The Death of Imagination

Opera season technically opened for us last weekend, but it was only Lucia and Nuphy wasn't going to miss a major playoff game just for that and I wasn't going to go to it without him so we found a good friend (Diego) to pass our tickets on to. I would've been more hesitant about agreeing to this if it weren't for the fact that I knew we'd catch Rheingold last night come hell or high water or even the Cubs clinching the NLCS.

I told Nuphy I simply couldn't face the prospect of yet another Thai meal so he generously treated me to dinner at Rivers beforehand. They seem to have upped their game somewhat, but still made some odd missteps. Like making their brussel sprout salad more enormous than all but the most ardent fans of brussel sprouts could stomach. Or serving all their desserts with "seasonal berries"--including the pumpkin tart. As you'd expect, even with too much panko Nuphy's scallops were better than my whitefish. Service was terrific. This may go down as the first time I've ever told a server not to fill my water glass during a meal. (We had 2½ intermission-free hours ahead and were strictly controlling our fluid intake.)

Nuphy wisely told me in advance about our temporary displacement--our regular seats had been sold to others (probably at a premium) so we were three rows back--so that I was able to avoid the upset of the Awful Russian Lady across the aisle. The usher had to gently coax her to move back, prompting outraged rants about having occupied the same seats for 20 years and яда яда яда. Wagner brings out the serious operagoers, so no leaners or whisperers or phone-users in front of us, making our interim seats were hardly worse than our usual ones.

Now, to the production. It was a completely different direction from the minimalist stagings I'm used to. As usual when you switch it up, some things worked and some things didn't. I think maybe the point of all the visible stage machinery (there were stagehands in view almost constantly) was to reinforce the notion of unseen fate driving the events, but that may be a reach. In any case, this was more effectively conveyed simply by making use of the Norns, who were the first characters on view. I found having them appear with mop and pail to clean up after the bloody mutilation of Alberich odd, but Nuphy argued that their mending the fabric of destiny is a kind of housekeeping. We both loved the symbolism having them on the roof of Erda's box when she rose up out of the ground.

Those boxes though...they were used sometimes to great effect and sometimes for pure spectacle. Like when Loge and Wotan visit Nibelheim, a couple of them pop up two or three times for no real reason. The same goes for the huge pieces of stage machinery representing the Æsir and Jötnar. At one point, Fasolt's mighty face was turned stage left whereas the singer inside faced stage right, making it confusing where the character's attention was really directed. The platforms for him and Fafner were also located very high above the stage which inhibited their ability to project to the balcony. This was painfully noticeable at their entrance, where their voices sound thin contrasted to the swelling orchestra and the booming bass of Eric Owens as Wotan.

And they aren't thin voices--particularly Tobias Kehrer as Fafner, as was demonstrated later when they were allowed to descend or at least come far enough downstage to mitigate the dampening effect. There weren't any weak voices in the whole cast, though the particular standouts were newcomer Samuel Youn as Alberich and the scene-stealing Štefan Margita as Loge. Or weak actors. I thought some of the clowning was a bit much--I can't remember the last time I heard this much laughter at Wagner--but some of the choices Nuphy found weird (like giving Freya a bit of Stockholm syndrome during her captivity in Riesenheim) I found interesting.

Davis conducted so well I forgot it was Davis. He's good at Wagner provided he doesn't go too slowly and, if anything, he went too far the other way. (Nuphy opined that his take on the Creation was roughly double time compared to Solti's.) The orchestra got an enthusiastic round of applause at the end, so my impression that they played very well seems substantiated. The whole atmosphere--despite anxieties about curtain--was very festive. Any misgivings I had about resubscribing have been allayed.

I feel remiss for not writing full reviews for the couple of recent opera performances I saw. I was under the weather both times, but I wish I could've been sicker for The merry widow than for Wozzeck rather than the other way around, since obviously a serious drama about the exploitation of the proletariat requires just a bit more concentration than a romcom.

First the Lehár. I'm amazed I didn't fall asleep during the first half. Not because it was exceptionally boring but because I almost always do during the first act of a romantic opera. In fact it was only moderately boring. Fleming still has a good voice, if nothing as enchanting as it was during her peak, but I don't recall her being so wooden as an actress. There seemed to be no modulation in her speaking voice at all. You'd think it would sound totally changed after that moment in Act 2 where she realises Danilo loves her after all but you would be wrong.

Fortunately Hampson takes up all that slack and then some. He's a bit long in the tooth, too, but that works rather well given how the plot is all about second chances. Frankly, any non-musical scene without either him or local talent Jeff Dumas--who absolutely kills as Njegus, the comic relief--is a waste of time. I ranted to Nuphy about how pedestrian the direction was, reminiscent of a high-school production. The scene where Fleming sings "Vilja", for instance, is completely static. Sure, the focus should be on the singer, but you've got the entire chorus on stage. You can't think of any stage business to give them that would reflect or comment on the action in some way? Get back to theatre school. Or, you know, stop cutting corners, Lyric, and hire a director and a choreographer instead of making the latter do both jobs.

Susan Stroman has a background in Broadway musicals and it really pays off during the big numbers. The opening scene at Maxim's, for instance, is a show-stopper, and not just on account of the grisettes. The set change is simultaneous with the dancing, so while the ladies are pirouetting walls are swooping in and out and decoration is dropping from the ceiling. And such decoration! Maxim's was gorgeous, and the other sets were much enhanced by detailed lighted cityscapes of Paris in the background.

Speaking of Paris, our performance took place the day after the assault, so we were all asked to stand for a performance of the "Marseillaise". I reacted about how you'd expect I'd react if asked to sing the "Star Spangled Banner" the day after the Boston Massacre, which is to say with resignation and discomfort. It just reinforced for me how thoroughly and successfully the situation is being exploited by rightist elements but at home and abroad.

One more reason why it would've been infinitely preferable to have had Wozzeck then rather than a week earlier. It's possible you could miss the anti-military and anti-nationalist message of Berg's masterpiece, but you'd have to be pretty thick indeed. Unfortunately its impact was blunted someone by Davis' rushed conducting, which flattened the high points of the score. Tomasz Konieczny is perfectly cast as the title character and, as good as he and Denoke were, they would've been even more shattering with better musical direction.

I didn't see where Nuphy was coming from with his criticisms that the sets weren't realistic enough. Yes, there's some stylisation (notably in the square which marks the centre of the settlement), but there are also ingeniously detailed contraptions in most every scene reinforcing the theme of mechanicisation of society and stark lighting emphasising the bleakness of existence for those bearing all the burden of industrialisation while accruing few of the benefits.

I thought it was particularly good how the handled the many scene changes--fourteen of them in the space of 90 minutes! Instead of scrims, they used low rods hung with heavy curtains which could nonetheless be pulled back with alacrity by invisible runners. I found it added to the edginess inherent in the music and plot; Nuphy just found it annoying.

I meant to use the weekend to catch up on some reading but I caught up more on films instead. For various reasons, there were three at the house, but I don't want to watch Winter's Bone until it's cold, so I sent it back. That left a Chinese film and a French-Canadian one, and I watched them in that order.

It's been so long since I dropped 桃姐 (English: A Simple Life) into my queue that I forgot it was a Hong Kong film. It took me until the end of the credits to figure out that they were speaking in Cantonese and even longer than that to figure out that this was an Andy Lau film. When I discovered Hong Kong film, Andy Lau was a god--or more precisely, a Heavenly King. We called him "Andy 'Not In The Face!' Lau" because his Cantopop heartthrob status meant that, even during the most vicious fight scenes, no one took at swing at his head. He wasn't as pretty as Leslie Wong, but then no one was, not even the starlets they paired him with. And he grew into his acting roles from a slightly stiff stand-and-model start.

Which is good, because the film rests on his shoulders as much as it does Deanie Ip. She's the focus character, an orphaned maid who's been with the same family her entire life. He was the last child she was allowed to spoil before the bulk of the family packed up and moved to California. Now middle-aged and still unmarried, he's the only one left for her to take care of in the cozy Kowloon apartment they share when he's not jetting away to Beijing or wherever on movie business.

Speaking of which, there's an early scene where he's in a contentious meeting with three other guys. Through the dialogue, it's revealed that one of them is a film director, another is an action director, and a third--the only Mandarin-speaker--is a financial backer of some sort. When the director pitches a fit and stalks off, someone calls after him, "Director Tsui!" It wasn't until that moment that I placed him as legendary director of the OUATIC series Tsui Hark. Then I took another look at the action director and placed him as fight choreographer and comic actor Sammo Hung.

That cosiness is one of the things I enjoyed about the Hong Kong cinema of the 90s. After all, the only reason I know what Tsui Hark looks like is because of his cameo in 雙龍會 (Twin Dragons), which also includes walk-ons from Ringo Lam and John Woo. And there's a callback to the in-jokes of that film in the very next scene, where it turns out that the argument in the conference room was all staged to extort more funds and Tsui compliments Lau's character by telling him, "You should've been an actor!"

So I was already in a nostalgic frame of mind, which made the film's themes of loss and forgetfulness all the more poignant. (Andy Lau hasn't had a chart-topping hit in more than fifteen years; after hears of chronic depression, Leslie Cheung killed himself in 2003.) Ip (the "Miss Peach" of the title) suffers a debilitating stroke and decides she wants to move into an nursing home before she becomes a burden to anyone. But Lau, left without any family in Hong Kong, becomes as devoted to her as any son. It's frankly sentimental, but that's not all bad, because (apart from discordant elements which recall some of the broader HK comedies) it works.

By contrast, I felt much less connected to the characters in Le Déclin de l'empire américain. They're all very full of themselves, in the way that only academics can be (The fact that they're all speaking French only makes it worse) and most are cheats or liars of one sort or another, even if they're only really lying to themselves. The drama turns on an incident of infidelity disclosed out of casual spite and at times the stereotyping (e.g. the nurturing homosexual addicted to dangerous sex) becomes a bit hard to take.

On the other hand, some of my best friends are intellectuals who are full of themselves and, at its best, Déclin reminds me of listening to their banter. At other times, it feels like a Canadian French Big Chill. (That's not a compliment.) Perversely, giving the viewing order, this functioned as a prequel to Les Invasions barbares for me, which probably made me less sympathetic going in. I'm not surprised that both films made the list of top Canadian films of all time, and I'm equally unsurprised that both have seen their position slip with time, to the point of dropping off altogether in the current version.

Blondie seems to think that I don't like musicals. Y'all know that's not true. I don't like most musicals. And I don't like seeing musicals presented on an opera stage, because it only invites invidious comparisons. If I'm watching a musical on DVD, I'm comparing the soundtrack to that of other movies I've seen and thinking, "There are some pretty good songs here." If I watch it at the Lyric, I'm comparing it to scores of great operas I've seen there and thinking, "This sounds pretty weak."

Given that handicap, Carousel actually did really well on the musical axis. Some reviews have called it the "most operatic" of musicals (or at least of classical musicals or Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals) and it's impressive how durchcomponiert it is in places. There are still lots of "numbers", but the songs don't feel shoehorned in they way they often can. Instead, the dialogue feels carefully inserted between the musical bits, which are the meat of the matter.

But, Jesus God, the characterisation. I know all about the past being a foreign country. Still, there's only so much I can do to keep my second-wave feminist sensibilities in check during an extended scene of sexual assault played for laughs (at the expense of the naïve soubrette, natch). And even that was peanuts to the constant domestic abuse apologetics culminating in the equation of striking a young girl with giving her a kiss. Ew, ew, ew.

Nuphy and I almost got into a fight over it afterwards. He grew up with Carousel, the songs are woven into the fabric of his childhood, and he kept urging me to take the ugly bits "in context". I argued that that was exactly what I was doing: the context was one of normalising sexual abuse. From his protests, I feel like he didn't understand what that really means. Yes, it's all meant to be enjoyed as light entertainment. That's exactly what makes it so awful. We're so comfortable with exploitation and abuse of women we're going to do a cute little dance number about it. (Maybe follow that up with an uptempo number about darkies knowing their place? Oh, wait, no, different musical.)

Even despite that, I found the show genuinely affecting. I teased Nuphs about his watery eyes afterwards, all the while hoping he didn't notice the tear tracks on my own cheeks. At some point during "You'll Never Walk Alone" I began thinking of that grim future where I won't ever again have monshu to come home to and then it was all over. Is this how I'm going to be from now on? How tedious.

The production was terrific. Great sets, solid choreography. The Second Act interlude feels endless though. A couple in front of me got up to leave right as it finished and I was like, Where you going? You just made it through the worst part! The only thing that really bothered me (beyond, you know, the rampant sexism) was the lighting. For some reason, most of the action takes place around sunset regardless of whether that makes any sense. It's very pretty to have those pinkish hues glimmering on the scrims, but it doesn't lend any coherence to the action at all.

We also came very close to missing curtain for only the second time in my history with the Lyric. Somehow both Blondie and Nuphy managed to look right at the tickets and not see that the show started at 1:30. The former and I arrived at the theatre about 1:24 expecting to meet Nuphy there only to find out from a phone call that he was relaxing across the street. I expect that kind of ditziness from Blondie, coming from Mr Semper Clamo it's a surprise. I made it to my seat just as the lights were dimmed; they managed to slip in during the overture and moved up after the first intermission.

I was somewhat ambivalent about my annual visit to the Irish-American Heritage Center on Saturday and then, when I felt a twinge of gout, I decided the last thing I needed was to drink a lot of beer. So I gave it a miss and tried to get some things done at home instead. Things like making Irish soda bread and reading a murder mystery set in Galway. This was supposed to culminate in me writing an entry about my doings complete in Irish, but I just ran out of steam before that happened.

Partly it's because I decided to catch up on my NetFlix viewing so I could send the discs back and get me something Irishy for tomorrow. I've had Royal Flash and Coup de torchon at home since before monshu's surgery. I thought the former would be a delightful romp that we could enjoy sometime when we really needed a break from it all, but neither he nor my mother ever had any desire to watch it. It's amusing enough, but one can kinda see why it was never picked up as "a series like James Bond", as the producers were hoping for. For me the most outstanding thing it had going for it was Oliver Reed as Bismarck; every time he came on screen, my eyes would lock on him until I sorta forgot there was movie going on in the background. Alan Bates was great fun, and the early cameo from St Bob was simply gravy.

Coup de torchon is an odder duck in almost every way. It's based on a novel by Jim Thompson about a bumbling small-town sheriff with a hidden sadistic streak, but in order to keep the racial elements Tavernier had to translate the action to French West Africa. Clearly, the budget was small, which contributes to the vagueness of the setting. The principles are in period costume, but the extras just seem to be wearing their ordinary garb as if that hadn't changed at all in fifty years. There are old cars and advertisements around, but this is a colonial backwater so that's all inconclusive. As a result, I wasn't sure what decade we were in and what "the war" was that was being talked about until Germany gets mentioned three-quarters of the way through.

From the plot summary, I had pictured something rather different: a punching bag who gets pushed too far and finally snaps, à la Joe or Falling Down. But even after he starts killing, he preserves his inoffensive veneer, dropping it strategically to terrorise individuals or win their complicity while everyone else continues to take him for a fool. The results of that are even more disturbing. Overall, a good study of the corrosive effects of being a low-level enforcer in a corrupt system (and as timely now in the age of Ferguson as ever).

Ken Bruen's The guards covers some of the same ground but in a less serious way. Soon as the book arrived and I saw home much dialogue there was, I knew it would be a quick read, which is why I decided to take a break from my other reading and tackle it Saturday evening. I ended up reading the whole novel in less than three hours with only a couple breaks, which is the first time I can remember doing that in simply ages. It's the first in a series and I may stick with it to see how Bruen deals with the instability of having a murderous alcoholic as an ongoing protagonist.

As usual, Sunday was chores day. It was also the warmest day of the year so far (save today) and I decided to take advantage of it by strolling over to the former Safeminick's on Ridge. A friend of ours had related to us how it'd bought by one of the Hispanic minichains which didn't seem to know what to do with all the space. There solution seems to have been to fill it with every kind of crazy ethnic goods they can find. So it's the kind of place which has five brands of sugar wafers, only one of which is American and it's not Nabisco, while at the same time carrying only one brand of hummus. But if you want one-stop shopping for frozen idli, canned ackee, grass jelly drink, and Belarusian "wellness mayonnaise", then this is your store.

Unfortunately, I misunderstood the Old Man when he gave me a list of ingredients for dinner. Since he'd started cooking again the previous week, I thought we was offering to fix it himself when it turns out he was only "making suggestions" on what he could "help me out" with. This sparked an ugly fight at quarter to six when I discovered he was expecting me to do all the actual cooking. I'm so anxious to return to our old routine, I keep forgetting that it's something we should be renegotiating constantly in light of monshu's recovery rather than making any assumptions about. His making quiche tonight as a peace offering. Maybe that can be a stepping stone to getting this all worked out.

Having read Run, I'm really not sure why it was recommended to me. It's not a bad novel, but neither did it impress me much. As I may have mentioned, Patchett's capable of writing some very emotionally affecting passages but only so long as her characters don't speak. Whenever there's dialogue, I get fatally distracted by how unconvincing it is--particularly if an adolescent is speaking. I found myself wondering, for instance, if she'd ever listened to how college-age males actually talk to each other.

Compounding the problem, the novel supposedly addresses issues of privilege and race. I also mentioned that I was sceptical how well a well-off White woman from Nashville could write urban Black characters. With good reason, as it turns out. Everyone speaks standard English all the time, from taxi drivers to the young girl who we're supposed to believe grew up in the projects. If I told you who the characters were and then read you lines at random, I suspect you'd have difficulty matching them up. You certainly wouldn't be able to tell me they were all from Boston, that's for sure.

But what I really can't forgive is the Mighty Whitey storyline which requires bumping off the one character who stands in the way of having the poor (but preternaturally gifted, mature, and well-mannered) kids delivered into a rich White family who can guarantee them a life full of wins. In the back-of-the-book interview there's some guff about how it's a book about about community and responsibility and giving back. (She actually calls it "a novel about politics".) But to me it was all about flattering us White liberals for our token acts of charity. No wonder the NYT loved it.

I'm not sure what it will take to wash out the memory of it. As I was writing some more background for my RPG character I realised that, without intending to, I seem to have made her very similar to the (human) protagonist of nihilistic_kid's Sensation. Which, naturally, reminded me of my intention to read the novel. But even if Amazon has buried the Hachette, I'm still not fond of relying on it more than I need to. So I ordered it directly from the publisher and god only knows when it will arrive.

In the meantime I guess I still have my short stories. Patchett's artificial Negroes made me long for a taste of the real thing, so I'm thinking of picking up Edward P. Jones once again. On the strength of Lost in the city I grabbed All Aunt Hagar's children but I still haven't gotten around to cracking the cover. That's an easily-remedied oversight.

Our opera subscription this year includes two opening nights, and somehow I've managed to dress down for both. My excuse this time was that I didn't even remember I had an opera until 10 a.m. this morning. In fact, I didn't even remember then; I texted Nuphy to invite him to join me at the Christkindlmarket and he was like, "I thought we'd stop by before Anna Bolena tonight." I asked him why he hadn't reminded me and he was like, "I sent you the dates." Yeah, you did, but that was seven trips to the hospital ago.

I still had time to dress up, of course, but my need to see my best pair of slacks ruined by some yahoo's mug of Glühwein was far too small--as small as my desire to see my wool topcoat smeared with sour creme, so I wore my parka. As it happened, neither of these misfortunes took place. Murphy's Law has something to say about that, I think.

I haven't seen Maria Stuarda, but I haven't on good authority (i.e. Nuphy) that Anna Bolena is no Maria Stuarda. It's the libretto that's to blame, it seems. Maria has the advantage of being based on Schilling. Anna is based on the works of two minor Risorgimento poets. You won't find any drama in it, only melodramma. When the score isn't flat, it's laughably obvious (I think "Weeping, she suffers!" may deserve an award for Least Necessary Line of Dialogue in a Grand Opera) or just laughable (Henry's "I'm outraged!" drew chuckles from the crowd; as Nuphy commented, "That isn't a good sign").

But bel canto opera is all about the singing, right? And we did have singers. John Relyea is strong and menacing as Henry VIII. I spent the first fifteen minutes of the opera pining for male voices, so his entrance came like a bracing splash of aftershave. Nuphy's secret boyfriend Hymel made less of an impression. Excellent technique and tone, but a voice a bit too small for this house. (Honestly, the opera is a bit too small for the house, but that's the Italian repertoire for you.)

I was genuinely fooled by Kelley O'Connor's trouser role. Nuphy had to check the programme to confirm that, yes, this was a female singer in drag and not a countertenor. Not only is her build remarkably masculine, but even her voice sounds more boyish than womanly. Jamie Barton as Seymour was never actually shrill, but she got too close for my taste, despite singing well throughout.

But the opera belongs to Radvanovsky as the eponymous heroine. She sings almost the entire three hours and--as per usual--needs to keep a good bit in reserve for her final scene, which she absolutely nails. I would've fallen asleep at that point if not for her. Nuphy cavilled that she didn't sound like she was really suffering, but you could've fooled me. One of her more piercing cries made me start in my seat.

The less said about the production, the better. As usual, we challenged the UofC professor with us to find some sense in it, but he made only a few half-hearted stabs, calling it "safe" and "practical". There was a certain elegance to the minimal staging and he admired the Rembrandtesque tableaux in which the chorus was arranged and lit, but to me that only emphasised the staticness of the action. The lighting seemed harsh in places and I caught at least one outright error. From our angle you could see the tape marks on the stage and, as usual, many scenic choices didn't work (such as the use of narrow bands of colour upstage).

Am I glad I saw it? Well, it was a break from the usual warhorses. Would I pay to see it again? Not really. More than anything, watching it made me want to rent a copy of The Lion in Winter to curl up with on the couch with monshu.

How many years ago did I buy Stoner--two, three? It was at some point when the Powell's on Lincoln was still in operation. All I knew about the novel then was that it was set in Missouri--at the University of Missouri, as a matter of fact. So I kept meaning to read while on a trip to Missouri. But that never worked out. Nonetheless, it stayed near the top of my to-read pile and was never very far from my consciousness.

So when mentions of it popped up earlier this year, I took notice. The last straw was this map of the "Best Book for Every State". It's absolutely perverse in its amnesiac contrarianness (as I told the friend who posted it, "How can I take seriously a list of American literary greats which doesn't include either Twain or Faulkner?")--plus the inclusion of an entry for New York City separate from New York State is simply trolling--but there had to be some there there. And I wasn't the only person in my circle to notice all the hype. When I needed help interpreting a puzzling line, I turned to my best-read colleague, who admitted to giving in as well and reading it earlier this year. "Why is this fifty year-old book getting so much attention now?" she asked, and I had no answer for her.

One of the blurbs on the back of the Modern Library edition calls it "a perfect novel". I'm not sure what prompted this judgment apart from the way in which it very neatly comprises the arc of one man's life. Other characters appear (and I can't agree with McGahern's forward in which he praises how fully developed each of them is) but the focus remains firmly on the protagonist and everyone else is clearly depicted from his point-of-view. It starts with an unpromisingly modest assessment of this life, but I quickly knew that this wasn't a book I was going to find hard to finish.

In retrospect, I felt the novel was at its best when depicted the disastrous marriage between Stoner, a real son of the soil, and his neurotic bourgeois bride. The tragic collision of two horribly shy people who seize each other with desperation, clueless to how fundamentally unsuited they are to each other, was riveting. So was, for different reasons, the implacable feud which develops between Stoner and the incoming department head. I had to steel myself against reading the book in bed, and I know that at least one night it contributed to my insomnia. Not since Shalimar the Clown, I think, or The true history of the Kelly Gang have I felt such fury while reading nonfiction.

But I'm absolutely mystified how McGahern can term Lomax, Stoner's colleague, "the most complex" of Williams' "brilliant portraits". He's considerably less developed than Stoner's daughter, let alone his wife, and at times seems (like Stoner's oldest friend Finch) creakingly close to being a plot device. I feel like there must've been some mid-century stereotype of the physically disabled that's simply inaccessible to us now. McGahern doesn't even attempt to make such a case for Stoner's "little coed", who reads way too much like the author's attempt to rationalise his own mid-life infidelities. (The breakup conversation where she agrees completely with Stoner's summation of their relationship and absolves him entirely for choosing his work over her is particularly embarrassing.)

In the end, it feels like a story with limited ambitions that fulfills them abundantly; a great small novel. I'm not surprised it held so much resonance for me given the parallels to my own biography (I shudder to think what might've become of my mother if she'd been born a generation or two earlier and hadn't had her career) and its academic setting (what my colleague suspects is the real reason for its current fame). Now we'll see if I can find the same in the work of a gay man of monshu's generation.

Every year I consider dropping my subscription to the opera. As Nuphy reminded me yesterday, this is my 20th year. I've seen all the major works at least twice and, in many cases, the chances of the next production being superior to the last are minimal. (No way, for instance, am I ever going to see a better Nozze di Figaro than that one with Fleming, Terfel, Futrelle, and Graham, all at their peak.) At least when Lyric was commissioning a new opera every year, I was assured at least one work a season that I had never seen before, but that commitment didn't survive the recession. I think of all the live theatre or concerts I could be attending instead, but I remember that there's simply no way I'll go out without being coerced and I'd never subscribe to anything unless I had a partner willing to wield the upper hand, like I have in Nuphy. So why do I still send him a fat check and drag myself out for eight performances a year? It's because every now and again I have on of those evenings where I am absolutely enraptured by what's taking place on the stage. Yesterday was one of those evenings.

The opera was Richard Strauss' Capriccio, which--as it happens--was the very first one the Nuphy took me to. Not the first one I'd ever seen (that would be Così fan tutte, unless you're inclined to count The beggar's opera), but definitely my first one at the Lyric. It's also one of his absolute favourites. Which is hardly surprising, given that it's regarded as "an opera connoisseur's opera" due to the sheer density of its references and its abstruse subject. He's not only studied it but taught it as well (and developed his own slightly nutty theory regarding the ambiguous ending). And he confirmed that this production topped the previous one in every way.

First, I need to give full credit to Davis, who I normally never have a kind word for. He's better the more lyrical the material, but Nuphy's standing complaint is that he wants everything "pretty" at the expense of drama and definition. For whatever reason, though, he was completely on point yesterday and he never felt sluggish in his tempo or too mushy in his direction. When notes were meant to sound harsh, they sounded harsh. (Which isn't often--it's one of the most beautiful scores in opera.)

The performers were magnificent. I can hear a little roughness creeping into Fleming's tone, but she still has one of the single best soprano singing voices I've ever been lucky enough to hear live. Everyone else killed, with the sole exception of Annie Sofie von Otter as Clairon, who was overwhelmed by the orchestra at one point and made tepid porridge of her grand entrance. Of course, I have to single out Peter Rose, whose bottom was one of the real joys of Midsummer night's dream four years ago. I'm sure last time I heard La Roche's big aria, it seemed rather grandiose and longwinded; this time it was a showstopper. Iversen was making his debut and I don't recall Burden's performance from Lulu, but Skovhus was as solid as always.

The real challenge of Capriccio is staging. It's all one extended drawing room argument, and keeping that visually interesting for two hours drives directors to distraction. I'm really impressed with McClintock's work. He may have been following Cox' production closely, but I don't recall the middle section being so entertaining. The ballet sequence in particular was deftly handled, succeeding equally well as both dance performance and light comedy when it would've been all to easy to err on the side of slapstick.

The only real problem with it--and the chief complaint of Nuphy's--is that there's no mirror. Far from being a minor point, this is crucial to the climax, since the Countess' final aria is addressed to her reflection. Cox makes the house the mirror (which is true to the spirit of Strauss' allegory) by lowering a frame downstage centre for this bit. McClintock decided to do without it while positioning Fleming in the same place. As someone who remembers the previous production, this caused me no problems, but I wonderful how confusing it might've been for first-timers. Even just having a servant air-polish the space in the scene before (or the tragédienne check her coiffure) would've take care of this (though then you'd be left with the puzzlement of why La Roche addresses many of his arguments to his reflection rather than his opponents in the room).

These are things I noticed, but they are not details that diminished my enjoyment in any way. I was a little sleepy, having had a beer at dinner, but whenever I began to find myself drifting, I found that the music brought me right back. (Again, thanks to Davis for that.) I left giddy with enjoyment. (If only it were easier to preserve that emotion on the long el ride back north.)

Normally, when I seen an opera, the only person to get a full breakdown is monshu since, though he loves them, he very rarely accompanies me. I'll talk through some aspects with Nuphy and whoever else I run into at intermission, but that's about it. Talking something through is a good thing in that it helps solidify my thinking, which makes it easier to do a write-up. But too much of it and I tend to lose the will to compose an entry. I did so much talking about the Lyric's Don Giovanni over the weekend that I'm weary of it. Nevertheless, I still intended to do an entry yesterday evening, but the time I'd set aside for that got taken up by a reprise of my breakdown to Nuphy over the phone. Uncharacteristically, he did something I think he's done that at most twice before in all the time I've known him: he bailed halfway through. That's how much he hated Robert Falls' staging.

I think he was a victim of his expectations. I don't know Falls from Adam, so I had none. The Lyric doesn't have a great track record with original productions. Being a staid institution, they favour conservative ones. Often when a director does try a novel take, it seems they fail to think things through completely, creating a muddle. So I wasn't the least bit surprised to see that happen here. The coat check clerk called the production "crazy". I've been favouring the term "incoherent". To give you an idea: Before we went, Nuphy told me what the setting was, and I remember being intrigued by it. At the end of Act I, I turned to him and asked, "When was this set again?"

In Falls' notes, he said he was attracted to the period because it had a distinct lower, middle, and upper class. To underline this, he dresses the principles like urban playboys and the peasants like Andalusian villagers. I legitimately wondered if Lyric had sought to economise by simply borrowing the costumes from another production with a 19th-century setting. And just about the only thing in the entire production which says "Spain" to me is the mantilla worn by Donna Anna when she's in mourning.

"But she's in mourning for most of the opera, isn't she?" Yes, but it's easy to get confused given the number of costume changes. Those together with the crazy number of light cues (I counted more than a dozen in a single chapel scene alone) really mess with the chronology. Traditionally, it's considered to take place over the course of a day and a night, or sometimes a day and two nights. Hard to say what the intention is here: it's dark, then it's bright, then dark again. At the Don's party, his enemies are wearing garish fancy dress; in the very next scene, they've all changed back to what they had on before. Don Ottavio wears uniforms of two different colours for no discernible reason. When the Commendatore comes to diner, Leporello is suddenly clad in outlandish livery, like something from a Hollywood club.

If I had to choose another word to sum up the production, it would be "excessive". There's too much of everything. A whole cart of flowers for the wedding scene. The huge ornate metal coffin for the Commendatore (which somehow requires two fewer pallbearers than the number of people required to remove the actual corpse in the opening scene) groans under the weight of them. Later, Leporello has to climb an entire mountain of floral arrangements to read the inscription on the statue in the cemetery. It's like Lyric kept throwing money into the production budget until it attained a fitting grandeur for their 60th anniversary gala. (A similar lack of restraint was on display in the main lobby.)

Which would all be fine, of course, if it made some sense. But too often it felt at cross purposes. The scene outside the Don's villa, for instance, is dominated by tremendous shrubberies. Yet when Masetto decides to hide in order to spy on him he goes downstage left where there's nothing at all and ends up tucking himself behind the proscenium arch. As ornate as her father's coffin is, it doesn't seem to draw the attention of Donna Anna until her aria requires it to. When it's not undercutting the action, this excess is underlining it to an almost insulting degree. In the penultimate scene, just in case you hadn't yet figure out what a total prick Don Giovanni is, Falls has him pelt Dona Elvira with food before dumping a carafe on her. It made me feel so sorry for Martínez, who deserved better than that after her terrific vocal performance.

I could go on and on--really, most of the reason I avoided writing this entry was that I didn't want it to be nothing more than a laundry list of complaints. On the plus side, the vocal performances were terrific. Silvestrelli killed in the last scene (and then was hustled off stage so anticlimatically that I completely missed his exit). Kwiecien and Rebeka were fantastic, as was Ketelsen despite a few opening-night problems keeping in synch with the orchestra. Davis robbed the music of dramatic punch, but otherwise didn't mess it up badly.

It was simply hard to concentrate on what was working with all the distractions. The best explanation I heard for the stage business of the second half was, "Do you think they were high as kites?" (The Don is shown sniffing something from a small bag at various moments, and at least once offering some to Leporello; I took it for snuff, but given the period it's quite likely it was intended to be cocaine.) I spent most of a scene trying to figure out whether a half-naked bound figure lying stage left was unconscious, dead, or merely metaphorical.

All in all, a memorable experience, but not a transcendent one. The crowd felt like an extension of the spectacle. Nuphy and I actually ended up on the edge of the red carpet trying to flog our herniaed seatmate's ticket and given ample opportunity to photobomb glitterati in our Obama jeans and off-the-rack finery. Quite a few of them must've been first time opera-goers judging from the surge of applause which cut off the end of one of the most famous arias in all of Mozart. I do have to wonder, given the production, how many of them will ever be coming back.