HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Reds and readers, you are such a wise and literate crowd, and we’ve talked about books and magazines and movies and TV shows in our days – – but have we ever talked about opera?
Last week we went to Tanglewood, the beautiful music venue in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, to walk in the gardens and look at the art and to attend two concerts – – one of which was a performance of Tosca. We had seen Tosca once before, in Rome! At one of the very settings where the opera takes place, the Castel Sant'Angelo.
But this night, the performers were accompanied by the entire Boston Symphony Orchestra playing the gorgeous Puccini, and it was quite a tour de force. And though it was in Italian, there were supertitles of the dialogue in English above the stage, which made it easily understandable.
Sometimes the libretto of opera is a little…weird. Possibly that’s just the translation, but when everything has to be song, the performers wind up singing things like:
SACRISTAN
Oh! So sorry!
Be sure to close up when you leave.
CAVARADOSSI
Run along!
SACRISTAN
I'm going.
But Tosca is a fantastic story! And just as timely as ever, with the villain Scorpia, arrogant and power-hungry, using his ill-gotten power to control everyone around him.
As our hero Cavaradossi sings:
CAVARADOSSI
Scarpia? That licentious bigot who exploits
The uses of religion as refinements
For his libertine lust, and makes
Both the confessor and the hangman
The servant of his wantonness!
That sort of struck a chord with me. How about you?
And from the standpoint of crime fiction, there is such a suspenseful twist in the plot – – Scarpia, the villain, has captured Cavaradossi, and is about to have him shot by a firing squad. Tosca, the gorgeous jealous beauty, agrees to have a night of passion with him if he only pretends to execute her lover–and then allows them to escape.
Scarpia knows he has to make it look like he’s killed Cavaradossi, but he promises Tosca his sharpshooters will use only blanks.
This is all singing, remember :-)
But as Scarpia sings his instructions to his henchmen, we know, from the haughty lift of his eyebrows and his sarcastic intonation, that he is actually giving instructions to them to use real bullets. And kill Cavaradossi.
But! Tosca believes him. And sings, (of course,) to her lover, not to fear the firing squad, but that he must be a good actor and pretend to be shot and killed and then she will come take him away to the countryside.
Uh Oh. The audience knows that this is not going to happen.
And I have to say, the suspense of watching that firing squad line up, ( and it’s not often a firing squad has the Boston symphony to accompany it,) had everyone in the audience thinking run run, Scarpia was lying! And there was a poor Tosca, believing she had saved her lover.
And after the shots, she sings, of course, what a good actor, you really look believably dead! Or something like that.
And then she realizes what’s happened – – and a lot more drama ensues. And I haven’t even told you the whole thing, including a couple of murders.
But the music was gorgeous, and the performers were terrific, and it was a memorable summer evening under the roof of the Tanglewood music shed.
Reds and readers, do you like opera? Do you go to outdoor concerts in the summer?
LUCY BURDETTE: I do like opera, though I don’t know many and don’t understand a lot. When we were going to Paris, I convinced John to go to the opera with me. We saw Rigoletto from excellent last minute seats–it was glorious! I noticed that La Traviata will be at the Met this spring. That’s the one opera I’m familiar with because an old flame was performing in it in CT and did a lot of practicing LOL, so I’ll definitely go.
We are booked to go to Tanglewood in a couple of weeks. Luckily some good friends live in Lenox, so it’s much easier for us. We love going to see the rehearsals during the day too!
DEBORAH CROMBIE: Fun post, Hank! I had season tickets to the opera for at least a decade, back in the 80s/90s, with a friend. But I suppose life intervened in one way or another and we gradually stopped going. But this last year, I talked Kayti into going to a performance of Tosca (loved your dialogue breakdown!) and she loved it so much that she bought us FRONT ROW tickets to see Boheme this last spring! That was so amazing (only problem being we nearly broke our necks trying to read the supertitles!)
We just bought tickets to see Carmen in the fall and I’m very excited to introduce her to that glorious production and music. I’m really enjoying rediscovering a lot of this music myself as well as sharing it with her
RHYS BOWEN: I’m a big opera fan. My aunt took me to Rigoletto when I was 12 and I was hooked. For several years I sang in an opera chorus and absolutely loved it. It’s also a challenge as it’s not like a choir where other singers are singing the same notes as you. And you have to act while you sing. I was in La Traviata and cried every night in the third act ! I had to make sure my make up didn’t run.
I do love Tosca and almost all Italian opera. And Mozart. I’ve sung Magic Flute.And Carmen. But I can’t get into Wagner. To me it’s not hummable!
JENN McKINLAY: I’m with you on Wagner, Rhys. I used to have season tickets for the Arizona Opera (before kids) and I would groan whenever Wagner was in the line-up. My favorite production was a reimagined Carmen (by Arturo O’Farrill) set in a Cuban cigar factory in 1958. Carmen smuggles guns to her soldier and the rebels - it was brilliant!
HALLIE EPHRON: When I was in high school, they took us to see a comic opera. It was Gianni Schicchi … Something about a barber and that’s all I remember.
In Padua on my honeymoon we went to see an opera in the ancient arena. Aida. I remember it went on for more than 4 hours and the seats were hard and we hadn’t eaten dinner.
A Philistine, I know.
I was a huge fan of Broadway musicals because our parents took us to all the ones that traveled to Los Angeles. Carousel. Oklahoma. Annie get your gun. And we had the record albums and I’d play them over and over and sing along and dance around in our den. I never made the leap to opera.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: When I was a kid in Germany, a child-appropriate performance at the Stuttgart Opera was a part of our Christmas celebrations - I saw Hansel and Gretel, The Magic Flute, and Cenerentola (Cinderella.) But it was my college professor boyfriend (don’t judge!) who made me into the opera lover I am today. He took me to Mozart’s comic operas: The Marriage of Figaro, Abduction from the Seraglio and my fave, Cosi fan Tutti.
I utterly fell in love, and gradually expanded my tastes to include other light operas, then the dramatic warhorses, then Wagner (in a category all his own) and finally modern compositions. The most amazing opera I’ve heard in recent years, in fact, was The Hours (2022) based on Michael Cunningham’s bestseller.
Thank God for the Met’s simulcasts! I haven’t seen a live performance in years, but I’m a regular attendee at the Frye Academy Theater on opera Saturdays.
HANK: And I will never forget the day in Paris when were just happen to be at the Champs de Mars when the Three Tenors were about to perform. It was a free concert, can you believe it? And we found a perfect spot on the grass, and we were transported.
Of course, any performance of anything is awful if you are hungry or cold or confused or bored or not in the mood.
If you’d like a tiny taste of some perfect opera, please please listen to these. I dare you not to love them. And they are completely hummable.
Here’s O mio Babbino caro, from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. (Maria Callas!)
Here’s the duet from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers. (This is a great version, but it's not on video.)
Here’s Nessun Dorma, from Puccini’s Turandot. (Pavarotti!)
(And go look for yourself for the irresistible Carmen, and the gorgeous Madame Butterfly, and the tear-inducing La Boheme. Oh, and again, I dare you not to start marching around to the Triumphal March from Aida.)
Here--at the Met! No elephants in this version, but it is WAY ridiculously over the top. The music is incredible, but I am still laughing at the performance. And imagining the cast call for the supernumeraries: "Anyone, anyone, we'll take ANYONE!)
Reds and readers, tell us how you feel about opera.
(We’ll do musicals another day.)
