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The Ghosts of Versailles
Jun. 12th, 2020 07:52 amThe Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano as performed at the Met in 1992, which was last night's Met Opera Free Stream
The Ghosts of Versailles is a glorious clusterfuck of an opera. In terms of storytelling, I think it is more unsuccessful than successful, but I admire the ambition nonetheless, the way it mashes pieces of the Figaro trilogy together with history and metafiction and tries to make a bigger shape out of all of it.
But given the protests of the past week, I was super not into a narrative that was so sympathetic to Marie Antoinette and Count Almaviva, that argued that the French Revolution was manipulated by evil men for their own personal benefit and overthrew a monarchy that was trying for justice and a Queen who was just misunderstood and suffered for it.It was like Corigliano was trying to write an opera (WP says he calls it a Grand Opera Buffa) that encompassed all of opera's bigness, and so in addition to writing a story that was both a comedy and a tragedy, a love story and a story of lost love, both a historical narrative and a fictional artifice... he also wrote an opera that is racist and sexist and classist in truly disturbing ways.That this opera was written in the early 1990s, not the early 1790s, made it egregious. Like, obviously racism and sexism and classism are core elements of opera, but that doesn't mean you need to keep them!
The Ghosts of Versailles is a glorious clusterfuck of an opera. In terms of storytelling, I think it is more unsuccessful than successful, but I admire the ambition nonetheless, the way it mashes pieces of the Figaro trilogy together with history and metafiction and tries to make a bigger shape out of all of it.
But given the protests of the past week, I was super not into a narrative that was so sympathetic to Marie Antoinette and Count Almaviva, that argued that the French Revolution was manipulated by evil men for their own personal benefit and overthrew a monarchy that was trying for justice and a Queen who was just misunderstood and suffered for it.It was like Corigliano was trying to write an opera (WP says he calls it a Grand Opera Buffa) that encompassed all of opera's bigness, and so in addition to writing a story that was both a comedy and a tragedy, a love story and a story of lost love, both a historical narrative and a fictional artifice... he also wrote an opera that is racist and sexist and classist in truly disturbing ways.That this opera was written in the early 1990s, not the early 1790s, made it egregious. Like, obviously racism and sexism and classism are core elements of opera, but that doesn't mean you need to keep them!