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Feb. 11th, 2016 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretSunday I saw Opera Philadelphia's staging of Jennifer Higdon's new opera "Cold Mountain". Which was generally fascinating. I've not read the book nor seen the film, but it's clear that at its core, "Cold Mountain" has an excellent story, grounded in myth as well as in historical reality and geography and human nature. In the first act, that was mostly what gripped me- the excellent character work, the skillful way Gene Scheer's adapted scenario moved from scene to scene. The music lagged behind a little bit- dull recitative with obvious instrumental underscoring, arias that suffered for being overly harmonically complex and underly melodious. The thing I said at intermission was that I was enjoying it, but wasn't clear what making this story into an opera gained.
The second act was where Higdon found her footing. (At a Q&A session afterward, Higdon noted that the first act was finished and workshopped and revised before the second act was finished, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nathanielperson speculated afterward that this may, in Higdon's first opera, explain why the second act was more polished. But the music, Post-Romantic (in the Q&A Higdon cited Britten as a principal influence; I would also mention Strauss and Bernstein as likely influences) but heavily flavored with a characteristic Appalachian bluegrass flavor, justified itself in the second act. Not just in the beauty of the melodies and their rightness for their place in the scenario, but for the way the music spoke to the place of music in the story. Rather than just use some of the many specific folk songs Charles Frazier apparently mentioned in the novel, Higdon composed her own symphonic bluegrass songs: warm, homey, but rhythmically and harmonically complex and subtle. These songs do double duty as songs and metasongs, serving their narrative function in the plot but also helping to tell us about the characters. These songs answer the question of why make Cold Mountain an opera: because in opera, because music is positioned alongside so many other artistic disciplines, they all become greater than themselves.
Among those other disciplines, the set design is worth calling out for separate attention. A work of contemporary art unto itself, the set was abstract, formed of massive beams arrayed at jarringly dissonant angles. From the cheap seats where we watched the opera, it resolved into a flat space that easily transformed into a flowing river, a snowy mountaintop, a sunny farmhouse, and all the other spaces the story required it to. But when we dropped down to the orchestra level after the show, we were impressed by the verticality of the set, how different layers created different senses of place, and how that all worked differently at different angles. It was a pretty remarkable set.
Afterward, we found a bar a few blocks away to watch the Super Bowl.nathanielperson called Cold Mountain the superior cultural experience, and was bored for good stretches of the game, but I enjoyed the game. Denver's defense is a thing of beauty. There are no gimmicks to it, none of the trickery and disguise of a Bill Belichick or Rex Ryan defense. Denver just beats you by not having any weaknesses. You can't exploit their pass rushers with runs because the interior linebackers are so good at run stopping. You can't exploit them with quick passes because their corners are so good at coverage. And you just plain can't stop their pass rushers from hitting the quarterback. Denver takes away your choices so all you can do is run the plays you are best at executing and hope that you're good enough.
I'm also intrigued by the paradox of Peyton Manning's 'legacy', the way that his mediocre performance in this Super Bowl solidified his reputation as a quality quarterback even in the postseason, merely because his team won in spite of him. The reason for this is pretty clear- his previous reputation as a postseason choke artist was undeserved and everyone knew it and we've all been grasping for an excuse to properly appreciate how great Peyton Manning was in his prime. The Colts were never quite good enough, especially defensively, to carry Manning all the way- I did some checking on the famed imbalance in the Brady-Manning head to head playoff games and found that 80% of the disparity, at least, can be explained by the fact that the Patriots had home field most of the time in these games. The Patriots were the better team; Brady was not necessarily the better clutch player.
The second act was where Higdon found her footing. (At a Q&A session afterward, Higdon noted that the first act was finished and workshopped and revised before the second act was finished, and
nathanielperson speculated afterward that this may, in Higdon's first opera, explain why the second act was more polished. But the music, Post-Romantic (in the Q&A Higdon cited Britten as a principal influence; I would also mention Strauss and Bernstein as likely influences) but heavily flavored with a characteristic Appalachian bluegrass flavor, justified itself in the second act. Not just in the beauty of the melodies and their rightness for their place in the scenario, but for the way the music spoke to the place of music in the story. Rather than just use some of the many specific folk songs Charles Frazier apparently mentioned in the novel, Higdon composed her own symphonic bluegrass songs: warm, homey, but rhythmically and harmonically complex and subtle. These songs do double duty as songs and metasongs, serving their narrative function in the plot but also helping to tell us about the characters. These songs answer the question of why make Cold Mountain an opera: because in opera, because music is positioned alongside so many other artistic disciplines, they all become greater than themselves.Among those other disciplines, the set design is worth calling out for separate attention. A work of contemporary art unto itself, the set was abstract, formed of massive beams arrayed at jarringly dissonant angles. From the cheap seats where we watched the opera, it resolved into a flat space that easily transformed into a flowing river, a snowy mountaintop, a sunny farmhouse, and all the other spaces the story required it to. But when we dropped down to the orchestra level after the show, we were impressed by the verticality of the set, how different layers created different senses of place, and how that all worked differently at different angles. It was a pretty remarkable set.
Afterward, we found a bar a few blocks away to watch the Super Bowl.
nathanielperson called Cold Mountain the superior cultural experience, and was bored for good stretches of the game, but I enjoyed the game. Denver's defense is a thing of beauty. There are no gimmicks to it, none of the trickery and disguise of a Bill Belichick or Rex Ryan defense. Denver just beats you by not having any weaknesses. You can't exploit their pass rushers with runs because the interior linebackers are so good at run stopping. You can't exploit them with quick passes because their corners are so good at coverage. And you just plain can't stop their pass rushers from hitting the quarterback. Denver takes away your choices so all you can do is run the plays you are best at executing and hope that you're good enough.I'm also intrigued by the paradox of Peyton Manning's 'legacy', the way that his mediocre performance in this Super Bowl solidified his reputation as a quality quarterback even in the postseason, merely because his team won in spite of him. The reason for this is pretty clear- his previous reputation as a postseason choke artist was undeserved and everyone knew it and we've all been grasping for an excuse to properly appreciate how great Peyton Manning was in his prime. The Colts were never quite good enough, especially defensively, to carry Manning all the way- I did some checking on the famed imbalance in the Brady-Manning head to head playoff games and found that 80% of the disparity, at least, can be explained by the fact that the Patriots had home field most of the time in these games. The Patriots were the better team; Brady was not necessarily the better clutch player.