May. 2nd, 2011

skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (Default)
This weekend I had my second experience with modern opera (for four dollars, which is a pretty good way to see opera), Seance on a Wet Afternoon, by Stephen Schwartz of Wicked and Pippin fame. I like the scores of both those shows quite a lot, but - I dunno, guys, there's something about the weight of opera that seems to make composers feel like they need to be really heavy. From the music of this show I wouldn't even have thought it was the same guy - there's nothing of the jazzy sense of playfulness that you get in his Broadway stuff, it is all SAD. SLOW. PSYCHOLOGICAL. OMINOUSNESS. all the way through.

And I don't get it, because - while my experience with classical opera is a bit limited - there's nothing in what I've seen to suggest you shouldn't have fun with it! It's a spectacle, it's melodrama, there's supposed to be some kind of force to it. The other opera I've seen in the past year was Carmen, which as a story in itself is of coure so frustrating, much more frustrating to watch (DON JOSE, WHY SUCH A JERK), but was musically powerful and fun in a way that neither this nor Nixon in China was for me.

But I don't know, I fully acknowledge my ignorance on the topic! If anyone has more wise Thoughts On Opera that they would like to share, please feel free.

. . . anyway, I also think this was not necessarily the best story to do as an opera because it's the kind of Hitchcockian thriller that could probably use silence a lot better than sound ALL THE TIME and everyone carefully explaining their motivations in song. The experience of the show is a lot like this:

MADAME FOSTER: I have spiritual gifts, I do, I do! But instead I am cheating people out of their money for small change. I need RECOGNITION and my dead son spirit guide Arthur has thought of a genius plan to get it for me!
MR. FOSTER: Honey, I do not think that kidnapping a little girl, keeping her in our spare room, and meanwhile attempting to gain fame by informing the world you know where she's hidden is a plan that's going to end well for us.
MADAME FOSTER: Yes, but you're dependent on me in a fairly unhealthy way, so you'll do what I and the dead son only I can see say anyway, right?
MR. FOSTER: . . . . . *sigh* yes.
DEAD SON SPIRIT GUIDE ARTHUR: I am Madame Foster's creepy ghost son and I think everybody wishes that I was just a disembodied voice, or, even better, a creepy silence, instead of an actual little kid jumping around the set in white facepaint.
SAD MILLIONAIRE PARENTS: We are, respectively, an impatient angry skeptic and an emotional believer grasping at straws! GUESS WHICH GENDER IS WHICH. (And wouldn't it be nice for once to have that dynamic reversed?) The singers playing our parts are valiantly doing their best to elevate us beyond the stock millionaire parent stereotypes that we embody, but there is only so much one can do.
POLICE INSPECATOR: If I was around more, I would probably have a really interesting personality and come across as quite competent, but unfortunately I'm not allowed to act until the plot says I can for a dramatic denouement, and therefore competence appears impossible.
KIDNAPPED GIRL: I'm cute and charismatic and apparently talented, but alas in this show I am doomed to be not much more than a tragic adorable moppet.

TRAGEDY: *LURKS* *IN OMINOUS CHORDS* *EVERYWHERE*
PSYCHOLOGICAL NUANCE: *IS LEADENLY SPELLED OUT* *IN OMINOUS CHORDS* *EVERYWHERE*
INEVITABLE DOOM: *IS IRONICALLY AND YET ENTIRELY PREDICTABLY DOOMY*

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: And that's opera!

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