Operatic Trio

I have written a couple of entries here about the free performances of the Metropolitan Opera that have been streaming nightly during the pandemic.  Since then my opera viewing has been more sporadic, but last week there were three presentations on three consecutive nights that I wanted to watch... two of my favorite operas, and one light-hearted operetta.

(images taken from the web)

Last Wednesday there was Jacque Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffman".  This opera is filled with beautiful, familiar music including the famous "Barcarolle", and it also has one of the most bizarre plots in the standard repertoire.  The drunken poet Hoffman tells his tavern buddies about the three loves of his life.  In Act One he falls in love with Olympia, only to discover that she is a mechanical doll.  (Diminutive, Korean-American soprano, Kathleen Kim, gave a stellar performance, not only for her singing but for her hilarious robotic movements.)  In Act Two, Hoffman falls for the singer Antonia (played by Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, one of the biggest names in opera today).  Antonia literally sings herself to death.  Finally, the poet is infatuated with Giulietta, a Venetian courtesan in league with the devil.

The costuming of the cast was very eccentric, with everything from 18th century powdered wigs to 1920's "flapper" styles.  The scientist who created the doll Olympia was dressed like a mad scientist out of an old horror movie. I was OK with that, but some of the outfits seemed rather gratuitous and ridiculous.  In Act One, a couple of the female dancers are dressed like strippers wearing nothing but panties and pasties.  In Act Three some of Guilietta's colleagues are lounging around in lingerie like Victoria's Secret models.  It seemed as if the producer was trying to titillate the audience with semi-nudity,  Other than that small quibble, I found the production very enjoyable.

On Thursday, the Met presented Franz Lehar's most famous operetta, "The Merry Widow".  The delightfully silly plot involves a fabulously wealthy widow from the fictitious Balkan principality of Pontevedro who comes to Paris where she meets an old beaux, Count Danilo.  The operetta was performed in English, and singers came from both the worlds of opera and the Broadway stage.  Playing the role of the widow was the famous soprano Renee Fleming, but frankly her voice sounded too operatic for this light and frothy work.  However, it was a fun production filled with lovely melodies including the famous "Merry Widow Waltz".  The costumes and stage setting were lavish and recreated Paris of the "belle époque".

Friday's presentation was one of my favorite opera's, Verdi's "La Traviata".  This was the first opera that I ever saw.  When I was a kid, back when the Metropolitan Opera would come to Cleveland for a week of performances, my mother took me to a Saturday matinee of this work.  I was probably too young to understand the plot, which was considered scandalous in its day.  It deals with Violetta, a courtesan (in other words, a high-priced "fallen woman") who is dying of consumption (tuberculosis). 

The music is beautiful, and the singers in this performance were all first rate.  However, this was one of those cases where the producer created a new "vision" of the opera that was just ludicrous, and screamed, "Oh, aren't we so avant garde!"   The stage setting for the entire work was a stark semi-circular room.  The only furnishings were an enormous clock, which I suppose represents that Violetta is living on borrowed time, and a few modern sofas.  Even in the final death-bed scene, the heroine does not have a bed in which to die.  She just staggers around the stage until she drops to the floor.   The costumes are all modern dress.  In the party scene in Act One, the entire chorus, both males and females, are all dressed as men in identical black suits.  It's as if all her clients came to visit her at once.  Throughout the opera there is an older man observing the action on the sidelines.  I thought that he must represent Death waiting for Violetta, but in the last act we find out that he is her doctor.  It was all so pretentious that it detracted from the music.  I wonder what Guiseppe Verdi  would have thought if he had seen what they had done to his opera.