Opera and Action, Action, Action!!!
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What is this constant demand in entertainment
for action, action, action? Generally your most
popular, money making movies are all about action.
What about the screen play? Too often there does
not appear to have been any, just a skeleton of a
script and the actors fill in the rest. In the theatre
we may yet see the dangerously action packed
“Spiderman” musical.
I’m not impressed. I know I’m old and not “with it”
but I still maintain that your greatest adventures
occur between your ears. |
| Where does this leave us with opera? Do people object to a Mahler symphony for having
little action except the gyrations of the conductor and the French horns waving in the air
from time to time? Apparently not. So why is there this passion for action, action, action
in new operas and in new productions of the standard repertoire? |
I love Olivier Messiaen’s “Saint-Francois d’Assise” where, recognizing
the lack of action, the composer separated his work into “tableaus”
not acts. When the curtain rises you experience looking at something
like a painting in a gallery. Similarly I remember Visconti’s iconic “Don Carlo” many years ago at Covent Garden. All the colors were
pastels reminiscent of Dutch painters of the period of the action.
Action froze from time to time. You could have been looking at a
renaissance painting. Stravinsky’s “Rake’s Progress” at San Francisco
some years ago was mostly in black and white reflecting Hogarth’s
wood cuts on which the opera is based.
So, where are we with action in the operatic repertoire? Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde”. Here the greatest action occurs |
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| in the lastact where the English horn player heralds Isolde’s
approach backstage. The question, or action if you will, is can she make it back to the
orchestra pit in time to come in with the rest of the woodwinds? Even more lack of action
in Mascagni’s chef d’oevre “Parisina”. It takes nearly five hours to tell a simple story of the
old king who takes on a new wife. Wife falls in love with king’s son. King catches them.
They are both condemned to death. Two heads, one pool of blood. Five hours was far too
long for the Italian opera going public to accept, even back in 1913. So some of the most
magnificent Italian operatic music ever composed combined with the most beautiful Italian
libretto ever written by anyone, it’s by Gabrielle D’Annunzio, gets ignored.
Last year San Jose staged “Anna Karenina”. Action, action, action, lots of nice little parts
for young opera singers. The music was pleasant but unmemorable. The orchestra never
played better. But where were the reflective moments? I waited in vain for Karenin, the
cuckolded spouse, to sing an “Ella gammai m’amo”. Where was Karenina’s “letter song”
perhaps? No just action, action, action. She fell under a train, I missed that. Most of the
youngsters loved it! |
Previous Opera stories:
Donizetti's "Lucretia Borgia" more
A Music Conservatory in Salinas more
Guess he was lucky he didn’t get hydrophobia! more
Hector Berlioz more
Lashings of gore is what we're here for more
Livestock on Stage more
The Loquacious Soprano Tax Client more
Mothers Day and Tenors more
Opera & Economic Stimulus more
Ziegfried more
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