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Feb. 3rd, 2015 10:22 amI saw Tchaikovsky's Iolanta in a double bill with Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle last week at the Met.
Iolanta was one of the better 19th century operas I've seen and Bluebeard's Castle one of the least interesting 20th century operas I've seen, and my adjustments to my ranking list reflect this: Iolanta now sits 5th on the 19th century list. Bluebeard's Castle sits 20th on the 20th century list. That being said, the two operas stand only 20 years apart in composition date and have a lot in common as far as their use of Symbolism and tonality and sexual themes. I think if Bluebeard's Castle were a 19th century opera, I'd probably be ranking it around 7th or 8th on that list, and if Iolanta were a 20th century opera, I'd rank it something like 15th.
Iolanta's a fairy tale about a blind princess raised without the awareness that her blindness is a mark of distinction. Her father decreed that nobody may mention light or sight or color or anything else that may clue her in to the 'terrible curse' she was born with. Until a stranger sneaks in, unaware of the decree, and woos her by speaking beguilingly of the magic and wonder of light. This ought to compel the stranger's death, but an Arabic doctor has examined Iolanta and pronounced her capable of being cured, if only she were made aware of her blindness first. So the King is in the end perversely grateful to the young man for doing what he was too weak to do and telling his daughter about her curse. By this point in my description, of course,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tikva is having an aneurysm. Iolanta is ableist as hell: obsessed with disability as disease language, and perhaps worse, insistent on treating blindness mostly metaphorically as a stand-in for other ideas.
Iolanta isn't really about being blind. It's about youth and old age, ignorance and wisdom, faith and empiricism, empathy and hope and love. And it is really good at talking about those things through music. If there is any virtue to be found Iolanta's treatment of blindness, it is in Tchaikovsky's magnificent efforts to talk about how communication works without vision, and particularly how courtship works without vision, in the central love duet. That's a theme I was working through in different ways in "The Music Speaks For Itself"- that if you live an aesthetic life fully attenuated through music and audio art, the weight you place on the visual as part of your aesthetic life may be lesser. For Tchaikovsky, music is love and love is music.
But it's still really fucking obnoxious how Iolanta talks about blindness and blind people, and it's chief among for my reservations about an opera with incredibly bright, brilliant vocal music. But I mean, 19th century opera is fucking terrible, so what do you expect?
Bluebeard's Castle, another fairy-tale opera, is about a newlywed couple entering the groom's forbidding castle for the first time. There are seven locked doors, and the bride boldly insists on opening each one in turn, as her husband pleads with her that she will regret it. Spoiler alert: she regrets it.
In Bartok's hands, it becomes a sort of psychosexual meditation on desire and its intersection with others. I don't know, I think I expected more out if it than I got, and I thought the Met's staging was awfully dull. But I know now I was coming down with a terrible cold, so maybe that's why I wasn't fully into it?
Iolanta was one of the better 19th century operas I've seen and Bluebeard's Castle one of the least interesting 20th century operas I've seen, and my adjustments to my ranking list reflect this: Iolanta now sits 5th on the 19th century list. Bluebeard's Castle sits 20th on the 20th century list. That being said, the two operas stand only 20 years apart in composition date and have a lot in common as far as their use of Symbolism and tonality and sexual themes. I think if Bluebeard's Castle were a 19th century opera, I'd probably be ranking it around 7th or 8th on that list, and if Iolanta were a 20th century opera, I'd rank it something like 15th.
Iolanta's a fairy tale about a blind princess raised without the awareness that her blindness is a mark of distinction. Her father decreed that nobody may mention light or sight or color or anything else that may clue her in to the 'terrible curse' she was born with. Until a stranger sneaks in, unaware of the decree, and woos her by speaking beguilingly of the magic and wonder of light. This ought to compel the stranger's death, but an Arabic doctor has examined Iolanta and pronounced her capable of being cured, if only she were made aware of her blindness first. So the King is in the end perversely grateful to the young man for doing what he was too weak to do and telling his daughter about her curse. By this point in my description, of course,
tikva is having an aneurysm. Iolanta is ableist as hell: obsessed with disability as disease language, and perhaps worse, insistent on treating blindness mostly metaphorically as a stand-in for other ideas. Iolanta isn't really about being blind. It's about youth and old age, ignorance and wisdom, faith and empiricism, empathy and hope and love. And it is really good at talking about those things through music. If there is any virtue to be found Iolanta's treatment of blindness, it is in Tchaikovsky's magnificent efforts to talk about how communication works without vision, and particularly how courtship works without vision, in the central love duet. That's a theme I was working through in different ways in "The Music Speaks For Itself"- that if you live an aesthetic life fully attenuated through music and audio art, the weight you place on the visual as part of your aesthetic life may be lesser. For Tchaikovsky, music is love and love is music.
But it's still really fucking obnoxious how Iolanta talks about blindness and blind people, and it's chief among for my reservations about an opera with incredibly bright, brilliant vocal music. But I mean, 19th century opera is fucking terrible, so what do you expect?
Bluebeard's Castle, another fairy-tale opera, is about a newlywed couple entering the groom's forbidding castle for the first time. There are seven locked doors, and the bride boldly insists on opening each one in turn, as her husband pleads with her that she will regret it. Spoiler alert: she regrets it.
In Bartok's hands, it becomes a sort of psychosexual meditation on desire and its intersection with others. I don't know, I think I expected more out if it than I got, and I thought the Met's staging was awfully dull. But I know now I was coming down with a terrible cold, so maybe that's why I wasn't fully into it?