Don Giovanni

[poliphilo]

Classical opera speaks a strange language.

If the soprano is doing lots of trill-embellished vocal gymnastics it doesn't mean she's a shallow drama-queen but that she's in the grip of some deep and disturbing emotion and I should be paying her close attention and not waiting for her to shut up so something more interesting can happen.

And if the baritone sings something simple and pretty, it doesn't mean that he's Mother Nature's Son; it means he's a heartless cheat.

Complexity = sincerity: simplicity = duplicity. It's a formulation that goes clean against my mid-20th century instincts.

We watched the Joe Losey film of Don Giovanni yesterday. This is Mozart made easy. If the piggy little romantic hero spends too long over his aria I can tune him out and enjoy the Palladian architecture instead.

This is Don Octavio I'm talking about. I don't know who the singer was, but he looked like Ernie Wise.

Otherwise the casting is splendid. Raimondo Ruggieri has eyes that shine in the dark. Kiri ti Kanawa is wonderfully demented as the madwoman in the attic.

My favourite character is the hermaphroditic page who acts as Don Giovanni's shadow. Yes, I know, s/he's not in the script. Dare I say that what I liked best about her/him is that s/he keeps her mouth shut?

Gorgeous music. Gorgeous and mostly over my head.

Like being confronted with a wall-full of hieroglyphics.

Comments

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

Baroque opera is no less confusing by modern standards. I went to see Handel's Julius Caesar at the Proms this year. The title role originally went to a castrato, now sung by a mezzo-soprano. It doesn't sound very butch or heroic at all (though having the libretto - and its translation - to hand helps there) and the gender confusion tends to make it more comic than intended, or perceived by its original audiences.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I entirely agree. In fact, the rules in baroque opera seem to be that the higher the male voice is, the more heroic and admirable he is, and the lower, the more villainous. Rodelinda is a fabulous example, where the romantic hero is a countertenor (or, originally, a castrato, of course), the villain a bass, and the greedy but ultimately weak intermediary between the two of them a tenor. I find it does work quite well for me if the hero is a male counter-tenor, but even then you need to be acclimatised to that style of singing, I think.

Baroque opera does tend to offer more in the way of simple but emotionally arresting melodies, though. It certainly does by comparison with Romantic opera, which (with one or two exceptions) I frankly can't stand. While I consider myself an opera nut, what I really mean whenI say that is that I'm a baroque opera nut. And I'm more than ready to forgive people who say they don't like opera, because I know that in most cases, all they've ever heard is the tuneless wailing and warbling which seems to constitute Romantic opera.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the human brain is wired to find high-pitched noises more thrilling- and disturbing.

Something to do with the noises predators and their victims make-

Only a thought.....

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes - they certainly demand attention in a way that lower pitches don't. Which I suppose is why victims in particular make high-pitched noises, to attract attention and help.

My interpretation of the high=good, low=bad arrangements in baroque opera has always been that it is to do with 'heavenliness'. I suspect that a high voice would have been seen by contemporaries as being loftier, and closer to God, while a low one was devilish and demonic. After all, children have high voices, and they are pure and innocent.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Not all children...

http://www.skary.net/

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Hehehe! Oh, thanks for the link! That was great. :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think your interpretation is almost certainly the right one.

It still holds true, I think, that we like our heroes to have light voices. I can't think, off-hand, of any deep-voiced male movie star.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We are tuned to expect realism. And if a text isn't realist we expect it to be flagged up as surrealist or absurdist. The 17th and 18th century audiences didn't have these categories. They accepted that anything presented on stage would be artificial and were, perhaps, better schooled than we are in the suspension of disbelief.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

I love Raimondo Ruggieri, I've got him singing Escamillo in Carmen. You should get the DVD of "Carmen" with Domingo and Julia Mignes-Johnson in it. It's really HOT and if you don't like the singing, you can watch her move and understand how a man could toss away everything for a sexy woman (well, at least as far as in an opera).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ruggieri is not just a fine singer, he's got the kind of presence that lights up the screen.

I must watch more opera.

The production I really want to see Ingmar Bergman's Magic Flute.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

there's a lovely film version of "La Traviata", my personal favorite, also with Placido Domingo and Teresa Stratas as Violetta (tiny, beautiful, believably tubercular at the ending). Both Carmen and Traviata are also filmed as films, not movies of stage productions, so visually, they are quite splendid as well.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Seeing as how I'm movie-mad, it's probably the case that my best approach to opera is through cinema.

I saw Don Giovanni on stage once- about twenty years ago- and found it horribly static. I really liked the way Losey had people singing while walking through Palladian rooms or travelling through the marshes in boats.

Thanks for the recommendations.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

My little Japanese student, Fumi, is very much into opera and was trying to tell me about Don Giovanni a few weeks ago. In her enthusiasm, she can't quite bridge the gap between English and Japanese. She's excited that she's going to New York City in November and going to the opera...Carmen, she told me.

Fumi is just 19. She says she is only now getting old enough to appreciate operas like Don Giovanni.