDB’s point – I wonder if I believed L’Orfeo because it was about a singer. It wasn’t such a stretch to turn the whole exercise into song. I must admit the starving Bohemians plot with fat people playing the parts (up the thread) sounds like a pretty big stretch.
I greatly prefer the lyrics to the music of G&S operettas, though perhaps I’m a bit pretentious about that. They’re certainly far superior to some modern musicals (which I won’t name.)
Was it Orwell that said of late 19th century poets and lyricists like Gilbert that they mastered comic poetry, turning it into an extremely complicated and technical art. This might be true, though it’s also true that details of Gilbert’s poetry can be endlessly changed and rearranged to suit modern times – it’s as if it’s important to maintain the form of the poetry, while the message can be manipulated to suit the poet.
‘I am the very model of a modern major general’ has a claim to being the most rewritten song in existence. Wikipedia lists some of these parodies. There are many more.
Glad you liked L’Orfeo, sl. It’s a wonderful work. I recommend Purcell (The Fairy Queen, Dido and Aeneas) if the baroque style appealed to you.
I’m an opera buff but I dislike the implication of ‘opera’ that somehow it’s all the same, or if you like some of the genre you have to like all of it. How like is Janacek to Britten? Not very!
I dislike Italian opera (unusual for a fan) with the exception of two or three of Puccini’s works. Verdi I love to watch for the spectacle, but the usual ‘DUM dum dum, DUM dum dum’ intro to his arias makes me tired — as do many of the arias.
The greatest operas are by Mozart — I don’t think it would be physically possible not to enjoy a good performance of The Marriage of Figaro. That said, poor performances can be an incredible turn-off. My wife and I took our 23 year old niece to a performance of Figaro by Opera Australia hoping to convert her. It was a shocker and probably put the poor girl off opera for at least a decade.
But by the same token the performance we watched last year in Vienna of Bizet’s Carmen I swear would have converted the most determined sceptic.
Opera is easy to get wrong and difficult to get right. But when it works there’s just nothing like it.
Agree with others on G&S. It’s almost the perfect match of words, wit and music. George Bernard Shaw rated it even higher than Wagner, I seem to recall.
On a related issue, one of the things I noticed when I was reading Barzun’s Dawn to Decadence was how highly he rated Shaw. I’d always thought Shaw amusing but also the sort of playwright who whipped up a play in order to harangue everyone in a (usually rather long) preface.
Barzun made me appreciate just how wittily written Shaw’s prefaces are, and also helped me to respect his critical judgments (Shaw was a superb and prolific reviewer). If he rated G&S so highly, he was likely to be right in an absolute sense. He really did understand comedy and the comic spirit.
Just on quality, it’s now got to the point that L’Orfeo is a complete sellout and the Edinburgh Festival organisers are warning punters about ticket touts. I figure an opera must be pretty damned good when the ticket touts start to emerge.
I find it doubtful that Shaw rated G&S higher than Wagner. He wrote a hilarious little book of Wagner criticism/appreciation that, in effect, introduced Wagner to the English speaking world: he rated him very highly indeed.
Maybe it was one of his quips or paradoxes?!?
I may have it the wrong way round, TimT. It’s an apocryphal story, anyway. Wagner is sublime at his best but, golly, you have to wade through a lot of dross to get to the gems.
I think I’ll stick to baroque for a while, if only for the restraint
sl, you might enjoy Handel (still baroque). His dramatic oratorio Solomon and his masque Acis and Galatea are both fabulous — lovely tunes, great orchestration and just a bit more fun than Monteverdi.