Norma
Although the setting is exotic and distant: Roman-occupied Gaul in the first century BCE, it is really a story that recurs throughout history right up to the present. A foreign army has conquered and is occupying an area. A local resistance force is fighting back, attempting to gain back their land. Instead of Gaul it could be Boston in 1775 with occupying British troops. It could be Paris in 1940 with a German occupying army, it could be Ukraine in 2022. There are many parallels that can be brought to mind.
Most 18th and 19th century European opera composers had to contend with censors. This was true even for Verdi in the early 20th century. If a composer and librettist wanted to treat a subject censors might find problematic, they would set the opera in some far away land or in the distant past. In such scenarios characters might be allowed behaviors that would call down the wrath of censors were the action to be contemporary or local.
My point in mentioning this is to explain that the setting for this opera is a contrivance to avoid possible censorship. For the purposes of the opera, Druids are portrayed as an indigenous religious cult of the Sicambi tribe. This is simply a literary device, it is not meant to be anthropology. Norma is a priestess of this religion and she intercedes with the moon goddess for the benefit of her people.
For some time Norma has been involved in a clandestine affair with the Roman proconsul Pollione. Indeed, they have had two children together. It is best not to ask how this could have gone on for years in secret.
Unfortunately for Norma, Pollione has fallen for one of her novice priestesses, Adalgesia. Apparently, Norma’s affair with Pollione has been such a well-kept secret that when the women mutually confess their secret affairs they are shocked and dismayed to discover they are in love with the same man. Even worse Pollione is being recalled to Rome and he wants to take the children with him.
This two-timing betrayal is the set up for the operatic conflict that must somehow be resolvedHow will this all be resolved? Who will live? Who will die? Who gets the kids?
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La Traviata
This opera is based on an 1852 play The Lady of the Camellias by Alexander Dumas that, in turn, was adopted from his 1848 novel of the same title. Verdi saw the play and immediately planned to compose an opera using the story.
This is an opera where the original audience was already familiar with the story line as both the novel and the play were widely known. In such cases the opera is usually skimpy on exposition. Thus a 21st century opera goer, lacking this background knowledge, would not immediately see why Violetta’s relationship with Alfredo causes his father such consternation.
Verdi originally intended to set the opera in the present day. However, he was initially thwarted by the censors with whom he battled over every one of his operas. They refused to license the production unless he set it in the past. Eventually, Verdi was able to stage it in the present day.
This controversy continues to the present. Many people are strongly wedded to productions set in the past. The production we will see follows Verdi’s wishes and sets the opera in our present.
What does the title mean? There is no translation given for the word traviata in my Harper-Collins Italian Dictionary. The closest word is traviare a verb meaning “to lead astray.” Traviata is feminine, so by extension, it seems to mean: the woman who is led astray or who has lost her way.
This is Violetta, a high-class call girl and habitué of the posh Parisian party scene. Violetta has tuberculosis and is living on borrowed time. A fact emphasized in our production by the presence of a large clock prominently placed on stage counting down her remaining time.
At one of these parties Violetta meets Alfredo Germont, a naive young man who apparently seems to think she is just some nice girl he met at an otherwise boring party. Against all of her instincts, Violetta is taken with him and they go off together.
Act II finds them blissfully cavorting at a country home. This idyll is disturbed by the arrival of Alfredo’s dad, Georgio Germont. He tells Violetta she has to give up Alfredo because his daughter is engaged to be married and the prospective in-laws would break off the engagement were it to become known that the brother of their prospective daughter-in-law was involved with a woman of her erstwhile profession.
This sordid bit of business is transacted in one of the greatest duets in all of opera. She agrees to Georgia’s demands and returns to Paris. Alfredo, upon hearing of her departure, runs after her.
What happens at the showdown in Paris? How much time does she have left? The ever-present ticking clock on stage throughout the performance does not bode well for a happy outcome.
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Cavalleria Rusticana
The action takes place in a small village in Sicily around 1900. Following the model of Greek drama upon which opera is modeled, the action is continuous and takes place in near real time.
This is an opera based on an actual event with which the original audience was probably familiar. So it plunges directly into the action and the characters’ back stories are only gradually filled in. This can leave a contemporary viewer confused as to the characters’ backgrounds and interrelationships.
Turiddu and Lola had been lovers. Then Turiddu went away to serve his compulsory military service. While he was away, Lola married a well-off businessman named Alfio.
Upon his return Turridu began an affair with Santuzza. She became pregnant and he abandoned her. Her pregnancy has resulted in her excommunication from the church. She is generally shunned by village residents
Meanwhile Turiddu and Lola have clandestinely renewed their relationship, meeting while Akfio is away buying goods for his business.
The opera begins at dawn on Easter Sunday with Turiddu singing offstage to Lola. Santuzza, driven to desperation by her outcast status, will make a final impulsive attempt to win back Turiddu.
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Madama Butterfly
Puccini based this opera on an 1898 short story of the same title by John Luther Long. Long’s short story was based on the recollections of his sister who had been in Japan with her husband, a Methodist missionary. The opera closely follows the short story with the exception of the ending.
Pinkerton is a US Naval officer temporarily stationed in Nagasaki, Japan. He learns that he can arrange a marriage to one of the poor local girls This is fifteen year old Cio Cio San.
She naively believes he loves her and that it is a real marriage. For Pinkerton it is a sham relationship of convenience with a woman from an inferior culture. To him it will only to last until he goes home and has a real American marriage.
The version we will see is the rarely-performed original version of the opera with material and scenes that are ordinarily cut from most productions. Here Pinkerton is even more despicable, arrogant, and chauvinistic lout than in the usually-performed censored version.
A digression on censorship. Performances of Butterfly were banned in the United States between 1941 and 1945 because the Japanese characters are favorably portrayed as innocent victims of racist American jingoists..
Today, censorship is back. A production planned for Boston in 2021 had to be withdrawn over charges of cultural appropriation. Some of the melodies Puccini wrote use a pentatonic scale to simulate the sound of Japanese music. Evidently Puccini, an Italian, had violated a taboo he surely never knew existed. Then there is the issue of Europeans playing roles of Japanese characters.
So, with performances of Otello and Butterfly in limbo, what about Aida, Turandot, Lakme, The Pearl Fishers, Porgy and Bess, The Abduction From the Seraglio, the list could go on and on. What about trousers roles where women play the parts of young men?
When Pinkerton leaves, Cio Cio San is sure he will come back to her. She goes to the American ambassador to show Sharpless Pinkerton’s son. She knows knowledge of the existence of a son will pique his interest. It does, but not in the way she had hoped. When Pinkerton learns of the son, her returns to Japan, but not for her.
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Der Rosenkavalier
This opera is a change of pace from those we have seen so far. It is a comedy, at least in the sense that no one dies. It is in German, not Italian.
What does the title mean’ Der Rosenkavalier means “The Knight of the Rose”. Rather than having a man propose to a woman in person, this tradition had him select a close friend or relative to present a silver rose to his intended. This person was the Knight of the Rose.
The Marschallin and Octavian are having an affair. Their ages are unspecified, but he is quite young and she is considerably older.
Baron Ochs is a cousin of the Marschallin. The German word Ochs means ox and is pronounced the same way. The Baron is a comic character who blusters and stumbles and lives up to his name.
He arrives to announce his intention to marry a considerably younger woman, Sophie. He has come to the Marschallin to ask her advise as to who he can get to deliver a silver rose to Sophie.
Here is a point where Strauss and librettist Hoffmannsthal want the audience to consider their reactions to what they have just seen. There are two age-inappropriate relationships pictured. Most audiences are usually OK with the older woman/younger man pairing, but are applied at the reverse situation with Baron Ochs and the as yet unseen young Sophie. Is one intrinsically more troubling than the other?
Octavian is chosen to deliver the rose. Well, no big surprise, Octavian and Sophie have a love at first sight moment. The rest of the opera lies in sorting things out.
Some are bothered by a mezzo-soprano being cast as Octavian. One reason for this casting is that there is a long standing tradition of using mezzo-sopranos in the roles of young men, dating back at least to Cherubino in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. More importantly, though, Strauss needs three distinct women’s voices for the sublime trio of the Marschallin, Sophie, and Octavian that ends the opera.