More later but I did watch the Figaro section last night (and then promptly crashed) and I have been having a lot of FEELINGS and THOUGHTS!
-Vienna!Joe! :D
-Not specific to the theatrical production, but this is the first time I've watched any version of Amadeus since I fell in love with opera and it is suuuuuch an experience. Not least because the movie was my very first introduction to opera as a Thing, particularly a Thing that people might love, and so a lot of how I can articulate how I feel about Mozart's operas is, I am realizing, informed by Salieri's words here. And so there's a lot of "YES YES WOW THIS IS JUST SO EXACTLY THE WAY IT IS" overlaid by remembering that all the other times I've watched it I was kind of ?? about opera.
-Specific to the theatre production, the highly stylized bits, like where Mozart talks about everyone being a quartet while people freeze in place, and Salieri gesticulates alongside the singers in the finale of Nozze -- those all work sooooo well and I'm so glad I got to see this production!
-Though... in this section the Mozart interpretation really starts hampering the production, I feel. In Act I it didn't matter so much because it was all about Salieri's reactions to Mozart, but in this specific bit where he's talking about the music in Figaro as well as wanting to write a quartet with Salieri and Mozart and the other two guys I feel like we need to believe that he's utterly sincere about it.
-I do have a theory about why Gillen might have been directed to play it that way -- I know this is a UK production, but they must have been thinking about race in a US context as well, and there is a choice there about making Salieri black and Mozart white that could have backfired colossally with a Mozart who was too sympathetic. Like I know I would have side-eyed it a bit if it had become the story of "black guy who is upstaged by more awesome white guy!" But if the white guy is played as simply the conduit for God and not with any redeeming qualities of his own -- well, I am not having that side-eye at all. (Admittedly, in large part, because all the side-eye is going towards being frustrated at Mozart.) (Of course, they could have cast Mozart as black as well, I feel like that would have solved all the problems :) And I think it would have worked, too -- Mozart and Salieri are both outsiders, though in different ways.)
-Msamati confronting Gillen after the opera and saying how marvelous it is -- it is heartbreaking when Abraham does it, and it's heartbreaking when Msamati does it. <33333
Act 2 - Figaro
-Vienna!Joe! :D
-Not specific to the theatrical production, but this is the first time I've watched any version of Amadeus since I fell in love with opera and it is suuuuuch an experience. Not least because the movie was my very first introduction to opera as a Thing, particularly a Thing that people might love, and so a lot of how I can articulate how I feel about Mozart's operas is, I am realizing, informed by Salieri's words here. And so there's a lot of "YES YES WOW THIS IS JUST SO EXACTLY THE WAY IT IS" overlaid by remembering that all the other times I've watched it I was kind of ?? about opera.
-Specific to the theatre production, the highly stylized bits, like where Mozart talks about everyone being a quartet while people freeze in place, and Salieri gesticulates alongside the singers in the finale of Nozze -- those all work sooooo well and I'm so glad I got to see this production!
-Though... in this section the Mozart interpretation really starts hampering the production, I feel. In Act I it didn't matter so much because it was all about Salieri's reactions to Mozart, but in this specific bit where he's talking about the music in Figaro as well as wanting to write a quartet with Salieri and Mozart and the other two guys I feel like we need to believe that he's utterly sincere about it.
-I do have a theory about why Gillen might have been directed to play it that way -- I know this is a UK production, but they must have been thinking about race in a US context as well, and there is a choice there about making Salieri black and Mozart white that could have backfired colossally with a Mozart who was too sympathetic. Like I know I would have side-eyed it a bit if it had become the story of "black guy who is upstaged by more awesome white guy!" But if the white guy is played as simply the conduit for God and not with any redeeming qualities of his own -- well, I am not having that side-eye at all. (Admittedly, in large part, because all the side-eye is going towards being frustrated at Mozart.) (Of course, they could have cast Mozart as black as well, I feel like that would have solved all the problems :) And I think it would have worked, too -- Mozart and Salieri are both outsiders, though in different ways.)
-Msamati confronting Gillen after the opera and saying how marvelous it is -- it is heartbreaking when Abraham does it, and it's heartbreaking when Msamati does it. <33333
(OK, that's all until tonight :) )