What's opera, dog?

[muckefuck]

In response to 0595's most recent comment in my journal, I present a list of Ten Opera Plots Which Do Not Suck at All:

1. Mourning Becomes Electra Librettist: Henry Butler. Euripides Electra, but set in New England--by Eugene fucking O'Neill. 'Nuff said.
2. Susannah. Librettist: Carlisle Floyd. Young woman living in the hollers of Tennessee driven mad by the lascivious hypocrisy of a travelling prearcher and the narrow-minded prejudice of her community. (Yeah, it's depressing; do I have to quote Buggs Bunny here?)
3. Ariadne auf Naxos. Librettist: Hugo von Hofmannsthal. (Pretty much anything he did for Strauss was pure gold--and when Strauss tried to go it without him, it really really showed.) Rich man throws a big bash at which he's going to have two operas, a serious drama about the abandonment of Ariadne and a light diversion from a commedia dell'arte troupe. But dinner goes over and the fireworks won't wait, so he orders the two operas combined into one. The first half is all behind-the-scenes wrangling, the second is the opera itself--a pure delight, as Ariadne's moping is repeatedly interrupted by Zerbinetta's coquettish attempts to cheer her up.
4. Liška Bystrouška (The cunning little vixen) Librettist: Leoš Janáček. A young vixen is captured by a woodsman, escapes, finds a mate, raises a mess of young, and is shot to death. Breathtakingly simple and told without a hint of sentimentality.
5. A Wedding Librettist: Arnold Weinstein. Old and new money collide on the North Shore in this adaptations of a Robert Altmann film. Adultery, hypocrisy, drugs, homosexual subtext--it's all out there, but it also hangs together well.
6. Mefistofele Librettist: Arrigo Boito. More a series of highlights from the work by Goethe than a truly coherent sequence of scenes, probably because it was so drastically recut after its disastrous premiere, but much truer overall to the source material than Gounod's take on it. Also contains a devil-worship scene, which I think should be a must for any opera.
7. Der Freischütz Librettist: Friedrich Kind. Contains the mother of all devil-worship scenes as a huntsman sells his soul to obtain the magic bullets which will deliver him the girl of his dreams through victory in a shooting competition. Trouble ensues, however, when the fix is found out.
8. Così fan tutte Librettist: Lorenzo da Ponte. Two men bragging about the faithfulness of their sweethearts are convinced to put them to the test by disguising themselves and attempting to woo each other's partner. All fun and games, right? Not quite, as everyone discovers to their cost (including the audience, if the damn thing is staged right).
9. Пиковая Дама (Queen of Spades) Librettist: Modest Tchaikovsky. An avaricious young soldier seduces an ingénue in order to learn her mother's gambling secrets, accidentally killing the old woman in the process. Of course he comes to a bad end--it's Pushkin after all!
10. Falstaff Librettist: Arrigo Boito. Sir John Falstaff thinks it a simple thing to seduce the merry wives of Windsor, but they've got a plan to cook his hash! I'd say borrowing from Shakespeare was almost cheating if it weren't (a) plain that it wasn't his plots which made him a great dramatist and (b) so many others attempts hadn't fallen flat, including Verdi himself when he and a couple of hacks took on Macbeth years earlier.

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I had the chance to see Susannah lo these many years ago, and we passed it up because El Bedbug didn't see any use in "modern" classical music. So I missed Sam Ramey. *sigh*

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

His loss--unfortunately, your loss, too. IIRC, that was the performance with Renée Fleming, one of the greatest sopranos alive.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. That Bedbug: what a pain in my ass. So happy to be rid of him!

[off_coloratura]

I disagree; I thought A Wedding was entertaining but fairly pointless, and certainly didn't have much of a story at all. I was especially offended by the brief amount of time it took for everyone to get over the death of the best man. And sure, other famous operas have unrealistic moments like that in them too, but I would not consider them elements of a great story.

Plus, although Cosi has a very interesting premise, getting the end to work is something that has plagued stage directors for ages.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

There's enough story in that opera to furnish three or four conventional opera plots: The matriarch's expiration and the infighting that follows, Jules' and Tulip's near-adultery, the outing of Diana and Ross' interracial affair, and so forth. A lot of tension is built and resolved, it's simply in the service of several smaller plots rather than one overarching one.

Yeah, getting the end to work on Così is tough, but there's real payoff for doing it successfully. Other operas are similarly challenging without the compensations. (Manon Lescaut, for instance. It would take a genius to stage the last act in a way that it wouldn't come across as totally ludicrous to a modern audience. The Lyric didn't even try this time round, they just plunged right into high camp.)

[hwizz-kid.livejournal.com]

You've mixed up Modest Musorgsky and Pyotr Chaykovsky :--)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Um...no I haven't. Peter Tchaikovsky was the opera's composer, but not its librettist. That distinction belongs to his brother, who as it happens has the same given name as Mr Mussorgsky, namely Modest.

Все понятно?

[hwizz-kid.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

как сказать по-русски "pwned"?

[hwizz-kid.livejournal.com]

I couldn't find this word in my "Teach yourself Welsh" book.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Mae hyn yn gellwair, ydy?

[hwizz-kid.livejournal.com]

Nag ydy. It looked quite Welsh to me.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Wyddost ti beth? The online Welsh-English lexicon lists it as meaning "pack, burden, bale".

[0595.livejournal.com]

Yay! You got another icon!

Did you mean it this way?

[hwizz-kid.livejournal.com]

USAGE:
Pwned is often said to an individual's lesser opponent after the greater person or team has defeated his enemy.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia has a more accurate definition.

[hwizz-kid.livejournal.com]

Seems like there's no equivalent cliche in our cybersubculture. But if you had witnessed someone pwn someone else, you could insert that ubiquitous note, "Слив засчитан". Optionally misspelling it intentionally, which is done a lot by Russian internet users.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I saw _The Cunning Little Vixen_ last year and was totally charmed by it.