Meine Frau and I saw a production of Massenet’s Werther (1892) in the legendary, historic, blah blah blah, Vienna Staatsoper. The production, although not insane, included the usual attention deficit disorder- induced decisions (set the story in the 1950s, put a working television on stage, why not?) They were in keeping with the main curtain or drop which had images of Popeye and the Incredible Hulk on it.*
The story, the adaptation, of The Sorrows of Young Werther was unbelievable, a disgrace, the creation of someone who apparently actively hated Goethe’s story and wanted to destroy it. A bizarre and inappropriate Christmas theme runs through the entire opera. Charlotte is given a younger sister who has a crush on Werther. And the entire last act is the final meeting between Werther and Charlotte, after (after!) Werther has fatally shot himself. That last act is a travesty, really.
But that last act (most of the previous act as well), a long duet between the two leads, was also a sort of pure flow of song that was basically as beautiful as any opera I know. I was best off ignoring the subject, ignoring the words entirely, just luxuriating in the singing.
Werther was sung by the young Spaniard Rolando Villazón. He was not the most forceful tenor I’ve ever heard, but he had an amazing clarity, a perfect tone. The Viennese audience applauded him as soon as he came to the fore of the stage, before he had sung a note, which I found weird, but he’d earned the applause by the end. Sophie Koch was Charlotte, almost as good.
Opera fans put up with a lot of nonsense. Maybe that’s true of fans of anything, 19th century literature included.
*In general, Vienna felt genuinely elegant. So I can’t explain this lapse.
Showing posts with label travesties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travesties. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other
This is a quote from Chapter 9 of Emma. Some pleasures I completely fail to understand are those found in hack* novels parastitically roped to Jane Austen. Some examples:
- a series of mysteries in which the detective is Jane Austen, now in its ninth volume. Ninth!
- a series of mysteries in which the detectives are Darcy and Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice, now in its third (!) volume.
- a series of romances, one for each of Darcy and Elizabeth's five daughters. Five, just like the Bennet sisters, ain't that clever. I don't know if the youngest two are complete idiots, just like the Bennet sisters.
Maybe I should link to these. They're easy enough to find, though, for the morbidly curious.
I understand how a mystery involving Jane Austen could be a hoot. But nine of them - nine verges on the soul-deadening. The Elizabeth & Darcy mysteries are even worse. I don't see how any of these books are really for fans of Jane Austen. They're travesties, ghastly parodies. They don't repeat or revisit the pleasures of the books, but instead mock them.
There are more - Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view, and various attempts at finishing Sanditon. I have a little more sympathy here. A gifted writer could potentially do something interesting here, along the line of Jean Rhys in The Wide Sargasso Sea. Sanditon in particular is a sad case. It is lovely and funny as a fragment, and would certainly have been as good as Austen's other books, so the temptation to finish it is not in and of itself a desecration. I have some doubts about the results.
Somewhere here is a failure of education. The reader of a Jane Austen mystery really wants more Jane Austen, so he settles for a feeble imitation. What he ought to do is expand his reading a bit, to Gaskell or Trollope or The Heart of Midlothian. Or follow Austen back to her sources, like Ann Radcliffe, or favorites, like Richardson.** Anyone who has been tempted by a Darcy and Elizabeth mystery should not just add Fanny Burney’s Evelina to their NetBoox queue, but should put it on the very top.
I think many Austen fans, perhaps most, actually do read like this. But there's another group that does not, who don't know how to explore in their reading, how to follow one book to another. Someone failed them somewhere.
Feel free to ignore everything the grump says - except do read Evelina!
* The author of the Darcy and Elizabeth mysteries previously wrote Dungeons and Dragons novels. Hack, hack, hack.
** Austen's favorite book was Sir Charles Grandison.
- a series of mysteries in which the detective is Jane Austen, now in its ninth volume. Ninth!
- a series of mysteries in which the detectives are Darcy and Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice, now in its third (!) volume.
- a series of romances, one for each of Darcy and Elizabeth's five daughters. Five, just like the Bennet sisters, ain't that clever. I don't know if the youngest two are complete idiots, just like the Bennet sisters.
Maybe I should link to these. They're easy enough to find, though, for the morbidly curious.
I understand how a mystery involving Jane Austen could be a hoot. But nine of them - nine verges on the soul-deadening. The Elizabeth & Darcy mysteries are even worse. I don't see how any of these books are really for fans of Jane Austen. They're travesties, ghastly parodies. They don't repeat or revisit the pleasures of the books, but instead mock them.
There are more - Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view, and various attempts at finishing Sanditon. I have a little more sympathy here. A gifted writer could potentially do something interesting here, along the line of Jean Rhys in The Wide Sargasso Sea. Sanditon in particular is a sad case. It is lovely and funny as a fragment, and would certainly have been as good as Austen's other books, so the temptation to finish it is not in and of itself a desecration. I have some doubts about the results.
Somewhere here is a failure of education. The reader of a Jane Austen mystery really wants more Jane Austen, so he settles for a feeble imitation. What he ought to do is expand his reading a bit, to Gaskell or Trollope or The Heart of Midlothian. Or follow Austen back to her sources, like Ann Radcliffe, or favorites, like Richardson.** Anyone who has been tempted by a Darcy and Elizabeth mystery should not just add Fanny Burney’s Evelina to their NetBoox queue, but should put it on the very top.
I think many Austen fans, perhaps most, actually do read like this. But there's another group that does not, who don't know how to explore in their reading, how to follow one book to another. Someone failed them somewhere.
Feel free to ignore everything the grump says - except do read Evelina!
* The author of the Darcy and Elizabeth mysteries previously wrote Dungeons and Dragons novels. Hack, hack, hack.
** Austen's favorite book was Sir Charles Grandison.
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