Thursday, October 05, 2006
Park and bark
My first ticket of the season was La Gioconda, an opera written at the twilight of what is known as the Bel Canto era. It is in every sense a diva’s opera – a grand, loud, long, epic tale of love, betrayl, murder and suicide. It is one of the great operatic melodramas and also contains the famous “dance of the hours”, a ballet now made infamous by Disney’s “Fantasia”.
For all that’s being done to update this intransigent art-form – new stage designers, cinema folk directing it, puppets, weight loss of the great dramatic sopranos, etc. – we are, in performances such as this, reminded that the genre is essentially music.
Starring were a great dramatic soprano and mezzo soprano Urmana and Borodina, respectively –they shook the dust off the rafters. The drama was in the sound and ooooh what a sound it was. In the last act, singing the famed aria “Suiciado!”, where Gioconda contemplates suicide, and vocally forces onto the audience her feelings with such power and intensity that it mattered little that it was coming from a 300 pound woman standing on stage. From all the way up in the balcony, my ears were buzzing. I would much rather hear this that some tiny soprano squeaking out Butterfly.
I was sucked in. Having worked late every night this week I was convinced I would not make it through the second act. But I made it through all five and and left the house after midnight beaming with energy.
The first arts page headlines “The Divas Take On La Gioconda” marks this as a true triumph.
Urmana (left) and Borodina in La Gioconda at the Metropolitan Opera
For all that’s being done to update this intransigent art-form – new stage designers, cinema folk directing it, puppets, weight loss of the great dramatic sopranos, etc. – we are, in performances such as this, reminded that the genre is essentially music.
Starring were a great dramatic soprano and mezzo soprano Urmana and Borodina, respectively –they shook the dust off the rafters. The drama was in the sound and ooooh what a sound it was. In the last act, singing the famed aria “Suiciado!”, where Gioconda contemplates suicide, and vocally forces onto the audience her feelings with such power and intensity that it mattered little that it was coming from a 300 pound woman standing on stage. From all the way up in the balcony, my ears were buzzing. I would much rather hear this that some tiny soprano squeaking out Butterfly.
I was sucked in. Having worked late every night this week I was convinced I would not make it through the second act. But I made it through all five and and left the house after midnight beaming with energy.
The first arts page headlines “The Divas Take On La Gioconda” marks this as a true triumph.
Urmana (left) and Borodina in La Gioconda at the Metropolitan Opera
# posted by otas : 6:28 PM
