Don Quichotte
....or Massenet's take on Cervantes's novel. Interesting! We didn't know much about this production besides the obvious "what's the thing based on", as Himself hadn't heard much of Massenet's work. This is one of the works which are, politely, not performed very often, so we weren't sure how we'd like it.
The short summation: this is only the second opera I've seen which made me tear up1. Being a decided dreamer myself, I was always inclined to be sympathetic toward the fantasist, Don Quixote. But the opera played up the disjoint between the "mean girls/boys" with whom Dulcinee hangs out and the outmoded old knight to the point that I had to dab away more than a few tears and sniffles in the scene(s) after Quichotte's return with Dulcinee's necklace, and is not only spurned by the object of his dreams but cruelly mocked by the bright young stylish things.
As an abstract talking point, I'd have appreciated the opera a bit more if Massenet had ended it with that final scene in Act IV, though I understand why he continued on to Quixote's death. Sancho Panza's love for his master was made crystal clear when he defends him through the first four acts; he says in effect "I'm the only one who can make fun of him, because I'm the only one who really loves him. You're all just mean girls/boys, with not a scrap of empathy. You can't possibly understand a dreamer like this." The fifth act consolidated that, true, but the first four had settled the point.
As for the concrete production details, it was well-done2. The performers playing Quichotte1 and Sancho Panza2 interacted convincingly; we'd seen Furlanetto in Boris Godunov, so I'd expected to like him, but we hadn't seen Alaimo in anything. No one was drowned out by the orchestra, or drastically out-sung by any of the other performers. The horse and donkey were a bit out of place-wheeled jobs that looked like a child's rocking horse-but then using live animals of that size on stage is dicey at best. Very few horses could remain reliably calm during a theatrical production, especially given the likely rider is going to be distracted by his/her own performance.
But I particularly appreciated the 'tilting at windmills' scene. Furlanetto had done a remarkable job with the 'addressing the Duma' scene, in which Godunov slips irrevocably into madness, so I'd expected he'd do at least a plausible job of Quichotte's gentler disjoint from reality. And he did. The staging was interesting, to say the least. It's easy enough to just bung a windmill on stage and leave it at that, but the Lyric projected several windmills that moved and shifted quite disconcertingly....as if the audience was hallucinating those giants along with Quichotte.
Hopefully, the remaining two operas will stand up to the first two!
1the other being that warhorse La Boheme
2haven't the artistic chops to produce specifics
3Ferruccio Furlanetto
4Nichola Alaimo
The short summation: this is only the second opera I've seen which made me tear up1. Being a decided dreamer myself, I was always inclined to be sympathetic toward the fantasist, Don Quixote. But the opera played up the disjoint between the "mean girls/boys" with whom Dulcinee hangs out and the outmoded old knight to the point that I had to dab away more than a few tears and sniffles in the scene(s) after Quichotte's return with Dulcinee's necklace, and is not only spurned by the object of his dreams but cruelly mocked by the bright young stylish things.
As an abstract talking point, I'd have appreciated the opera a bit more if Massenet had ended it with that final scene in Act IV, though I understand why he continued on to Quixote's death. Sancho Panza's love for his master was made crystal clear when he defends him through the first four acts; he says in effect "I'm the only one who can make fun of him, because I'm the only one who really loves him. You're all just mean girls/boys, with not a scrap of empathy. You can't possibly understand a dreamer like this." The fifth act consolidated that, true, but the first four had settled the point.
As for the concrete production details, it was well-done2. The performers playing Quichotte1 and Sancho Panza2 interacted convincingly; we'd seen Furlanetto in Boris Godunov, so I'd expected to like him, but we hadn't seen Alaimo in anything. No one was drowned out by the orchestra, or drastically out-sung by any of the other performers. The horse and donkey were a bit out of place-wheeled jobs that looked like a child's rocking horse-but then using live animals of that size on stage is dicey at best. Very few horses could remain reliably calm during a theatrical production, especially given the likely rider is going to be distracted by his/her own performance.
But I particularly appreciated the 'tilting at windmills' scene. Furlanetto had done a remarkable job with the 'addressing the Duma' scene, in which Godunov slips irrevocably into madness, so I'd expected he'd do at least a plausible job of Quichotte's gentler disjoint from reality. And he did. The staging was interesting, to say the least. It's easy enough to just bung a windmill on stage and leave it at that, but the Lyric projected several windmills that moved and shifted quite disconcertingly....as if the audience was hallucinating those giants along with Quichotte.
Hopefully, the remaining two operas will stand up to the first two!
1the other being that warhorse La Boheme
2haven't the artistic chops to produce specifics
3Ferruccio Furlanetto
4Nichola Alaimo