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Halloweenish activities
Nov. 1st, 2004 06:55 pmI spent Halloween proving my dedication to music by travelling to the other end of Germany (nearly), Münster, to be specific, to watch a rarely performed opera, and today by traveling back to the south. It was worth it, though. The opera in question was Le Prophète by Giacomo Meyerbeer. (Meyerbeer for beginners: born Jacob Meyer Beer, was the most popular opera composer of his day, and a nice, generous man to boot, but lost his reputation and popularity postumously to a combination of grand opéra going out of style and Wagner having hated his guts. Most famous operas probably said The Prophet and Les Huguenots.) Since the plot of Le Prophète takes place in Münster and uses the story of the anabaptists there for background, the event had a particular rarity. It was the first Meyerbeer I ever saw on stage. Minimalist background; the cast was good, though not brilliant as far as their voices were concerned; very good acting, though, which isn't that self-evident with singers.
While watching it, I was reminded of talking with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
andrastewhite last week about how father/son relationships get an overabundance of treatment on the popular media, and father/daughter combinations a close second, but mother/son relationships TV and cinema shy away from. My guess was because of fear from going into oedipal implications on the one hand (as opposed to Elektra implications), and/or "mama's boy" derision on the other. And look at our pop culture tradition. Marilyn Monroe singing My heart belongs to Daddy is considered as very sexy. I somehow doubt that if a male star of the 50s, especially one who was considered a sex idol, say, the young Burt Lancaster or the young Rock Hudson, would have sung My heart belongs to Mommy, it would have been declared sexy at all.
(Although: Elvis, singing That's alright, Momma. Hm.)
Anyway. What does all this have to do with a rarely performed grand opéra? Well, Le Prophète is all about the mother/son. The prophet of the title, Jean (based very loosely on Jan Bockelson of Leyden, one of the anabaptist leaders who was crowned king of Münster and ended up excuted in a gruesome manner, with his remains put in a cage handing from the ceiling of the cathedral), has his most passionate and crucial relationship with his mother, and said mother must be one of the very few, if not the only, lead soprano roles for a woman over 40. She, not the young and hardly present love interest, gets the juicy passionate duets, soul examining solo arias, and high points of drama. And the best dramatic scenes, the likes of which make your avarage bodice ripper and/or slash story seem tame.
To wit: one in which Jean has just been crowned as the messiah king of Münster, and she recognises him. He could either silence her by executing her or admit he's her son and not some über-being. Being an inventive fellow, he comes up with a third option: he declares her mad, prays for her healing, declares out loud that if he is her son then they should kill him as a fraud and then asks her whether he is her son. Fidès can't bring herself to do anythinhg but save him and declares he isn't, of course. Later: prison scene in which she first has a furious solo aria about loving and hating him at the same time, then a soul stirring duet when he comes in secret to her and she refuses to have anything to do with "The Prophet", etc. Not surprisingly, the two of them end up dying together in a passionate clinch while the building they're in crashes down, killing off both anabaptists and imperial army.
This mother/son love fest comes attached to a rather pessimistic view of history. The old order is presented as oppressive and tyrannical, but the anabaptists, consciously building up Jean as an idol of the people and using religion to win followers and make cash, aren't much better. There is a lot of praying going on, but the most hypnotic prayer sequence, the great finale of the third act (pre-break), the one where Jean goes from being the one used to the one consciously using people for the first time for his own purposes, is presented as Jean being deliberately manipulative, not pious. At the end, nobody wins. Methinks Meyerbeer and Scribe, who wrote the libretto, are being incredibly post modern there. Thankfully, someone gave me a CD, because I do want to hear that opera again.
***
If you haven't read it yet, you should: Susannah Clarke wrote a great Halloween story, "Antickes and Frets", presenting a completely unsentimental view of Mary Stuart (okay, so I'm an Elizabeth fan). The style is that wonderful prickly irony married to the supernatural she has in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. Choice quote:
The Queen's (i.e. Mary's) husbands had never consulted her convenience in their dying. Her first, the King of France, had died at the age of 16 and so she had lost the French throne. Her second husband (whom she had hated) had fallen ill in the most tantalizing way, but had utterly failed to die - until some kind person had first blown him up and then strangled him.
***
On the fannish front, behold this new essay about "Supersymmetry", the season 4 AtS episode, analyzing Fred and paralleling this episode with Shiny, Happy People and The Magic Bullet in amazing ways.
Moving over to my darling space stations: in addition to having written great Londo/G'Kar for the Londothon,andrastewhite put up some of her rewatching-DS9's first season reviews, including
this one which is about Quark, The Nagus, the Nagus and the Ferengi in general. Avowed Quark fan and defender of Ferengi episodes that I am, it made me very happy.
While watching it, I was reminded of talking with
andrastewhite last week about how father/son relationships get an overabundance of treatment on the popular media, and father/daughter combinations a close second, but mother/son relationships TV and cinema shy away from. My guess was because of fear from going into oedipal implications on the one hand (as opposed to Elektra implications), and/or "mama's boy" derision on the other. And look at our pop culture tradition. Marilyn Monroe singing My heart belongs to Daddy is considered as very sexy. I somehow doubt that if a male star of the 50s, especially one who was considered a sex idol, say, the young Burt Lancaster or the young Rock Hudson, would have sung My heart belongs to Mommy, it would have been declared sexy at all. (Although: Elvis, singing That's alright, Momma. Hm.)
Anyway. What does all this have to do with a rarely performed grand opéra? Well, Le Prophète is all about the mother/son. The prophet of the title, Jean (based very loosely on Jan Bockelson of Leyden, one of the anabaptist leaders who was crowned king of Münster and ended up excuted in a gruesome manner, with his remains put in a cage handing from the ceiling of the cathedral), has his most passionate and crucial relationship with his mother, and said mother must be one of the very few, if not the only, lead soprano roles for a woman over 40. She, not the young and hardly present love interest, gets the juicy passionate duets, soul examining solo arias, and high points of drama. And the best dramatic scenes, the likes of which make your avarage bodice ripper and/or slash story seem tame.
To wit: one in which Jean has just been crowned as the messiah king of Münster, and she recognises him. He could either silence her by executing her or admit he's her son and not some über-being. Being an inventive fellow, he comes up with a third option: he declares her mad, prays for her healing, declares out loud that if he is her son then they should kill him as a fraud and then asks her whether he is her son. Fidès can't bring herself to do anythinhg but save him and declares he isn't, of course. Later: prison scene in which she first has a furious solo aria about loving and hating him at the same time, then a soul stirring duet when he comes in secret to her and she refuses to have anything to do with "The Prophet", etc. Not surprisingly, the two of them end up dying together in a passionate clinch while the building they're in crashes down, killing off both anabaptists and imperial army.
This mother/son love fest comes attached to a rather pessimistic view of history. The old order is presented as oppressive and tyrannical, but the anabaptists, consciously building up Jean as an idol of the people and using religion to win followers and make cash, aren't much better. There is a lot of praying going on, but the most hypnotic prayer sequence, the great finale of the third act (pre-break), the one where Jean goes from being the one used to the one consciously using people for the first time for his own purposes, is presented as Jean being deliberately manipulative, not pious. At the end, nobody wins. Methinks Meyerbeer and Scribe, who wrote the libretto, are being incredibly post modern there. Thankfully, someone gave me a CD, because I do want to hear that opera again.
***
If you haven't read it yet, you should: Susannah Clarke wrote a great Halloween story, "Antickes and Frets", presenting a completely unsentimental view of Mary Stuart (okay, so I'm an Elizabeth fan). The style is that wonderful prickly irony married to the supernatural she has in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. Choice quote:
The Queen's (i.e. Mary's) husbands had never consulted her convenience in their dying. Her first, the King of France, had died at the age of 16 and so she had lost the French throne. Her second husband (whom she had hated) had fallen ill in the most tantalizing way, but had utterly failed to die - until some kind person had first blown him up and then strangled him.
***
On the fannish front, behold this new essay about "Supersymmetry", the season 4 AtS episode, analyzing Fred and paralleling this episode with Shiny, Happy People and The Magic Bullet in amazing ways.
Moving over to my darling space stations: in addition to having written great Londo/G'Kar for the Londothon,
andrastewhite put up some of her rewatching-DS9's first season reviews, including this one which is about Quark, The Nagus, the Nagus and the Ferengi in general. Avowed Quark fan and defender of Ferengi episodes that I am, it made me very happy.
