Of Castratos and Countertenors

 

“Not often they give us Handel!”  I spoke with enthusiasm to the older gentleman seated nearby as we waited for Met @ the Movies to start. I was excited about hearing this nearly 300 year old piece, but as all he said was “Thank God - no!” I understood he wasn’t as jacked as I was about this afternoon's broadcast.

Giulio Cesare was first performed in 1724. It was a hit in its day and has again acquired traction among fans of Baroque opera.  I was familiar with the music because during the 80’s, when I’d been researching Mozart, I’d acquired a Handel CD called “Arias for Senesimo,” featuring Drew Minter, a countertenor. I knew that in the 1770’s, the young Mozart had written for castratos, who were still a feature of the operatic world. (In case you're wondering: the Italians castrated young male singers in order to preserve their soprano/mezzo range.)   These days, we make do with women dressed as men for such roles, or, more recently, with countertenors, men who are able to sing into a higher range, by using “head voice,” a.k.a.,  falsetto.

 As was usual at the Met @ The Movies, I was the youngest person present, a phenomenon which saddens me.  I sincerely hope that opera, this glorious, arcane slice of Western Civ. is not on its way to the cultural junkyard.  I have to admit that Giulio Cesare is definitely not the kind of opera you’d take a neophyte to hear/see. Not everyone can handle a middle aged man with a beard singing in a beautiful soprano voice. Dramatically, too, this kind of Opera Seria was already considered “old-fashioned” in Mozart’s time, fifty years later. There isn’t a lot of character development or action. The structure of the arias is not complex, either—a statement and a restatement, varied only by the addition of increasingly florid vocal embellishments. (An “Aria of Love,” an “Aria of Rage,” an “Aria of Sorrow.”)  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUnohSWwIh0

 

I admit I spent the next 4 ½ hours watching two fabulous male leads who acrobatically sang, soprano and mezzo, and a marvelous female soprano playing the part of a boy in what is called a “trouser role.” (As I’ve said before, this is not everyone’s scene. ) The multi-talented Natalie Dessay, who sang Cleopatra, performed some astonishing “song and dance” numbers which showed that not only could she sing Handel, but she could dance to him, too, deft as any Broadway hoofer.   

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz7bM2DBd7Y

~~

Juliet Waldron

http://www.mozartswife.com

Met at the Movies

Spent an afternoon at Met at the Movies, a bright new idea by the venerable Metropolitan Opera to cast their net over a wider audience by transmitting their Saturday afternoon matinees into movie theaters around the world. I’ve been going to these ever since I found out about them, three years ago. At our Regal Theater, we’re also able to see a repeat on the Wednesday night following the Saturday afternoon broadcast.

Opera lovers are an odd, and, for the most part, elderly subset of the population, but they are thick enough upon the ground to fill a theater here in Central Pennsylvania. Seats are first come, first serve, so you’ll see the old folks coming early, especially the wheel-chair bound and the oxygen toting group, also carrying in their sandwiches and bottles of water semi-surreptitiously in their totes. At $22 a ticket per Senior, the theater staff has (so far) graciously looked the other way at this otherwise frowned-upon practice. I brought water and a sliced apple to carry me through the recent performance of Don Carlo by Verdi, as it was to last 4 ½ hours.

Young people are arriving more frequently at these performances, brought in by local colleges as part of their musical or humanities education. I’ve been glad to see them attending, and hope that a few of these become converts to this most peculiar Western art form.

I’ve never seen "Don Carlo" before, although I’ve heard it on the Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts. It’s dark, even for Verdi, with the usual repressed and emotionally abused heroine—in this case a princess, a pawn played both by father and husband. There is also an on-stage burning of heretics, (a gruesome depiction of fanatical cruelty), betrayals of friendship, and backstabbing, all culminating in the murder of a prince condoned by his kingly father. Lawlessness and violence committed by The Church and by Society are enduring themes in Verdi operas; his music carries the despairing message even more powerfully than his story lines. I usually leave such operas emotionally drained, and Don Carlo was no exception.

It’s interesting to attend these events, for besides the spectacle there are small conversations to be had while waiting for the show to begin. We opera goers have stories to share that can only be appreciated by others of our kind, for instance, reading the Milton Cross Complete Guide to the Stories of the Opera. We talk about listening to the Met Broadcasts on the radio as part of our childhood experience, and perhaps reminisce a little about the person who introduced us to the art. I can still see my mother, lounging on a pink tufted Chenille bed spread, her blonde cocker spaniel tucked beside her. With cigarettes, matches, ash tray, lying on her side with a mostly unread book, she’d have the radio on, listening to Grand Opera from New York City. Oddly, at our house, near Syracuse, we received our Metropolitan Saturday Afternoon performance from a station in Toronto. Through the ether, across Lake Ontario from Canada, Great Art arrived at our snow-bound house in the Finger Lakes. It’s always gray outside that remembered window, and always snowing. The music is the brightest color in the room, especially if I’m lying on the braided wool rug with my toys, being a "good girl" which meant not bothering her by talking, just quietly imagining.

Afternoon at the Opera

Just attended one of those wonderful HD transmissions in my local Regal theater. These originate at the Saturday matinee of the Metropolitan Opera’s "Aida."

“Met at the Movies” is a godsend to lots of us: elderly fans and to those who’d like to introduce kids to this peculiar Western art form, and folks like me who don’t have a zillion dollars for Trip to NYC + A Good Seat. I hope it raises some money for the Met, too, during this economic fall over the cliff we’ve just passed through.

It’s not only a real treat to see/hear the opera through the privileged eyes of cameras, but to get the commentary from the elegant Diva Renee Fleming. This week, she took us backstage to see fascinating things we’d never get a look at otherwise, like the formidable machinery that moves huge sets and multi-level stages in a few minutes, while stage hands, focused as any pit crew, swarm everywhere.

As the performance is broadcast live, all the glitches are there, too, like this week’s incident where the Prima Donna had to leap across a rapidly opening gap between two stages. Verdi Prima Donnas are not generally made for jumping, so her stumble when she landed elicited a gasp of real fear from the audience who really wanted her to survive to sing the last two acts.

When I was a kid, my mother spent her winter Saturday afternoons stretched on her bed with a cocker spaniel and a murder mystery. She chain-smoked and listened to the Metropolitan Opera’s radio broadcast. We managed to pick it up in the Finger Lakes, although the nearest station that carried it was in Toronto.

Grand Opera became the sonic background to many a snowy, freezing afternoon of childhood. I know this makes me a little strange, but the emotional depth and absolute beauty of operatic music became imprinted on my brain.

Yesterday, I sat in the theater, listening to the familiar score of "Aida" and remembered all sorts of things, like me and my best friend, Gay, dressing up and dancing to this music. A melancholy rush through time into a dark, cold Skaneateles afternoon...

Snow piled up outside, and the two of us, all of ten or eleven, played at ballet and make-believe, putting the needle back on the "Aida Highlights" record again and again. We danced in tights and undershirts, wearing junk jewelry we imagined was exotic, long polyester scarves and odds and ends from the costume box her clever seamstress mother maintained. For a few hours, we were Temple Priestesses or the Princess Amneris' dancing girls, not just kids in a small upstate town.