Opera

Just got back from the opera. It was a performance of Verdi's "Macbeth". I don't think it was the original version as it premiered in Italy, but rather the later version that he adapted for Paris'ian opera houses because it included a ballet which wouldn't have been typical for when and where it was originally written.

How to put it properly... I think the quote by someone a couple rows behind me summed it up about right, "A beautiful performance. Wonderful singing. But who thought it was a good idea to adapt Shakespeare to opera?"

Well, Verdi did and he was a professional Italian opera-master... Myself I am a bit less certain. I think I would have liked the original version of it better, even if it would have been missing one of Lady Macbeth's four arias and one of the duets between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth because it also would have lost that confounded ballet bit in Act 3.

It isn't that I dislike ballet, though honestly I prefer opera to ballet because I don't need a script to figure out what the heck is happening on stage, but it is that having the witches ( of which they were a chorus of 33 ) dancing on stage before Macbeth enters to get their final prophecies from them felt a bit like that big bit in the desert in the middle of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. Beautifully done, well acted, but it felt really the frick out of place from the rest of the opera and if it wasn't for the fact it was coming right off of an intermission it would have really screwed up the pacing.

I suppose my major complaint though, and this is largely because I am such a fan of Shakespeare, is that the translation from english to italian meant that it lost a lot of the phrasing and sense of language that was in the Bard's original writing. Things like the complex word-play where Macduff spins metaphors for a few moments to escape having to say 'the king has been murdered' just didn't seem to translate across well. In part I think the fault is that the opera is condensed greatly in some places from the play ( while in other places like the ballet drags on... ) and so some of the dialogue may have been cut, but the english to italian translation likely is at least part to blame ( and the italian back to english subtitles couldn't have helped ).

Their isn't much bawdy in Macbeth that I can recall. I think in the scene right after the King is murdered the servant at the door tells a couple dirty jokes and has a bit of dialogue ( obscure today ) relating to the Gunpowder Plot that occured in British politics about that time. If their was any of Shakespeare's often huge bawdy streak left in the opera, it definately did not make it back into the english subtitles that showed up on the screen over the stage.

( If you don't know what I mean by bawdy, hit the library and find a copy of either Shakespeare's Bawdy or A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Sexual Puns and Their Significance. Both books are humorous reads and can make watching a Shakespeare play a lot more fun as you can finally understand all the humor in some of the more amusing lines. )

Anyways, still a fun evening. Left in the 2005/2006 Portland Opera Season, titled Power and Corruption, is "Nixon in China" which is next and "Don Giovanni" finishes the season. Don't have tickets yet to either of those, though pondering "Nixon in China" just because I haven't seen a modern opera for a whlie. I missed seeing "The Rape of Lucretia" back in December ( I forgot about it ) which was the opera before this one, which apparently is a pity as I heard several people say that it was an amazing performance.

The 2006/2007 season has a few announced that interest me: "Faust", "Norma" and "The Flying Dutchman" all look good. The 2006/2007 season is titled Truth and Transformation.

Anyways, passing time now until Full Metal Alchemist is on at midnite, then to bed and sleeping way in tomorrow after that.