Secco Recit

People like to complain about the terrible lessons of the old Disney films. Cinderella is too passive. Belle has Stockholm Syndrome. Ariel is just an idiot. And they've tried to appeal more to modern audiences by deviating from the standard stories and creating more proactive princesses in films such as The Princess And The Frog  and Frozen , often to the point of feeling really self-conscious and heavy-handed. Not to detract from these movies, of course (and certainly not to detract from the scores, most of which are very good and by Alan Menken). I didn't generate these complaints. I'm relaying them secondhand, and relaying them because I think I can offer a suitable alternative. Several of these classic fairy tales have ready-made operatic alternatives with smart protagonists, good morals, good music, and are out of copyright and already Disney-ready. So to the Disney execs reading this (I know you're out there among my half-dozen or so readers I'm sure I dearly ...

In spite of my last post, and perhaps against my better judgment, I really want to like La Rondine . It's a hodgepodge of romantic cliches, but I see why the characters and setting would have been appealing to Puccini. Well, except for the fact that he didn't seem to write any other operas that even approach being similar. Maybe a little Manon Lescaut . And on the face of it, La Rondine  seems like, if not phenomenal, it should at least be a good respectable opera like Francesca Da Rimini . Zandonai's Francesca  opera, by the way, is one I readily cite as an example of a terrific score making up for perhaps a less-than-satisfactory libretto. But to me, La Rondine  falls flat. But I want to like it. So I'm going to dissect it, focusing on the character of Prunier, the poet. Because when all else fails, making things meta automatically makes them better. Prunier is the first character to whom we're really introduced. He is a poet, and he has a half-finished song abo...

Dear Puccini, First off, happy birthday! Thanks for the great operas and all that. Now, can I ask you a question about La Rondine? The question is... well, La Rondine. I don't get it. I mean, I understand it, but it's like Act I of Die Fledermaus followed by Act II of La Boheme followed by the first half of Act II of La Traviata, but without the baritone part that makes it legit. And then no one dies! So, good job on the music and all that. It's probably one of my favorite scores from you. But... La Rondine. What's up with that?

I saw the City Center Encores! Off Center production of A New Brain  yesterday. A New Brain , by William Finn and James Lapine, seems on the face of it a fairly simple concept. Composer-lyricist Gordon Schwinn is stuck writing for a kids' show, a job which he hates, and then he suffers a... brain thing, and has to undergo high-risk surgery, causing him to reevaluate his life, and emerge with a new appreciation for singing frogs. (This is  based on a real event in William Finn's life; apparently James Lapine would urge him in the hospital to take notes.) The musical also concerns how this situation is handled by the other people in Gordon's life, including his mother, his boyfriend Roger, his colleague and friend Rhoda, and a homeless lady. I suppose I should give a review. (Look at that! My first review!) This review I should preface by saying I absolutely loved the show and all of its elements. I will, however, be trying to give an honest critique of the show. Whatever...

So, nobody dies in Aida . How's that for a hook? Definitely a good tagline for an opera, "Nobody dies!" isn't it? I'd go see that opera. But really, think about the plot of Aida  for a moment. Set in ancient times, there's a king of a country near northern Africa, and he's fighting against a certain people to whom go our sympathies. This king's daughter is involved in a love triangle with a member of said people and a conflicted third party with interests in both factions. The members of the love triangle are a soprano, a mezzo, and a tenor, but not necessarily in that order. Anyway, through some shenanigans, the conflicted third party is sentenced to death, but don't worry, because member of fought-against-people-to-whom-go-our-sympathies and conflicted third party both survive the Act IV curtain, and presumably live happily ever after. Oh, also, there's a famous chorus in the second scene of some act or another that has people singing abo...

The way you're brought up can affect how you view the world in some seriously strange ways. I, for instance, was brought up with the card game Set. We would mostly (and still do, though less frequently, particularly as we add new games to our collection) play this game on family trips during the evenings when we had nothing else to do. So I've never played Set  seriously or competitively (if that's even a thing), but over the years of playing it occasionally, it seems to have become thoroughly ingrained in my mind. This Tetris effect has been lying in wait for quite some time before it decided to to come out into the open. I was thinking the other day about Donizetti's three queens. I know it wasn't his intention for them to be presented holistically as a trilogy, but that's the way they are today, and so that's the way I was thinking about them. And in particular, I was thinking about all the reasons they make for a terrible trilogy. I mean, I love the th...

So I was considering the order of the acts in The Tales Of Hoffmann . Each act, save for the prologue and epilogue, is a mostly independent story about Hoffmann meeting a soprano, falling in love, and, of course, it doesn't work out for various reasons. Meanwhile Nicklausse is just hanging around waiting for Hoffmann to get a clue. The acts were written in the order of Olympia-Antonia-Giulietta (each act being called by the name of the soprano starring in it), which I will shorten here to OAG. But a lot of performances perform the acts OGA, swapping Giulietta and Antonia. There's a very good reason for this, I think, in that Antonia's act is the most dramatic, at least musically, and is the only act to end in true tragedy. Ordering the acts OGA, you start with the fairly lighthearted Olympia act, and then go on to the fairy-tale Giulietta act (okay, they're all fairy-tales; Giulietta feels the most like it to me; it's plot dense, alright?) before getting to the comp...