(no subject)

[seekingferret]

Agrippina by Georg Handel at the Met

So Baroque opera has this thing called the da capo aria. It's one of the basic building blocks of baroque opera. The way it works it that you sing an initial theme, and then you sing a new theme, and then you go back, da capo, to the beginning, and sing the first them again.

If done right, if the A section and B section interact in the right way, and the repetition of the A section does interesting things in varying the repetition, it does amazing things for character development. The key to a good da capo aria is that the singer at the end is singing the same words but feeling something different.

In a bad da capo aria, you feel the same thing throughout. And since baroque opera tends to have a lot of da capo arias, in a bad baroque opera, the emotional work just feels tedious and endless. Aimless da capo aria stacked on top of aimless da capo aria. This was the case for a lot of Agrippina, Handel's satirical opera about the internecine politics of the Roman Empire during the reign of Claudius. Particularly in the first act.

But there were a lot of really cool things anyway! Post intermission, the show opened on a set dressed as an upscale modern bar, the kind of place where the bartender wants to be called a mixologist. (Where is this opera being set? I asked freeradical42 at intermission. In Gilboa, from the show Kings, he replied.). And a set of arias set in the bar provided an amazing combination of personal humor and emotional development from what could have just been standing around yelling at each other. Dancers danced rock 'n roll dances to the baroque arias, an amazing choreographic juxtaposition that made the scene feel so startlingly specific. Brenda Rae's Poppea carries this sequence on her back, lurching wrenchingly from thoughtful self-doubt to drunkenly out of control and finally landing on a determination to learn from her mentors and seek revenge over reconciliation.


Also, Kate Lindsey's dissolute youth Nero was an unbelievable physical presence the likes of which I've never seen on an opera stage, as much a dance performance as it was a singing performance. And Joyce DiDonato was obviously brilliant as the compulsively backstabbing Agrippina, and Matthew Rose's Claudius was forceful but convincingly flawed.

Comments

[oracne]

That sounds FABULOUSLY COOL.

[seekingferret]

It definitely had its moments.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Do you think Handel was doing that intentionally, since it's satire and thus taking a pot shot at stacking the de capo arias like cordwood might be arch?

Sounds like the Opera found ways to resonate the work off some modern things that Handel couldn't have predicted but would recognize the multiple layers.

Huckleberry Finn now suffers from as many problems inflicted by when and how it is read, as Mark Twain caused to the ending.

[seekingferret]

Nope, I think Agrippina has some shitty arias because Handel wrote the music in three weeks.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

That's like Arthur Conan Doyle's continuity and Trollope needing a nitpicker. Different original cause, same principle.

"I wrote this on sleep deprivation, butter and coffee. Sadly, I'm not Mozart."

"I am Mozart, and sadly, James Buchanan Barnes didn't make me stop being a little shit."

"I'm Agent Carter and I needed Wade Wilson to take on a character assassin."

"This half of a double sided book was written by a college freshman and paid for beer."

[cahn]

Thank you for elucidating that about da capo arias! That... makes sense to me of some things I'd noticed about repetition in opera (not just in Baroque opera) but had never really articulated to myself. Can you recommend good da capo arias?

But I am gonna have to watch this anyway because KATE LINDSEY, no one told me she was in this opera (okay, maybe someone did but I wasn't paying attention), I fell completely and utterly in love with her when I saw her do Contes d'Hoffman. She is so great.

[seekingferret]

Handel's Giulio Cesare works a lot better for me than Agrippina did. Also, it's into the classical period, and so he's balancing them against a lot of other things, rather than stacking them on top of each other the way Handel does, but when Rossini does da capo arias they often work astoundingly well.

Verdi and Strauss also manage some successful parody of the less effective da capo arias... I've raved about the genius of "Addio Addio" in Rigoletto, which works because it plays like an unwelcomely extended da capo aria, except it's on purpose as a character move.

You're not the only person who's raved at me about Kate Lindsey in Contes, but she did not particularly register for me there. But wow does she stand out here.

[cahn]

Ah, OK! I saw Giulio Cesare before I liked opera (with an acquaintance who had an extra ticket), which I suppose was wasted on me and I should try it out again.

The Nabucco I saw was what I was thinking of, actually -- the singer who played Abigaille in the production I saw (Maria Guleghina) did That Thing, where the second time she sang her aria through it was the same notes but the emotions were different and way intense (the first time she was hopeful, the second time she was jealous and despairing) and it was an amazing performance. I've only watched it that once so I don't know whether it was Verdi or Gulgehina that put that in, but at least one of them was amazing.

[lokifan]

<*I>If done right, if the A section and B section interact in the right way, and the repetition of the A section does interesting things in varying the repetition, it does amazing things for character development. The key to a good da capo aria is that the singer at the end is singing the same words but feeling something different.

That sounds brilliant. I mean, it's 100% my favourite thing about musicals.