Twenty-four years with two melodies, only a few trumpeter heroes, and no elephant. Why is this mess a classic?
The bass’s loud approximando and unbecoming costume joins us in his wish for an imminent death.
(Nothing tricky about this opera; the trumpets state the premise in the opening notes, the rest of the overture tells the whole story, and then you get to sit around for three hours while they sing about it. If you heard SF Opera’s production last night, those were three hours well spent—some of the best duet-singing I’ve heard in years.)
Pride and Prejudicesky.
In Act I, a geezer wants to off himself because he’s a geezer. Handsome bass devil who sings better and is several feet taller talks him into sticking around, exchanging youth for some dubious duties later on. Spotting a beautiful, young woman who is actually just a soprano and neither of those things, he agrees, […]
(If I’m any good at this, it will be obvious that my nano-operas owe a great debt to Anna Russell. There’s no point trying to outdo Dame Russell’s great analysis of the Ring of the Nibelungen, which you must immediately view here, here, and here if you haven’t already. My own humble effort here is […]
This nano-opera comes to us from my Twitter friend, SAS expert Michael Tuchman (http://bit.ly/cnY8m8): Carmen: Soldier doesn’t want to marry nice girl. He chases bad one. He gets cold feet. She dates hot celeb, so he kills her.
16th century Tsar Boris proves he is Russian by wallowing in guilt for three hours until finally dying of guilt. Librettist proves he is Russian by giving long list of characters long names but very little to do. Composer proves he is Russian by giving long list of instruments very little to do but sound […]
Another nano-synopsis, this time for Stravinsky’s “Rake’s Progress,” on a libretto by Auden and some other dude: Boy gets rich, abandons girl, abandons virtue, abandons reality. It’s yet another twist on the Faust tale, where boy sells soul to devil, only this time he finds out the terms of the deal after the fact, and […]
La Rondine is your basic “girl meets guy, blows off icky rich husband, runs off with guy, wimps out, returns to rich husband, blows off and breaks heart of good guy” story set to equally boring music. So, yet another misogynist libretto and forgettable music, performed well by the San Francisco Opera, conducted adequately by […]