Plot of The Letter

The opera The Letter is by Paul Moravec on a libretto by Terry Teachout after the play by W. Somerset Maugham. It fills the requirement that opera is a chick flick. You don’t get chick-flickier than an opera based on a Bette Davis movie.

This is an opera based on a movie, based on a play, based on a short story, and finally based on a real incident in Singapore.

The lover says he wants to break up with the heroine, that he has found someone new. The heroine shoots him 6 times, stopping only because she runs out of bullets. Heroine makes up a story that the lover was trying to rape her.

A letter surfaces in her handwriting arranging for a tryst with the lover. Oops. The lover’s new Chinese girlfriend is the one who discovers the letter and offers it for sale. The price is all the money they have. The idea of the letter first appeared in the play.

There are variations in the many versions of the story. In the movie the Chinese girlfriend is his wife. In the other versions she’s his mistress.

The heroine is tried for murder and acquitted. Her husband says he still loves her, but she admits she still loves the man she killed. Each version of the story seems to have a different ending. In the movie the Chinese wife kills her. In the opera she commits suicide.

The major innovation in the opera is that the tenor lover reappears in flashback at various points.

Elixir

I don't have to tell anyone the plot of Donizetti's The Elixir of Love, I'm sure. And I'm not giving anything away to tell that the elixir is a bottle of claret. At the Santa Fe Opera the hero Nemorino has a car repair business directly across from the school where Adina teaches. Nemorino spends his time repairing a red sports car. The setting is post WWII Italy.

This is lots of fun. Everyone is just as they should be. Dmitri Pittas as Nemorino is lumbering and sweet voiced and does a mean "Una furtiva lagrima." He used to be an apprentice here.

Jennifer Black as Adina is arrogant, confused and sweetly sung, just as she should be. She was also formerly an apprentice. Her appearance is underwritten.

It is arguable that the true elixir is the appearance in this small Italian town of the American occupation army. It is the bold and daring Sergeant Belcore who starts the romantic ball rolling.

One of the more delicious bits of staging occurs when the girls of the town, except for Adina, hear the rumor that Nemorino is suddenly rich. They line up across the stage and start primping themselves to become more attractive to the new most eligible bachelor. In fact there is a lot of cute business in this production. Bravo.

I understand that Thomas Hammons as Dr. Dulcamara was a last minute rescue for the cancellation of John Del Carlo. Hammons has his opera buffa down cold. Instead of the elaborate wagon of other productions, the doctor appears disguised as an old woman carrying two suitcases with two carabinieri hot on his tail.

Great fun. Everybody left smiling.

Daphne Odjig

This is called Pebbles on the Beach. I went mad for this painter in the museum of contemporary native art in Santa Fe today. She is from Canada.


One of the pictures included a portrait of Picasso. He is a major influence on her work. Another is native symbolism. She is varied and very exciting.

Cute at Santa Fe (so far)

Saimir Pirgu, Alfredo


Paul Groves, Admete

Apologies to the barihunks crowd--these guys are both tenors.

Blogging

It would not be possible to imagine a greater stylistic contrast than we heard over the last two nights: the lively and athletic Natalie Dessay singing the lively and dynamic Verdi, followed by the stately and powerful Christine Brewer singing the sedate and sleep-inducing Gluck. The only thing that seemed similar was the dancing.

If you haven't been, the Santa Fe Opera venue is open to the elements. The weather is at nature's whim. We saw lightning in the distance both nights while the temperature stayed warm. As you wander around the grounds, everywhere are beautiful young people directing your way. Highly recommended.

The lecturer for La Traviata mentioned "The Lisbon Traviata"--Maria Callas's legendary 1958 performance of Violetta in Lisbon. Apparently you can buy this from House of Opera if you look for a city called lisbonne.

Brewer's Alceste

If it's Wednesday at the Santa Fe Opera, it must be Gluck's Alceste, pronounced al-SEST-uh when they are singing her name in the opera. Admete (ad-MET-uh), the king of Thessaly, is dying, and the oracle says that if someone else will volunteer to die, he will be spared. His beloved wife Alceste volunteers. When he recovers, she is still alive, and he asks her why she is not happy and celebrating with the others.

I'm giving the plot because nobody knows this opera. In this production they drag the dying king around the stage throughout the first act even though he has no lines. Then in the second act when he has recovered, he does a Greek dance with members of the ballet. The time and place for the opera would seem to be almost modern Greece. We are seeing the French version which includes a lot of ballet, performed primarily by dancers costumed as imps from hell.

The king hounds Alceste until she admits that it is she who will die in his place. Hercules appears and all descend into hell. There's a scene where Admete and Alceste compete over who will die. Death gives the choice to Alceste, but Hercules persuades them all to return. Then Apollo appears and allows both of them to live.

It isn't clear exactly what's going on, but there is intended to be a happy ending. Operas still usually had happy endings in that era. In the Santa Fe production a sign saying "La Mort" is carried out and when it is wrapped around someone, that means they died. In this manner they kill off an old couple at the end, and the opera ends with both Admete and Alceste dying. The music just kind of peters out.

The music is endlessly soothing and peaceful. Sturm und Drang has definitely died by this time. And, yes,Handel was right--there is not the tiniest hint of counterpoint. It took substantial doses of the excellent coffee provided by the opera to keep awake. The monotonous texture of solo singing with virtually no duets or ensembles is broken only by the chorus, a very welcome change. The chorus work at the Santa Fe Opera is excellent.

Why do this somber work? Berlioz is supposed to have liked this opera. Because it has a marvelous role for Christine Brewer, and she asked to be allowed to sing it here. She sings virtually throughout the opera and has a couple of marvelous arias. "Divinite du Styx" at the end of act one is especially rousing. The action is not too demanding. She was blocked in such a way to allow for occasional sitting. It is not too common to experience Brewer in an opera, especially one that is so perfect for her talents. Hear hear.

Sharing the stage with her was the excellent Paul Groves as Admete. The opera lasted about half an hour too long for me, and I could be heard muttering "Gott sei dank" when the lights finally went down at the end.

The eleven year old Mozart attended the Italian version of this opera in 1767 in Vienna with his father.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1760-1780]

Blogging

They were selling some gorgeous pictures of Natalie in the shop, so I'll try to pick some up to post. I don't know why I didn't yesterday.

I took a couple of shots showing the view of the sunset from my seat. I'll maybe post one of those eventually. La Traviata was accompanied by distant lightning.

Santa Fe is an opera experience like no other. They remember how you get great singers to sing in your house: you ask them what they want to sing that no one else will let them sing. Kurt Herbert Adler used to do this.

The t-shirts are not cute. At least to me. I'll just have to keep wearing my Daphne shirt.

Dessay's Traviata

In the autobiographical novel La Dame aux Camélias by Alexander Dumas the Younger the life of the courtesan Marguerite Gautier is presented in flashback after she has died. The production of La Traviata at the Santa Fe Opera uses this device. During the somber music that opens the opera, Violetta’s coffin is carried across the stage while Alfredo looks on. The novel formed the basis for the play of the same name, which in turn formed the basis for the opera by Verdi.

What makes this production special is that it is Natalie Dessay’s first Violetta on any stage. The performance is about her.

It is clearer than it has ever been that we are being shown in act I and the second scene of act II two parties being thrown by two prostitutes, Violetta and her friend Flora, for their rich clients. There is no sedate nineteenth century dignity here. When Natalie is carried on to the stage in her flaming red dress, she raises her arms and screams as loud as she can. There is drinking and carousing. At last we see why we should be shocked by her. Violetta is a party girl.

At Flora’s party the gypsy music is staged as the girls displaying what they have to offer to the highest bidder, and the men pretending to be matadors in pursuit of them. This was very effective.

However, we are not always sure of our footing with regard to period. The men wear nineteenth century top hats, especially the already quite tall Laurent Naouri who sang Giorgio Germont. But in the same scene Violetta wears pants, something I don’t recall hearing of anywhere outside the wild west. It gives her freedom of movement to show how healthy and happy Violetta is feeling at this time.

The floor of the stage is littered with large gray rectangular boxes, requiring Natalie to jump from one to another throughout the opera. Violetta may be dying, but Natalie Dessay is obviously quite athletic.

It is a Traviata for Natalie. Her vocal fragility becomes the heart of her characterization. We feel the emotions of each scene instead of merely seeing them written on the translation screens. We felt her reluctance to give herself to love followed by her complete commitment. We felt Violetta’s growing illness and death as real events. In this production she dies entirely alone.


Laurent Naouri is a beautiful singer one would like to hear more of. Alfredo was sung by Saimir Pirgu who is Albanian and quite adorably handsome. Is that enough to guarantee him a career? We’ll have to see.

Frédéric Chaslin conducted. He is part of a whole team that accompanied Natalie from France, including Louis Désiré, Laurent Polly, Chantel Thomas, and Jean-Jacques Delmotte who did the scene and costume designs.

I think at this point there will need to be a personal moratorium on La Traviata.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1850-70]

At Santa Fe

I am at Santa Fe with the Elderhostel, and in the mornings we hear lectures about the opera we will hear that evening.


Ron Grinage, the instructor, played a recording of Natalie Dessay singing the big aria from La Traviata. Toward the end a tenor came in. Who could this be that arouses such a visceral unease? We think Roberto Alagna is adorable, we like his voice and even his style. So what exactly is the source of the anxiety?

We said that pitch variation was part of the performer's interpretation. You must always feel that the performer.... How can I properly express this? I need to feel that the singer is always aware of what the pitch is supposed to be. He sometimes leaves a queasy feeling. Maybe he could use auto-tune.

Tonight we see Natalie in La Traviata. Her husband, Laurent Naouri, plays Georgio Germont in this production. They come with the whole family and spend the summer.


These are Maciej Pikulski, Natalie Dessay, Laurent Naouri.

Auto-Tune

Have all the pop songs started to sound exactly the same? Have you started to think you're becoming senile because you can't tell one performance from another? Well, blame it all on auto-tune.

According to Wikipedia, this is a software and/or hardware device that takes any performance and corrects all the out of tune parts.

According to Wikipedia, "According to the Boston Herald, 'Country stars Reba McEntire, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw have all confessed to using Auto-Tune in performance, claiming it is a safety net that guarantees a good performance.' Sara Evans, John Michael Montgomery and Gary LeVox of the group Rascal Flatts also rely on Auto-Tune to compensate for pitch problems. However, other country music singers, such as Loretta Lynn, Allison Moorer, Trisha Yearwood, Vince Gill, Garth Brooks, Martina McBride, and Patty Loveless have refused to use Auto-Tune."

Isn't this interesting! I have started to wonder what an auto-tuned "O mio babbino caro" would sound like. Or maybe an auto-tuned Elvis. Opera may be the last vestige of real singing.

Please see "Tools of Expression" in the previous blog entry. Pitch modifications are part of the song, part of the artist's interpretation. Except for the ones that mean you're tone deaf and should probably not be singing in the first place.

The mind boggles. It isn't your imagination--they actually want to all sound alike.



Or auto-tune anything. Don't you really like Katie Couric better this way?