We saw it last night. It was our first opera experience (an executive at the firm was on a trip and let us use his floor seats) Overall we were enchanted and Verdi is excellent and a great place for novices to start.
It was amazing how easy it is to give oneself over to the conventions of Opera and understand and appreciate the music in that setting. The translation helped as well. I've had trouble getting into opera before and I think it's because I was trying to do so via recordings and with zero visual or cultural context.
We did get the sense this was more of an average than the top offering of the season, mostly for the reasons you cite.
I had one thought about the story: one could read this as a long con revenge plot by Azucena, or her mother from beyond the grave. Thus Azucena choose or is led to burn her son as an intentional sacrifice to set up di Luna's downfall. Were I to stage this, I would use various visual and staging hints to imply the presence of Azucena's mom. Or, if I was skipping the evil spirit part, stage act two to have Azucena seem a bit more scheming in how she describes her mistake.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2014-11-19 04:33 pm (UTC)It was amazing how easy it is to give oneself over to the conventions of Opera and understand and appreciate the music in that setting. The translation helped as well. I've had trouble getting into opera before and I think it's because I was trying to do so via recordings and with zero visual or cultural context.
We did get the sense this was more of an average than the top offering of the season, mostly for the reasons you cite.
I had one thought about the story: one could read this as a long con revenge plot by Azucena, or her mother from beyond the grave. Thus Azucena choose or is led to burn her son as an intentional sacrifice to set up di Luna's downfall. Were I to stage this, I would use various visual and staging hints to imply the presence of Azucena's mom. Or, if I was skipping the evil spirit part, stage act two to have Azucena seem a bit more scheming in how she describes her mistake.