RIDING THE RAZOR EDGE

SIR PETER USTINOV SAID (and I never tire of quoting) “Opera rides the razor edge of absurdity.” Even sans mythical beings, opera verismo (Italian: “realistic opera”) fits Sir Peter’s characterization. 

To quote Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on the matter, he “never encountered anything more false and foolish than the effort to get truth into opera. In opera everything is based on non-truth.” 

This is all the more so when an original opera’s settings or even its themes are changed. However, I hasten to add, I like such operatic rethinking. It stirs the mind—and may even broaden the audience of opera lovers.

Here are tidbits gleaned from Opera with Opera News (the Met’s recent money-saving joint publication with its British counterpart), from Detroit Opera, and from operatic tidbits at SimanaitisSays. 

Tex-Mex Carmen. I have no complaints when a French guy’s opera about a Seville cigarette factory gets transformed to a U.S. border-town’s armament plant. I delighted in all those girls reminding me of junior high school.

 Image from the Met Trailer of Carmen.  

Plus, Carmen has done just fine thank you in 1936 Fascist Spain (with a 1986 Met’s Carmen as a Loyalist spy) and in an all-Black 1954 Carmen Jones flick (for which Dorothy Dandridge became the first African American to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress).

As cited by David Salazar in OperaWire, “There was also a dance film from Germany called ‘Carmen on Ice’ featuring the story told through the music and the movement of the skaters. There is no spoken dialogue and the characters retain their original identities from Bizet’s opera.”

Digital Der Ring des Nibelungen. The March 2024 Opera writes, “There is no shortage of magic made possible by technology and it worked a treat” in Opera Australia’s new Ring Cycle produced by Chen Shi-Zheng. “There was a keenly calibrated balance,” Opera recounts, “between digitally created visual display and close concentration on narrative and character.”

Examples of riding the edge: Rhinemaidens frolicked through a coral outcrop at the bottom of the river. Siegmund pulled the sword Nothung from a huge replica of a bonsai. Wild-haired Valkyries entered en masse on the back of a flying phoenix.

“That sulphurous cleft through which Wotan and Loge descend into Nibelheim?” Opera recounts, “There it was (as indeed Wagner wanted) and Mount Rushmore-like busts disintegrated behind the gods when they were deprived of Freia’s youth-dispensing apples.” 

Opera Australia’s Das Rhinegold, in which godly sorts discuss the hazards of going without apples. Image from Opera.

Yuval Sharon’s Garage Götterdämmerung. These wonderful Wagnerian shenanigans remind me of Michigan Opera Theatre (now Detroit Opera) and its Twilight: Gods. Appropriate for the Motor City, this mini-opera was performed iteratively in the opera company’s multi-level parking garage, with the audience traveling through in their cars.

Soprano Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde in the Immolation Scene from Twilight: Gods.  

Yet an Earlier Innovative Opera. Artistic Director Yuval Sharon has appeared before here at SimanaitisSays: He directed Annie Gosfield’s War of the Worlds, an avant-garde opera that worked “the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres, and noise.” This operatic happening took place within Walt Disney Concert Hall as well as on the nearby streets of downtown Los Angeles.

A New One from Sharon: Cosi fan Tutte Encounters A.I. This Mozart opera, originally set in 18th-century Naples, had a 2019-2020 Met production transformed to New York City’s Coney Island in the 1950s, complete with actual sideshow performers. 

This time around, Sharon transforms Cosi to the world of Artificial Intelligence. Detroit Opera describes, “This brand-new production by Detroit Opera Artistic Director Yuval Sharon offers a fresh take on Mozart’s controversial comedy, where the role of Artificial Intelligence turns the tale into a futuristic experiment. Don Alfonso’s manipulations of the ‘emotions’ of his robotic inventions (the lovers) become an obsessive quest to develop spiritual machines.”

Image from Detroit Opera. 

Detroit Opera asks, “Will his laboratory of lovers lead to a breakthrough for ‘Humanity 2.0,’ or are human habits of jealousy and deceit hardwired into us?” 

Bravi tutti! One thing hardwired into me is enjoying opera as it rides its razor edge. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024