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Mar. 7th, 2018 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretElektra by Richard Strauss
For the first time ever, a Strauss opera left me cold. I'm not sure how this happened. Everyone else who's seen this production has raved about it, and I always love Strauss. I was guaranteed to love this opera. And then I didn't.
So much of one's enjoyment of art is about mindset, and I must admit my mindset was a little off. I had a long day at work, briefly debated skipping the opera so I could go straight home, and perhaps I didn't really want to be at the show. But I don't think that's all of it. Certainly my exhaustion was fighting against my general expectation of enthusiasm. I always love Strauss and I was excited to be seeing Elektra for the first time.
The music was a little out of my comfort zone. I usually describe Strauss's music as Post-Romantic, even though I'm not entirely sure what that means. I think I use it to mean Romanticism + Self-Awareness. But Elektra, one of Strauss's earliest operas, is full-blown Late Romanticism, with one of the largest orchestras ever seen in an opera and a big, harmonically complicated score. The sense of irony and remove- the sense that Romanticism's technique can have value as we reject its ideology- which marks Strauss's later movement into early Modernism, is missing here. I am a fan of some Romantic music, and there were moments in Elektra I thought were quite lovely, but it is not the most sympathetic music to my ear.
I also think I was offput by the straightforward misogyny of the work. The entire two hour single act was a classic operatic mad scene. It was certainly a well-drawn, psychologically attentive version, but nonetheless constructed on the idea that female madness is this unique, feminized phenomenon available for the prurient enjoyment of bystanders. I can't think of a single female mad scene in an opera that has actually worked for me... and I wonder to a degree if that's not my own misogyny, if I'm incapable of empathizing with portrayals of female mental illness... but largely I think it's my antipathy to the particular, inaccurate over-dramatized representation of female mental illness that opera chooses to stage, over and over.
For the first time ever, a Strauss opera left me cold. I'm not sure how this happened. Everyone else who's seen this production has raved about it, and I always love Strauss. I was guaranteed to love this opera. And then I didn't.
So much of one's enjoyment of art is about mindset, and I must admit my mindset was a little off. I had a long day at work, briefly debated skipping the opera so I could go straight home, and perhaps I didn't really want to be at the show. But I don't think that's all of it. Certainly my exhaustion was fighting against my general expectation of enthusiasm. I always love Strauss and I was excited to be seeing Elektra for the first time.
The music was a little out of my comfort zone. I usually describe Strauss's music as Post-Romantic, even though I'm not entirely sure what that means. I think I use it to mean Romanticism + Self-Awareness. But Elektra, one of Strauss's earliest operas, is full-blown Late Romanticism, with one of the largest orchestras ever seen in an opera and a big, harmonically complicated score. The sense of irony and remove- the sense that Romanticism's technique can have value as we reject its ideology- which marks Strauss's later movement into early Modernism, is missing here. I am a fan of some Romantic music, and there were moments in Elektra I thought were quite lovely, but it is not the most sympathetic music to my ear.
I also think I was offput by the straightforward misogyny of the work. The entire two hour single act was a classic operatic mad scene. It was certainly a well-drawn, psychologically attentive version, but nonetheless constructed on the idea that female madness is this unique, feminized phenomenon available for the prurient enjoyment of bystanders. I can't think of a single female mad scene in an opera that has actually worked for me... and I wonder to a degree if that's not my own misogyny, if I'm incapable of empathizing with portrayals of female mental illness... but largely I think it's my antipathy to the particular, inaccurate over-dramatized representation of female mental illness that opera chooses to stage, over and over.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-07 06:14 pm (UTC)I wonder to a degree if that's not my own misogyny, if I'm incapable of empathizing with portrayals of female mental illness...
Just thinking here ... sometimes people latch on to characters or stories that are trope-y and full of fail not because the portrayal is free of misogyny (or racism or homophobia, etc), but because in a misogynistic work it can be powerful to read against the grain and find fissures that the author didn't necessarily intend to be there, but that speak to us anyway. Essentially finding ourselves in the text, when we weren't intended to be there or finding things that the author didn't realize they were including. I think a really good example of that is that my old roommate found things that spoke to her about being a woman with mental illness in the film Sucker Punch, even though the film itself was made with a dose or more of misogyny. But reading and watching works in this way, where you kind of sneak in the backdoor to find something that you like, shouldn't be the only way to approach works, rather one tool in the toolbox, and, honestly, is often a reading or viewing defense mechanism if the other option is to view it head on and feel attacked or unseen.
At the same time, not wanting to read works in that way is also valid. Or not to *only* read works in that way. To only read works in that way can be to ignore bigotry in the writing and can lead to accepting the characters we are given instead of demanding or looking for better. But I think it's also why, sometimes, it is easier for someone else to demand better characters on our behalf -- because finding characters that are meaningful when read against the grain is still finding characters that are meaningful.
I think I remember a post you did a while about the Merchant of Venice and how (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) even if you don't like or agree with Shylock you are always going to see the play from his perspective. That suggests, to me, a similar kind of looking for fissures -- a way to enjoy the play, but still push back at its anti-semitism in how you react and read the play. So while I might be more likely to find fissures in a work with a woman who is mad and find something there to connect with, the works you would read against the grain will be different, because we have different life experiences and wants from texts.
So, while it may be internalized misogyny on your part it could also just be that it's not a trope that you feel the need to find a different way into or even that connects with you even when well done. You're the best judge of that, I think. Though I'd be curious if similar characters in other mediums leave you cold in the same way. (Given that I just saw Angels in America, I'd be particularly interested in your read on Harper who arguably fits the mad woman trope as well as the rest of the play in general -- I'd love to read your take on the theology of the play -- but I'm not sure if you've seen it or like it if you have seen it?)
(As an aside: I latched on to the idea of reading against the text in college when I read an essay by Shoshana Felman. I forget the name of the essay or the specifics now, but the idea that you didn't have to read the story the author wanted you to -- that you could actively read against the text instead of passively disagreeing -- is one that still resonants with me today and that I think about whenever I encounter any kind of text, even one that is relatively in line with my own likes, dislikes, politics, and general aesthetic taste.)