Lucia di Lammermoor

I saw the opera Lucia di Lammermoor Wednesday evening with Cicily.

The opera was performed at the Met, in NYC, but we watched it on a live feed to a theater in West Springfield, Mass. in HD. Part of the Metropolitan Opera's attempt to make itself a global franchise.

Of course, nothing is quite so real an immediate presence as ... immediate presence. In other words, any electronic mediation is different from Being There. Still, the good folks behind this try to make up for the mediation by backstage segments between the Acts, in which the audience in places like West Springfield gets to watch the crew putting the next Act's scenery in place or listen to live interviews with the singers/actors about how they're psyching themselves up for the big aria ahead of them etc.

Lucia was excellently done. My congrats to everyone involved.

The story comes from a Walter Scott novel The Bride of Lammermoor. Scott wrote it in 1819 and set the events in the Scotland of a little more than a century before -- in the time of Queen Anne.

The plot involves two feuding families, Ravenswood and Ashton. Edgar Ravenswood is in love with an Ashton heiress, Lucy. They pledge their troth. Soon after the pledge is made, Edgar has to travel to France for pressing political reasons.

While he is away, the rest of the Ashton family press Lucy to renounce Edgar and marry the Laird of Bucklaw, who will be a powerful political ally and defender, helping the family restore its past glories. In Scott's novel, it is Lucy's mother who sets these machinations in place. In Donizetti's opera, on the other hand, Lucy is mourning her recently deceased mother when the curtain first rises: it is her brother who plays the true-love-frustrating villain.

This lets the opera tell the tale as a woman caught between two men.

In either version, though, Lucy goes ahead with the arranged marriage, goes mad, and stabs the groom when they are alone in their bedchamber. The groom survives his injuries in Scott, though they are fatal in the opera. Lucy descends further into madness and, soon enough, into death.

In either version, Edgar too dies soon thereafter, though his death is managed somewhat differently in each.

The short description of either tale, though, is that it is a transmutation of Shakespeare's story of star-crossed lovers to the Scottish moors.

Donizetti (and his librettist, Salvadore Cammarano) are faithful to the spirit of Scott's story, taking the usual liberties as I have mentioned, and of course giving all the characters the Italian variant of the name Scott had bestowed upon them.

This particular production of Lucia took a further liberty. It moved the setting forward in time, to a period more recent than the opera's composition, although only slightly so. This is a early-Victorian-era Lucia. The chorus looks a bit like they wandered in from a Sherlock Holmes movie. At one point, an early camera is set up on a tripod in order to take a wedding-day photo.

I don't know whether those changes are entirely successful, but I suppose Mary Zimmerman is entitled to her own vision.

Metropolitan Opera

I've been looking over what the Metropolitan Opera is offering for the 2010-2011 season.

Most of the offerings will sound quite familiar even to those of us who haven't spent a lot of time in opera houses:

Wagner, DAS RHEINGOLD and DAS WALKURE
Verdi, LA TRAVIATA and DON CARLO
Mozart, DIE ZAUBERFLOTE
Donizetti, LUCIA Di LAMERMOOR
Strauss, ARIADNE AUF NAXOS
Mussorgsky, BORIS GODUNOV (this opera was apparently the inspiration for the family name of Boris and Natasha in the old Bullwinkle cartoons -- enough reason to love it), and
Bizet, CARMEN.

There are other performances scheduled that aren't quite so renowned, at least to an ignoramus such as myself. There is:

Adams, NIXON IN CHINA
Tchaikovsky, THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Berg, WOZZECK.

Let us pause on that last one. Alan Berg was, it appears, both the librettist and the composer of WOZZECK, an opera first performed in 1925 in Berlin, and first performed in the United States in Philadelphia in 1931. The opera was based on a play by Georg Buchner, illustrating the hopelessness of the lives of the poor.

I don't think I'll go see that one.

Lincoln Center

Continuing the story of this past Saturday....

We caught a bit of a college basketball game on television before getting a cab to Lincoln Center. We saw that Marquette was winning against a team described on the screen and, so far as we could tell, in the announcer's patter too, simply as IPFW. So we wondered who the heck was IPFW.

Our best guess, putting our collective heads together, was "Institute of Photography at Fort Worth." So we had an image of tall Texan photographers competing with the Marquette Golden Eagles.

Turns out that IPFW actually stands for Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne, about whose sports teams (the Mastodons) you can read here.

Anyway, we left before the result of the game was decided, shared a cab with a kindly woman heading to 60th street, and arrived at Lincoln Center.

The Metropolitan Opera House there features a couple of striking murals painted by Marc Chagall. I'll upload one of them, above and to the left of this text.

The opera house also features wonderful chandeliers. I got a good view of the most striking of them the last time I was at the Met, back in February (to see Manon Lescaut) when I sat in a gallery, up with the gods.

For this trip, though, Cicily and I had orchestra seats, and back far enough so that the balconies rose up above us, cutting off the great chandelier from our line of sight. Alas.

I'll say something about the actual performance tomorrow. Today I seem to have gotten myself onto the physical description of the Met, so I'll make a historical observation attendent thereto.

Ground was ceremonially broken on the future Lincoln Center by President Dwight D. Eisenhower back in May 1959, when I was seven months old. As soon as Ike turned that first spade of earth, the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein struck up Handel's Hallelujah chorus. Who was the Messiah by implication? Robert Moses?

There is an irony in Bernstein's participation, for Lincoln Center was planted right in the middle of the neighborhood that Bernstein had celebrated in the Broadway musical "West Side Story." Well ... I don't know if "celebrated" is the right word. That musical didn't end happily, IIRC. Anyway, the neighborhood was transformed for better or worse (no doubt for both in different respects) into a cultural hub.

And so, 49 and a half years after that ceremony, Christopher and Cicily take their seats in the orchestra section of the Opera House for a performance of Don Giovanni. So moves the universe, wheels within wheels.

Heading to the Met

I'm going to NYC one week from tomorrow -- December 13th -- for an evening performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

This time I've rented a tux in advance. I know I risk looking goofily overdressed, but hey: I haven't worn a tux since a mid-1970s prom best forgotten. I'm bloody well gonna wear one in 8 days.

But enough about me. What about the opera? Here's the story.

And the cast? Erwin Schrott has the title role. Dorothea Roschmann is Donna Elvira: Tamar Iveri, Donna Anna: Isabel Leonard, Zerlina: Matthew Polenzani, Don Ottavio: Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Leporello: Joshua Bloom, Masetto. Kwangchul Youn plays the The Commendatore. Lothar Koenigs will conduct.

Ms Roschmann has only recently stepped into her role. Before Dec. 1, this production's Elvira was Petra-Maria Schitzer.

Going back a bit further, in the Vienna premier of this opera, in May 1788, the part was originated by a soprano with the lovely name Caterina Cavalieri. And wikipedia tells me that Catarina had studied voice with ... Antonio Salieri.

I imagine he was teaching her well, when he wasn't too occupied cursing his own mediocrity.

Once around, four acts

I did make it to the Met yesterday.

I was a little taken aback by the one-scene nature of each of the four acts of the opera. I'm more accustomed to the sort of drama that is divided both into acts and into scenes, the difference tactically being just that a change of scenes leaves less time between curtain down and curtain up than does a change of acts!

But in an opera, or at least this one, each act obeys within itself the classical unities of time, place, action. Though there are narrative gaps (huge ones) between them.

I was also surprised by the fact that the cast of each act came out to take a bow after the curtain closed on that one, rather than simply saving the curtain calls for the whole cast for the end. Well, conventions are what they are.

I won't speak of Manon Lescaut as an opera, beyond the little bit of canned-erudition I included in yesterday's entry here. Beyond that, I'll link you to a synopsis.

I will say, though, that I love seeing "understudy" slips in a program, especially with regard to the leading roles. It means some one is getting a break -- a chance to star for which he/she had prepared without any firm expectation -- without even perhaps daring to hope (since that would mean hoping for the illness of a lead, and who could do that?).

At the performance last night, Maria Gavrilova sang the title role, replacing Karita Mattila.

Richard Bernstein also fell ill. He had been singing the role of the captain of the ship that transports prisoners from France to Louisiana. That role fell last night to Keith Miller.

I can't say that the role of the Captain stood out for me. But Manon of course did! and I can say that Ms Gavrilova has a wonderful voice -- and that it's hard to imagine her performance being bettered. The crucial business in which she taunts her older lover with a mirror came off especially well, I think.

I don't see myself becoming an aficionado but I'm glad I went. Even the detour through the streets of the borough of Queens on the way home was instructive.

Puccini

I'll be travelling to NYC later today, to see a performance of Manon Lescaut in the evening.

Manon was the third opera composed by Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (now THERE's a name) -- and the first of his to make a big splash at the time, or become a regular in the canon since.

So indulge me while I reflect on Puccini. What about those first two operas, the ones that preceded his fame? The first was Le Villi (1884), about forest spirits or faeries. The second Edgar (1889), about a young man of that name struggling to choose between his chaste home town girlfriend and an exotic gypsy. The two female participants in the triangle are named Fidelia and Tigrana respectively. Now there's an unsubtle bit of naming.

Manon came along in 1893. One fascinating fact about this opera to a wordsmith like myself: it had five librettists. The publisher (Giulio Ricordi) also contributed to the libretto, as did Puccini himself. None of their seven names appear on the title page of the original score.

Puccini wrote nine operas thereafter: including such repertoire pillars as Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot. Turandot was his final work, left incomplete at his death in November 1924.

There was, one might say, an operatic quality to Puccini's life. In 1909, his wife accused their maid of having an affair with him. The maid subsequently committed suicide, and her family sued the Puccinis. In an opera, of course, there would have been a duel, not a lawsuit. Still, it seems an appropriate scandal.

The Quest for a Tuxedo

Until about a year ago, my home town supported a formal rental shop, known as Squire Tux. Until two days ago, I was under the distinct impression that Squire Tux was still in business. Unfortunately, I had no idea how much lead time the staff of such a place need to prepare a tuxedo for a formal event, so I didn't make any real effort to inquire about renting from them until Tuesday morning. The events thereafter proved surprisingly dramatic.

I'm going to the Met this coming Saturday evening, to see Manon Lescaut, a production reviewed by the New York Times here, and I had hoped (I had even resolved) to wear a tux for the occasion.

So I called Tuesday morning. The telephone number is such as to indicate that I'm talking to somebody at the old location for Squire Tux. Right area code, right prefix thereafter. Nobody at the other end of the line tells me I'm not. What they do tell me, though, is that I'll have to pay a premium, a special "rush charge" to be fitted and have the thing ready for Saturday. Fine, I say obligingly.

Then we make an appointment for 8 in the evening.

By 7:30 I obtain the Squire Tux address on the internet ("anywho.com") to be sure my memory is right -- the address conforms with my memory, and I set off though its early for the Elm Street location. It isn't there. I go up and down the street a couple of times, then go into one of the malls there, and start talking to shop owners. Finally, one of them tells me, "Oh, that closed down about a year ago, though I think they're in Holyoke now."

Well, I go back home -- I'm not in possession of my blackberry these days, though that's another story -- and start trying to call Squire Tux again to ask where they are. I get busy signals over and over. I do some quick research -- delving a little deeper than the anywho listing -- and discover that yes, Squire Tux went out of business a year ago. They seem to have merged with another company called Mr. Tux, but to have closed the stores under the older name.

I then called Beverly, Mass., the HQ of Mr. Tux. A woman there tells me the phone had probably rung through to West Springfield (not Holyoke). But it's now closing in on 8:30 and the propect of getting to that store by closing time at 9 looks dim.

So: I find that there's a Mr. Tux somewhat closer. In Springfield, at the border with Indian Orchard. That I can make. I call them to be sure they're open. They are, a young man tells me. And they'll stay open until 9. If I get there by 9, they'll stay there as long as needed to serve me. Okay, the time is a little tight, but I'll give it a try.

I hop in the car and it looks like I'll be there. Then, half way there, a freak quick snow squall hits Springfield. Almost blinding. I couldn't see three feet in front of the car at the worst of it. This, unsurprisingly, slows me down.

I pull into the Mr. Tux parking lot just as my watch is telling me it IS 9. Jumping out of the car, I see a young man and a young woman closing up the store. I identify myself as the fellow one of them spoke to on the phone half an hour earlier.

He says, "Well, we gave you the benefit of the doubt, sir, but you didn't make it in time."

The benefit of the doubt? What kind of expression is that? What doubt? what benefit?

I yell, "how much more quickly through the snow storm would you have wanted me to drive?" and get back into my car, feeling thoroughly disgruntled.

Okay, so the storm wasn't their fault, unless Mr. Tux has snow making equipment and used it to play with me. Which seems unlikely. But is that "benefit of the doubt" line what they teach in customer service classes? And why, a year after Squire Tux is gone, is it still so easy for the casual customer to think he's talking to an Enfield store of that name? Anywho listing, location-appropriate phone number, an "appointment" with no specification of place other than that which I thought I had just called.

I wrote the folks in Beverly about all this. I'll accept a free tuxedo in the mail. It would make me feel better.