Otello, the Perfect Opera

Opera Just Isn’t What It Should Be These Days

     Patrick Dillon’s review of the video of Verdi’s Les Vȇpres siciliennes as performed at the Royal Opera House, which appears in the current issue of Opera News, was heartening to this opera lover. Mr. Dillon pretty well shreds  director Stefan Herheim’s “vision” of Verdi’s opera, and from what I’ve read and even seen, deservedly so.

     When I watched the YouTube video of the final scene of the opera, I found it ridiculous. Or outrageous. Or both. Not musically, of course; Mr. Dillon points out how well the singers and the orchestra performed, though he does fault Antonio Pappano, who as music director of the ROH allowed this nonsense to take place on the stage. Mr. Dillon goes so far as to recommend a twenty-five-year-old video of the opera in Italian in preference to this recent release.

     It’s just one more example of the disconnect in opera world in which the intent of the composer, heard so strongly in the music, is not reflected by what the audience sees on stage. Call me old-fashioned, and I will proudly accept the appellation. I’ll align myself with the composer against the ego of the “director” any time, and for good reason. Who wrote the opera, anyway? These men of the theater were not just putting pothooks on paper (as Giuseppe Verdi described what he did to set down the storm of miracles in his head).

     The first time I saw Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann was in the mid-nineteen-sixties at the Cincinnati Summer Opera. It was an English language production, starring two American singers who were also great actors, Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle. Julius Rudel conducted and Tito Capobianco was stage director.

     It was a great production. Sills played all three of Hoffmann’s love interests, quite a tour-de-force for any soprano, and she was incredible. Bass-baritone Norman Treigle was probably the greatest operatic performer I ever saw and he was brilliant. The opera was beautifully costumed, the sets were exceptional.

     Interestingly, no one referred to it as “Tito Capobianco’s Tales of Hoffmann.” It was duly noted that his directing skills certainly enhanced what the audiences saw on stage. My late husband was fortunate enough to be part of the cast as the first act doll maker, Spalanzani. He found Tito a sympathetic, energetic and passionate director who worked closely with Maestro Rudel to find what Offenbach had to say through his music.

     To the audience, it was very clear that Offenbach, the author of this work, was well served. With harmony among all forces, conductor, director, and performers, Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann became an exciting evening of theater and music. Opera as it should be.

     I’ve seen other productions of the work since, most notably some thirty years later at the Metropolitan Opera in the mid-nineties when Placido Domingo performed the role of Hoffmann as I had never seen it, bringing nuance and depth to the role through his glorious singing and fine acting. He was unforgettable, at the height of his career. The production was exciting. Each act was presented differently, with its own color. There was humor where it was appropriate. Watching the great Met chorus during the Olympia act was delightful and often very entertaining. The Giulietta act was enchanting and passionate, and Domingo’s voice soared. It was thrilling to hear him. There was tenderness, passion and tragedy, and some wonderfully chilling moments in the Antonia act, as there should be. It was a great evening.

     I went to a local cinema to view Les contes d’Hoffmann last season as one of the Met’s HD broadcasts. I’m sure it is apparent that I love the opera, and I was looking forward to seeing it again.

     I saw Bartlett Sher’s Les contes d’Hoffmann. I have seen this too frequently, the director’s vision somehow superseding the creator’s. I don’t like it. The director did not write the work. The director must have a keen understanding of the work, but that does not include “finding” something in the music and text that is not there.

     But what I saw was just that. It was well sung. There were some interesting moments on stage. There was far too much “busyness” – every opera has moments where the music should be paramount. It's opera. There was sometimes a disconnect between what I was hearing – the music was wonderfully performed ─ and what I was seeing, which seemed confused at times. It seemed the director felt a need to present what he was sure the composer must have meant to convey, such as having a stage full of Olympias twirling around during the Giulietta act. I do not hear that in the music, whether Offenbach actually wrote the septet or not. It was just distracting.

     I was disappointed, because I had read Mr. Sher recently directed a revival of The King and I which was very true to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical. At least, that’s what the reviewer indicated.

     Now I see that Mr. Sher is directing the opera I love most, Verdi’s Otello. It makes me a little nervous that Mr. Sher seems fixated on the Risorgimento. Yes, Verdi was a part of that; he was deeply affected by it, and he had an impact on the creation of a unified Italy. Otello was written years afterward, and Verdi had learned his lesson about putting nationalism into his work when he wrote possibly one of the weakest of his twenty-six operas, La battaglia di Legnano.

     Once unified Italy was a fact, Verdi did his finest work, and none of it smacks of “nationalism” – Aida, the Requiem, Otello, and Falstaff.  Sixteen years passed between Aida and Otello, when Arrigo Boito presented Verdi with the libretto he had been waiting for all his life. He and Boito poured themselves into this great opera. They worked together for years to make Otello as perfect as they could.

     I plan to go to my local cinema to see Otello during the upcoming Met season, and I hope very much that what I will see is Verdi’s Otello. It’s a masterpiece; in my opinion, along with that of many others, it is the greatest Italian opera ever written. Verdi took his time writing it, and it was exactly what he wanted it to be. Everything is in the text and the music. Please, Mr. Sher, just let Verdi show you what to do with this. Please don’t add or subtract anything from so perfect a whole.

In Celebration of Opera Singers

“Tradition” Doesn’t Equate to “Stagnant”

     There are those in the world of opera today who consider presenting a “traditional” staging of a work the equivalent of being a “museum curator.” My reaction to this is that these people do not understand anything about opera.

     Opera is a vibrant, living art form. It takes place only when all the elements are put into motion as the composer intended. First and foremost, these men of the theater – Mozart, Verdi, Puccini among them ─ had a great appreciation for the human voice, that most perfect of instruments. No other instrument speaks to the listener as the voice can; and in order to sing opera, singers put themselves through many years of dedicated, difficult, strenuous, sometimes heartbreaking training. They make sacrifices as few people do. They live to sing.

     For over thirty-five years, I have worked with probably hundreds of people who wanted to improve their singing voice, and I can say this with authority: every voice is unique. I tell my students early on, “Your instrument is your entire body.” It’s actually more: it’s mind, body, and that third element which I refer to as soul. The mind helps them understand their instrument, which is produced through muscular control; but it is the soul which makes the voice soar, which makes the listener respond by striking something in his own soul, or heart, or whatever you want to call it.

     This is the instrument which was vital to the composers of opera, obviously. For the most part, they understood the singing voice and what they could ask of it. This is why those of us who love opera want to hear it as much as we can; far better to hear it live, but we’ll settle for televised streaming, live radio broadcasts, or recordings. Anything to appreciate and be transported by those glorious voices and these magnificent works of art.

     Here’s something else you can take to the bank: no great singer ever sings a song exactly the same way twice. Every time she sings it, something is bound to be at least slightly different – maybe a longer tenuto on this note, maybe an earlier diminuendo on that phrase. Because the great singers are always exploring the music, always finding something new to incorporate.

            Also, as singers mature their voices undergo changes. Because of this, they find they are singing the same role in a slightly different way – often with more ease. Being a singer is a constant work in progress. The greatest singers never stop learning and trying to perfect everything they do.

     And because of that alone, no opera performance, even with the same cast, is exactly the same as the one before. There are other variables: the conductor may vary a tempo slightly, simply because he’s human. He may feel it just slightly differently than he did three days earlier. He may not have had a good night’s sleep. It will be almost imperceptible, but it won’t be a carbon copy of the previous performance. That is not humanly possible. Because it’s a live performance, who knows what might happen. That element alone serves to create some excitement.

      All his life, Giuseppe Verdi – who knew he was born to write operas – strove for the production of just one of his works that would approach the vision he had. He finally achieved that, at age eighty, with Falstaff, when the Scala in Milan acceded to all his demands. Not requests. He was finished asking. If the Scala wanted to perform Falstaff, it had to be his way or not at all.

     With the opera he wrote before Falstaff, Otello, he finally had the libretto he had longed for all his life. Arrigo Boito, genius that he was, provided him with a libretto of sheer poetry. The first production of Otello was the best Verdi had ever realized to that point, and he thought it would be what he’d have to be satisfied with – not knowing that Boito would do it one more time.

     To state the obvious, Otello is a masterpiece. Some of the most powerful, most passionate music ever written is heard in this work. In Boito and Verdi’s hands, Iago’s villainy is even more pronounced than it is in Shakespeare. Otello trusts Iago, whose jealousy and hatred of Otello have twisted him. Possibly Boito’s addition of Iago’s “creed” defines him as an inherently evil person; Shakespeare hints at that. Whatever the reason, or reasons, Iago’s sole aim is to destroy Otello. His course of action is to plant seeds of doubt in Otello’s mind about his wife Desdemona’s faithfulness, thereby causing her death and Otello’s downfall.

     We know the story … Iago succeeds brilliantly, and Verdi and Boito give Iago his moment of triumph. At the height of one of the most breathtakingly beautiful ensembles Verdi ever wrote, Otello destroys all … the music, his marriage, himself. He falls to the floor unconscious (Shakespeare attributes it to epilepsy) as the offstage chorus thunders: “Eviva! Eviva Otello! Gloria al leone di Venezia!” (Long live Otello! Glory to the lion of Venice!) And Iago – according to the composer’s stage directions “standing erect and, with a loathsome gesture of triumph, points to the inert Otello” – sings “Ecco il leone!” (Behold the lion!)

     That’s pretty much the plot. How it can be twisted and misunderstood by some self-styled “directors” amazes me. One man’s mad desire to destroy another.

     The complexity and sheer brilliance of the music, the continuous movement of the plot, the extraordinary singers performing this, all the elements of opera at its best mean this work comes to life vividly on the stage, time and again. Yes, it can be performed a little differently. In just the scene I briefly described, “A loathsome gesture of triumph” certainly is open to interpretation. How does Otello fall? Is it apparent he’s had a seizure or not? How does Iago react to hearing the cheers of the crowd offstage before he delivers his scathing line?

     Each singer in this opera will have his own understanding of whatever character he is portraying, and each singer will bring a part of himself to his performance. A part of his soul.  In the hands of great singers and actors the opera will always – always – be fresh, exciting, engrossing, thrilling, moving. The audience will hate Iago and weep with Otello. 

     And I feel sorry for people who fail to understand this.

Thoughts on Camille and La Traviata

The Lady of the Camellias

     Very recently I watched the 1936 film Camille for the first time. It surprises me that I had not seen the entire film before, because I love the story and was very much aware of the Dumas novel being the basis for both Verdi’s beautiful opera La Traviata and this movie. I’ve seen and heard the opera many times and never tire of it. There are musical moments in this opera, as in many of Verdi’s operas, which are so achingly beautiful and so moving it’s impossible not to respond to them exactly as Verdi intended we should. 

     I have to admit, though, I’ve never read the novel, and I’m surprised that I have not. There were moments in the film in which the dialogue is nearly word for word the same as those scenes in the opera; in particular, the scene between Marguerite/Violetta and Armand's/Alfredo's father. I have to correct that; I need to read the novel, but I wish I could read it in French. I’m still not sure I understand why the film was entitled Camille and not The Lady of the Camellias, English for the book title La Dame aux Camélias.

     In the novel, Marguerite Gautier is a Parisian courtesan who lives by being “kept” by men of wealth (I won’t call them “gentlemen”). A woman of great beauty, she came to Paris from the country and grew to love the life of luxury these men afforded her. She’s battling consumption, though, and is doomed to die young. But before she does, she meets the great love of her life, Armand Duval, a younger man who has been hopelessly smitten with her. They have a summer together. She eventually dies in his arms.

     Since I knew the opera better than the film … or the novel … one of the things I appreciated about the movie was learning more about the characters. While the music paints the emotions of the characters as words alone cannot, there are some things about them we don’t learn in the opera. Marguerite is happy in the country because she came from the country, and she appreciates such things as the care of livestock. Verdi’s Violetta doesn’t show or tell us that about herself. However, she has an aria (“Sempre libera”) about her determined pursuit of living for herself that ignites the stage more than any dialogue or monologue ever could.

     Greta Garbo struck me as not just beautiful, but luminous. Radiant. I know it’s an old film, but I thought it was the most romantic movie I have ever seen, primarily because of Garbo’s Marguerite. What a remarkable actress the woman was. A lesson in what an actor needs to do to create and express a character – voice, face, body. It made me curious about how many sopranos who perform the role of Violetta study Garbo’s Marguerite. They should.

     The primary reason I wanted to watch the film was because the protagonist of my book You Are My Song, tenor Jamie Logan, sings the role of Alfredo – Verdi’s version of Armand. I had my own ideas about how Alfredo (or Armand) should be portrayed, and was enchanted with what Robert Taylor did with the role. I believe Armand was Taylor’s first major film role, and I’m sure it was daunting for the young actor to be performing in a film with the divine Garbo, but I found him wonderfully convincing in the role. It was exactly what I had hoped it would be.

     (An aside: Robert Taylor, whose real name was Spangler Arlington Brugh, began life as a musician. He was a serious cello student and followed his teacher from Doane College in Nebraska to Pomona College in Los Angeles. While a student there he became part of a theater group, where he was spotted by a talent scout. Those things do happen sometimes!)

     So here is a brief moment in You Are My Song (to be released January, 2015) concerning Jamie’s first appearance as Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata.

     Meredith attended the final dress rehearsal and loved what she saw. Marco’s staging called for an instant attraction between Violetta and Alfredo, and they were in each other’s arms almost from the moment the two of them were alone on stage. Meredith thought Jamie’s Alfredo was just about perfect; he played the role as a very eager, very young man, almost a boy. Arlene’s Violetta was at first seductive and sophisticated, then became a woman truly in love, entranced by Alfredo.

     Meredith thought of the old film Camille with Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor, which is based on the same story. She had thought the film the height of romanticism when she saw it. Marco was producing the same effect with two fine singing actors who had the voices, the looks, and the chemistry between them to make it work well.

     After the rehearsal Meredith said to Jamie and Arlene, “It’s wonderful. Just steamy enough. Who says opera is stuffy? You are both absolutely fantastic.”