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Ever have one of those crazy dreams that laden with deep Jungian symbolism that you couldn't quite grasp, like there were these amazing insights seeping out of your subconscious that you could get tantalising close to unraveling without succeeding?
Ever have someone else tell you a dream like that in excruciating detail so that you could marvel at the complexity of their inner world and be seduced by its portentuous enigmas?
FOR THREE HOURS?
If you answered "Yes" to the last two questions, well, set that experience to music and you'll have some appreciation for my opera experience last night.
( How long can I rant about this? Let's find out! )
I made a desperate attempt to stay interested by substituting in my head a libretto drawn from the works of H.P. Lovecraft (making the mysterious "Ancients" the horrifying Old Ones and adding a disturbing threat of "alienage" to the whole matter of marriage), but it didn't pan out. Yet I'm still looking forward to other contemporary operas. We've have had good luck overall and we're starting to get an idea what works. All the successful ones have been adaptations, and plays or movies (Mourning Becomes Electra, A Wedding) make for much better source material than novels (The Great Gatsby, Candide). Even the conceit of taking place within a dream can be employed successfully, as Un re in ascolta proved some years ago. One simply has to make the dream events matter by tying them to real-life developments.
Ever have someone else tell you a dream like that in excruciating detail so that you could marvel at the complexity of their inner world and be seduced by its portentuous enigmas?
FOR THREE HOURS?
If you answered "Yes" to the last two questions, well, set that experience to music and you'll have some appreciation for my opera experience last night.
( How long can I rant about this? Let's find out! )
I made a desperate attempt to stay interested by substituting in my head a libretto drawn from the works of H.P. Lovecraft (making the mysterious "Ancients" the horrifying Old Ones and adding a disturbing threat of "alienage" to the whole matter of marriage), but it didn't pan out. Yet I'm still looking forward to other contemporary operas. We've have had good luck overall and we're starting to get an idea what works. All the successful ones have been adaptations, and plays or movies (Mourning Becomes Electra, A Wedding) make for much better source material than novels (The Great Gatsby, Candide). Even the conceit of taking place within a dream can be employed successfully, as Un re in ascolta proved some years ago. One simply has to make the dream events matter by tying them to real-life developments.