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Jan. 26th, 2016 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI saw Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at the Met with ghost_lingering. It was... um... hilarious? I'm sorry, I have issues with 19th century opera. (ghost_lingering asked me what my issues with 19th century opera were and I told her "Everything is terrible.")
Cav/Pag, or Two Operas Which Would Have Been Improved By Revenge Threesomes.
But seriously, or at least, more seriously, Cav was the one where after it ended, I said toghost_lingering "Is it just me, or was that the least tragic tragedy ever?" and she cheerfully responded "The person I hated most died and there was no collateral damage!" It's not just that Turrido is terrible and deserves to die- it's that him dying neatly solves all of the story's problems: Lola and Alfio can go back and work out their marital issues, Santuzza and Lucia explicitly have each other for support, no more lies or infidelities... Everything fixed! I feel like the end of Cav deserves celebration.
Also, the best part of Cav was when Alfio stood up on a table to announce, "I am really horny and I'm about to go home to bang my wife." Alfio was a delight. The direction later set up a visual resonance between this moment and the moment when Turrido stood up on a table to announce "I really like wine."
Pag was the one that was more outwardly comic and slightly more tragic in reality, because the person we hated most didn't die. But it was still pretty silly, with its life imitating art imitating life frame producing a really simplistic and artificial look at interpersonal relationships. Though I thoughtghost_lingering had a really smart insight that the acts are in a way backwards- the first act is ostensibly real life, which then gets recapitulated on stage in Act II, but they are explicitly reenacting in Act I the stage show that they have performed many times before the opera starts, so really the stage show is what comes first.
That being said, everything about Cav/Pag is made better by remembering that Cav was the Kelly Clarkson of its day, the winner of an American Idol-like competition that somehow managed to earn cultural relevance anyway. Cav was never intended to be great art, it's just a brilliant effort at distilling the cultural id in as cheap and efficient a way as possible. The melodies in Cav and Pag are memorable but not deep, and David McVicar's production did a good job of sustaining the story without trying to find more in it than is really there. His primary design motif was a set of cheap chairs that surrounded the action, often sat in by extras, to contextualize Cav and Pag as human dramas, sustained by their audience more than their own inherent meaning.
They're two very silly operas, and I'm unlikely to ever really appreciate them, but it was a pretty good night anyway.
ghost_lingering. It was... um... hilarious? I'm sorry, I have issues with 19th century opera. (ghost_lingering asked me what my issues with 19th century opera were and I told her "Everything is terrible.")Cav/Pag, or Two Operas Which Would Have Been Improved By Revenge Threesomes.
But seriously, or at least, more seriously, Cav was the one where after it ended, I said to
ghost_lingering "Is it just me, or was that the least tragic tragedy ever?" and she cheerfully responded "The person I hated most died and there was no collateral damage!" It's not just that Turrido is terrible and deserves to die- it's that him dying neatly solves all of the story's problems: Lola and Alfio can go back and work out their marital issues, Santuzza and Lucia explicitly have each other for support, no more lies or infidelities... Everything fixed! I feel like the end of Cav deserves celebration.Also, the best part of Cav was when Alfio stood up on a table to announce, "I am really horny and I'm about to go home to bang my wife." Alfio was a delight. The direction later set up a visual resonance between this moment and the moment when Turrido stood up on a table to announce "I really like wine."
Pag was the one that was more outwardly comic and slightly more tragic in reality, because the person we hated most didn't die. But it was still pretty silly, with its life imitating art imitating life frame producing a really simplistic and artificial look at interpersonal relationships. Though I thought
ghost_lingering had a really smart insight that the acts are in a way backwards- the first act is ostensibly real life, which then gets recapitulated on stage in Act II, but they are explicitly reenacting in Act I the stage show that they have performed many times before the opera starts, so really the stage show is what comes first.That being said, everything about Cav/Pag is made better by remembering that Cav was the Kelly Clarkson of its day, the winner of an American Idol-like competition that somehow managed to earn cultural relevance anyway. Cav was never intended to be great art, it's just a brilliant effort at distilling the cultural id in as cheap and efficient a way as possible. The melodies in Cav and Pag are memorable but not deep, and David McVicar's production did a good job of sustaining the story without trying to find more in it than is really there. His primary design motif was a set of cheap chairs that surrounded the action, often sat in by extras, to contextualize Cav and Pag as human dramas, sustained by their audience more than their own inherent meaning.
They're two very silly operas, and I'm unlikely to ever really appreciate them, but it was a pretty good night anyway.
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Date: 2016-01-27 03:22 am (UTC)(In NJ Regions II Chorus in high school, I'd sung an English-language anthem to spring based on a number from Cavalleria Rusticana, which is the only place I had ever heard of it until then.)