Review to Follow: La Didone

I was just informed that I have, in fact, gotten a discounted ticket to see a, well, for lack of better words, something that promises to be an unusual performance.

The publicity materials say:

The Wooster Group returns to St. Ann's Warehouse with Cavalli / Busenello's baroque opera La Didone (1641), in which Aeneas, prince of Troy, lands on the shores of Africa after a violent sea storm. There he falls in love with Dido, queen of Carthage, and becomes entangled in a web of love, deception, power and madness. In Mario Bava's 1965 cult movie Terrore nello spazio, the spaceship Argos crashes on the planet Aura, and its crew becomes locked in a desperate battle with zombies over the all-important "meteor rejector."

The Wooster Group stirs these two Italian cultural artifacts together, dropping Aeneas' ships onto a forbidding planetary landscape, setting the lute alongside live electric guitar, blending acoustic and electronic space, and finding an unexpected synergy between early baroque opera and pre-moon landing sci-fi: A 21st-century retelling of an ancient tale about the destructive (and redemptive) power of erotic ­passion and the sheer tenacity of human nature in the face of annihilation.

I heard about this on NPR, and was intrigued, to put it mildly. This has all the potential to be hilariously awful, or, who knows, astonishingly good. With this sort of thing, one never knows until one tries it, I suppose. I will freely admit, however, that my tastes in this sort of thing are quite possibly more liberal than average. (One of the benefits, I suppose, of having grown up in the isolated manner in which I was raised is that one comes less expectation of what something should be, leaving one more open to enjoying what simply is. Of course, it also means a deficit of learning that also has to be filled, but it's easier to learn than it is to resist a habit, I find.)

The performance is next week, and I am anticipating it quite keenly. I will, of course, make a full report!

(For anyone who may be interested in the performance, it's currently running and will continue to run for a bit -- more details are available here: http://www.stannswarehouse.org/current_season.php?show_id=33 )

Un scandalo, un disordine!

In NYC, and in the opera circuit, the talk of the town lately has been the new production at the Met of La Sonnambula, by Mary Zimmerman. The reaction of the traditionalists is nothing short of absolutely furious, and interaction between the various factions has been heated -- dare I say operatic in its furvor?

As to the qualities of the production, I can't comment. I haven't seen it yet, and having had a fluctuating state of personal finance, I won't be able to until the cheap seats are available.

The lastest On dit regarding the production, and what I wish to address, is the suggestion that the starring soprano, Natalie Dessay, was responsible for some of the changes in the staging -- particularly the things that the dissenters found the most objectional. (Ms. Dessay, if you believe the loggionisti, is also personally responsible for the coming goetterdaemmerung of opera. I am amazed at how one soprano has managed to accomplish so much!)

If Ms. Dessay was indeed responsible, then criticizing her choices is fair, if perhaps overly zealous. With artistic freedom comes the possibility of criticism. But! (And what a big but!) There is also a common complaint among opera fans and opera singers as well, that singers are no longer allowed much artistic input in most productions. The common agreement seems to be that opera has suffered for this. In light of that, one would assume that Ms. Dessay's taking charge would be welcomed, even if the results weren't perfect.

What bothers me, therefore, is the reaction to Dessay's input. The general response has been, if one puts it succinctly, "shut up and sing." Cognitive dissonance, anyone? If opera has suffered from singers being told to "shut up and sing" by companies and directors, this (over)reaction is doing nothing to encourage other directors/companies to involve their singers in the artistic process.

As a singer, we have little enough control over many aspects of our performance. We control the voice, the words, the person -- but we rarely control the costumes (often unflattering and hindering), the staging (frequently unhelpful for either good acting or good singing), and so on.

So I have to ask: what is it fans really want? More artistic freedom, and possibly (probably) more things one may find objectionable, as well as more things one finds enjoyable -- or back to the "shut up and sing" and the same-old same old?

Che faro senza Eurydice?

After complaining publicly about how I can't afford to go to the opera, the Deities in their Wisdom let my name come up in the Met's drawing this weekend. Thus, I will be seeing the ever-so-(in)famous Mark Morris/Izaac Mizrahi production of Orfeo Saturday evening.

I'm not really sure what to expect. I've found some lovely moments in the works of Gluck, Lully, et al, but the thought of 2+ hours of French Rococco has, I must admit, filled me somewhat with trepidation.

I do love a lot of the instrumental music of the period -- I use it as the appropriate iPod filler for visiting art exhibits of the same time period, or going through places like Versailles, but not so much in the way of attending full length concerts of it. Oh well, I guess I shall be having my horizons expanded.

(Of course, all that said, I often really don't care for operas when I am introduced to them via sound recordings, but then fall in love when I see them on stage and it all makes sense.)