Do you like the new name and new look? I certainly do, and heaven knows it took me long enough to pick it all out!
I'll talk more about my New Year's resolutions later, but for now I'd like to talk about Opera. Because from now until the 8, Tuesday to Tuesday, is Opera week for me. I have to do it now because January 8, 1910, is when the last installment of what would become The Phantom of the Opera was published.
The Phantom of the Opera has been a story dear to my heart since I was five years old and I saw the Wishbone episode, resulting in one of my Christmas presents that year being a plush of Wishbone as Raoul de Chagny. The fascination has, since then, only grown. Wishbone of course introduced me to many stories, but a BIG one was always The Phantom of the Opera, which in turn got me into Opera. I love Opera, I love the Opera, and so this week is going to be about me getting more of those things I love into my life.
What is Opera week? Each day this week, I'm going to pick a classic opera that I can find on YouTube (who doesn't have tickets to Utah festival Opera as much as she desperately wants them? Me, so this is what we've got), watch it, enjoy the music, and talk about what I liked about it.
I'm also going to talk about Opera in general, for instance, why does a modern girl like me like Opera so much?
Well, other than the reasons listed above, I genuinely enjoy the music. I envy classical singers, one of my fondest (and least realistic, I admit) dreams is to be able to sing like that. For now, I just sing along in the shower, but even so it's nice to be surrounded by such glorious singing.
Also, Opera, I think, represents some of the best that is offered by human creativity. It is collaboration, it is telling an entire story--dialogue, songs, jokes--and telling it well but having the whole thing set to music and song. The closest thing we have to Modern Opera that most people know of is the famous musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables--another favorite of mine, and not a single person was surprised.
And, finally, someday I would like to write an Opera. Can I read or write music? No. But I can do the words, I have the plot figured out, and I can hear/feel a bit of the music for one part. Theophile Gaultier's story of Clarimonde, a courtesan/vampire who loves a priest, has caught my attention since David Tenant's adaptation for BBC radio. I would like to adapt it as an Opera and tell Clarimonde's side of the story. And I won't be able to get it all down unless I know Opera too well and secure a collaborator.
Today's Opera is Mozart's Don Giovanni, the beautifully adapted legend of a man-slut who has toyed with too many hearts too selfishly and is dragged down to hell by the soul of The Commendatore, who he murdered after trying to rape the man's daughter.
Any of you who have seen Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows have seen the scene where the Commendatore comes for Don Giovanni by possessing his own grave's effigy (the one where they go to the Opera at the Palais Garnier in Paris by mistake, and Sebastian Moran shoots a man as the building across the street explodes). All other critical theories aside, the most obvious reason for Ritchie's choice to have the Palais Garnier stage that Opera at that moment is the fact that it is Conan-Doyle written canon that Don Giovanni is John Watson's favorite opera.
The music is absolutely beautiful--I'm not saying I would have given in to certain guys with less-than-honorable intentions if they'd sung a perfect La Ci Darem La Mano, but I wouldn't have minded them trying. It is a beautiful duet between Don Giovanni and the innocent peasant Zerlina.
{I didn't know Cheryl Crow could sing like this. But here she is singing the duet with Pavarotti}
Also notable is Don Ottavio's Dalla Sua Pace. The Fiance of Donna Ana, daughter of the Commendatore, Ottavio sings of how he wants to resolve the matter of who murdered his darling fiancee's father, and put her mind at ease because of how dearly he loves her.
{I'm partial to Pavarotti, could you tell? But it's such a beautiful aria}
And now to highlight two characters from the piece you can't help but sympathize with, Leporello and Donna Elvira.
Leporello is Don Giovanni's manservant, and Don Giovanni is the ultimate horrible boss. He threatens Leporello, pawns off angry ex-lovers on him, forces him to switch places, gives the man's welfare no thought, freaks him out in a churchyard, and forces Leporello to keep and carry the catalog of his "conquests".
Through it all, Leporello has a remarkable wit, and through his wit is the bright, comedic spot of the emotionally fraught piece. You have to laugh with him, and at him, and pity him for his crappy job. And be happy that you will never have a boss worse than Don Giovanni.
Donna Elvira is one of the names in Don Giovanni's "Catalog" and she starts off the opera with a broken heart and the traditional attitude/mindset/goal of a woman scorned. However, as the story progresses, she remembers the love she once bore him, and tries to turn his heart to good and his mind to a more godly path, and to persuade him to honor his promise to marry her. If ever you have despised and loved a man, if you have ever loved a man after he vilely, cruelly broke your heart, you will sympathize with Donna Elvira.
That's the start of Opera Week!!
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