1/ Myths & Legends Week continues w that most operagenic of legends, Faust. I mentioned some time ago, re TROYENS, that I do not find myself on Berlioz’s musical wavelength. If that’s to be overcome, it’ll be thru a Faust story - but the dramaturgy of this one is odd. Supposedly
2/ based on Goethe, yet it not only leaves out Pt II (as does Gounod as well) - it also dramatically changes the ending, as the title proclaims. Berlioz’s Faust does a lot of apostraphizing nature. In fact at the beginning IIRC he has a big ol’ apostrophize-nature number b4 he
3/ even realizes he needs to get back to his study and ring up the Devil. Later he seduces and abandons Marguerite, then is once again found apostrophizing Nature. Then Mephistopheles hits him w “Marguerite is about to be executed, no time to lose, sign here,” which Faust does,
4/ but turns out it’s not a “save Marguerite” contract, it’s a “Mephisto gets my soul” contract. Next scene, in “Pandæmnium,” Mephisto tells the other devils “He has freely signed,” whereas there wasn’t even a decent attempt at offer & acceptance, consideration, bargained-for
5/ legal detriment, etc. Weird. Say this for @MetOpera’s production tho: this work is most often given in concert form (as at the Met last year); if anyone cd realize a staged production, it wd be Robert Lepage. Indeed this may have been his audition for THE RING.
6/ NB I checked the dates last time this was on and I do believe DAMNATION was the 1st Faust opera, or at least the 1st of the Big 4 (this plus Gounod’s FAUST, Boïto’s MEFISTOFELE, & Busoni’s DOKTOR FAUST, the last being mega-weird a d based on tradnl German puppet-plays, not
7/ on Goethe, and being narratively similar to Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus,” tho with 20thc twists). So if Berlioz came first, does anyone want to argue that, Goethe notwithstanding, you cdn’t *yet* show on the opera stage a guy making a pact w the Devil and (spiritually) living
8/ to tell the tale?
9/ Ok, I like *this* Berlioz more than *other* Berlioz, and Lepage's production is genius. Sometimes I think Berlioz is the answer to, what wd have happened if there had been no Romantic movement in music, and if the Classical perion, marquee'd by Haydn and Mozart, had just moved
10/ into the 19thc w/o Beethoven or the "Schu's" ever happening? - Much in the libretto of DAMNATION DE FAUST that touches on Christianity is gibberish, and I wonder whether or not intentionally so.

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More from @david_m_wagner

25 Mar
1/ R. Strauss's 90-min 1-acter of obsession and fulfilment has been putting the fun in dysfunctional and leaving audiences plastered to the backs of their seats since 1909. If you have any sympathy for Klytemnestra, this is not the show for you. This prodn makes her
2/ less of a wreck than we usually see, but c'mon man, her entrance music - maybe the best in opera - depicts a collapsing harridan, sacrificing bulls every night in vain effort to keep nightmares away, and leaning on two mysterious aides, the Confidante and the Train-Bearer. ...
3/ These, a/w/a the general Freudian reworking of the material from Aeschylus's Choephori and Sophocles's Electra, are the work of Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Viennese high-modern playwright and frequent Strauss librettist. Likewise, stay away if you're an Aegisthus fan, but I can't
Read 14 tweets
24 Mar
1/ 1st of 2 Oresteia-related operas, tonight's by mid-18thc Gluck, tmrw night's by early 20thc R. Strauss. Tauris=Crimea. Scythians were steppe ppl, of interest to Greeks primarily as warnings, but Euripides narrated them into the Greek cultural & religious world, so here we are.
2/ Gluck had earlier written IPHIGENIE EN AULIDE, i.e. in Aulis, where she was sacrificed, but later followed "Rip" in having her whisked away at the last second and transferred to Tauris, where it's nice being alive, but the downside is, she has to do priestessing for.
3/ the Scythians. She also really misses her brother Orestes. Suddenly the Scythian king orders up sacrifices of non-Scythians in Tauris for curbside pick-up, and, then, who but Orestes (w his bestie Pylades) shd then show up in Tauris. Fidge can't bring herself to do it, and
Read 12 tweets
22 Mar
1/ "Myths & Legends" is a fairly capacious theme: only genre it facially excludes is Verismo. This week we get two by Gluck. Now here's a thing. At the old Met, the one at 39th & B'way, the stage proscenium featured ornate rectangles w the name of a composer on each,
2/ names intended to celebrate the composers of most (obv not all) of the operas you might see within that proscenium. The first and earliest was not Mozart, but not Monteverdi either: it was someone in between them, namely, Gluck. (These plaques were in historical order, natch.)
3/ I don't remember whether there was anyone between Mozart and Verdi (Rossini, perhaps?). Verdi and Wagner of course; Puccini too IIRC, though he was "modern" for the old Met - two of works had their world premieres there (or four if you count IL TRITTICO as three). Gounod may
Read 14 tweets
22 Mar
1/ If any work bids fair to soften me on Handelian opera, this is it. McVicar directs this tale of Julio-Claudian politics as dark comedy. I think that’s how Handel intended it; McVicar modern-dresses it, so that e.g. a scene by a babbling brook is set walkin’ into a bar, with
2/ resulting sight gags. Putting the bar in Baroque, you know. Mezzo Joyce DiDonato is Agrippina. There are trouser roles (mezzo plays dude, e.g. Kate Lindsey as Nero) and countertenor roles (Iestyn Davies as Gen. Ottone). In Handel’s time certain roles were for “male soprano,”
3/ but these were, umm, not countertenors.

The program i.d.’s Poppea as “a Roman lady,” which is certainly an interpretation.

Next week we’re getting more Gluck per sq inch than ever b4 in these webcasts, and Gluck is said to led a revolution in opera, away from florid arias
Read 4 tweets
20 Mar
1/ In other opera activity this weekend - “The American RING” production of SIEGFRIED. Mime’s cave is a broken-down RV beneath high-voltage wires in the desert; Fafner is still a giant but encased (“dragon”) in a malevolent steam shovel; the Waldvigel is
2/ - sorry, the Waldvogel - is a “smashin’ bird” in a snazzy orange trench coat; Alberich the Nibelung Ring-forger, first seen in DAS RHEINGOLD as a confused miner, is a derelict pushing a shopping cart but still plenty proud.
3/ what I like about this production is not just that it’s cleverly untraditional but it carries a concept through and combines it w the traditional. Eg the Wanderer - Wotan in SIEGFRIED - enters as a desert roamer, but in addition to his ratty T-shirt he has the coat he wore in
Read 6 tweets
20 Mar
1/ Getting to like this opera more, partly bc of the @vaopera and @azopera perfs I’ve mentioned in previous ONEGIN posts, partly bc of this one, shown earlier as part of Hvorostovsky Week. “Hvor” - “Dima” - raised the artistic level of everything he was in; and, under Gergiev,
2/ with Fleming and Vargas, this lineup from 2007 was set up to show this opera at its best. Mixed reviews, gen’ly favorable, for Carsen’s production, which mixes abstract sets - or rather, no sets: the null set! - with highly traditional costumes and props (those autumn leaves
3/ in Act I). Quick, curtainless scene changes keep the story moving along, esp when a crew of Met dressers, themselves in costume, swarm Hvor at the end of the duel scene, take off a high percentage of his clothes, and suit him up in white tie for the scene at the Gremins’.
Read 4 tweets

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