Tag Archives: bove

Honour is satisfied

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Alessandro Scarlatti wrote at least sixty operas but only one of the extant ones is a comedy; Il Trionfo dell’Onore which premiered in Naples in 1718.  Cunningly Scarlatti insisted on an Italian, rather than Neapolitan, libretto so it soon got productions further north.  It’s a piece of its time.  It had only just become allowable to produce operas that weren’t based on classical myth or history.  Even Cavalli’s most tongue in cheek works like Il Giasone had roots in the classics!  But here we have an opera whose characters are quite ordinary though clearly based on the typical types of the commedia dell’arte.

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Brueghelland

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ETA 6th December 2019:

Rewatching Le Grand Macabre after four years has rather changed my opinion.  It still seems weird and sometimes hard to watch but I think I see a certain logic in it now that completely escaped me before.  So the End of the World is approaching and all the Powers that Be can do is squabble, exchange scatological insults and get very, very drunk while the one sane (if rather weird) character (Gepopo) can’t find a language to communicate the enormity of what’s happening to them.  Sound vaguely familiar?  (Coincidentally, I’m writing this on the day that Andrew Scheer said that the Federal Government should give more heroin to the addicts in Alberta because otherwise they’ll get in a snit).  Of course, in Ligeti’s version Death gets so drunk that he screws up terminating the space-time continuum but we probably won’t be so lucky.  So yes the fart jokes and the raccoon on bins orchestra is still there but it now seems to me in service of something rather more profound than I previously gave it credit for.  Also, Hannigan is not just brilliant vocally.  It’s also, even by her standards, an amazing physical performance. (Original review under the cut).

gepopoprince

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David Alden’s Poppea

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I’m never quite sure what to expect from David Alden.  Some things are predictable; striking images, bold colours and a degree of vulgarity, but beyond that it’s hard to be sure.  Sometimes he seems to be trying to be deep (his Lucia for example), sometimes more kitschy (Rinaldo) and there’s always a slight undercurrent of him thumbing his nose at the audience.  His production of L’incoronazione di Poppea at Barcelona’s Liceu is a curious combination of all these things and I think it works pretty well.

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But is it art?

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Wagner’s Tannhäuser is the earliest of the canonical works.  In some ways it’s very Wagnerian.  It has screwed up theology with a heavy dose of misogyny and some recognisably Wagnerian music.  On the other hand it is structured more like a French grand opera and some of the music definitely has more than a hint of Meyerbeer to it.The basic plot is that of the hero seduced into sin by the pagan love goddess Venus and then redeemed by the love (and death) of the chaste virgin Elisabeth.

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