[opera] Oscar, at the Academy of Music, Sun. February 8, 2015
Last week Mom and I went to opera! First time in a while. I was really excited for this one, too, but unfortunately it was kind of a bust.
The opera was Oscar, about the life of Oscar Wilde, which was indeed a tragedy worthy of being enshrined in operatic form. Wilde fell in love with a young man when he was middle-aged and married, and he got drawn into a series of legal battles ending with Wilde being convicted of "gross indecency" and sentenced to two years' hard labor, from which neither he nor his literary work ever recovered. In the first act the opera centers on the moment when Wilde, released on bail the day before the verdict is to be delivered, has the opportunity to flee England for a life in exile on the continent. Wilde in his pride chooses to take what comes to him, and the second act shows Wilde suffering in prison.
The first strike against this opera is its running time: two hours and 40 minutes. It's LONG. For those keeping score, a matinee starts at 2:30, and my and my mom's trains home are on the 8s and the 16s respectively. If an opera is much longer than two hours, we start running into problems, because we want to catch our trains in the 5 o'clock hour; waiting until the 6 o'clock hour means neither of us will be home until after 7, which means dinner happens late and, in my case, F is stuck with the kiddo for an extended period. So we like operas that run no longer than 2 hours 15 minutes tops, and even then we are sneaking out to run to the restroom while the cast is still doing their curtain calls.
And then while we watched the first act, we discovered why it was so long. Poor editing! The first act could have easily been cut by a quarter to a third. There was a lot of Wilde and his two friends standing around making casual small talk, and a lot of Wilde imagining his beautiful young lover waltzing around him. The imaginary lover wasn't terrible, but the small talk - there were no SONGS in this opera, it was all sung dialogue ("recitative", which I knew and had to look up the word for). Stylistically, over an hour of this was just super annoying. Also, the climactic moment of the first act is when, resting in the nursery room in a friend's home, the toys all come to life to act out the trial Wilde will experience on the morrow. We couldn't decide if this was the best moment of act 1 or just really pretentious. It was sort of both at once.
After the first act, we decided that, instead of staying for the full show, we'd cut out halfway through act 2 to catch our 5 o'clock trains, so I didn't see the full second act. However, from what I saw, the second act was better than the first, simply because there were more characters: the cruel governor of the jail, the guards, the other inmates, etc. Giving Wilde's character others to interact with was helpful. But it still wasn't worth staying for the whole thing.
The sets, as always, were fantastic - they really got the prison in particular and made it very cool-looking. The performer playing the handsome young lover was a dancer rather than a singer, and I thought they used him to good effect with the set a few times - there was one moment when he leaps onto the bars of Wilde's cell that was just great. And vocally everybody was very good, although David Daniels, the performer playing Wilde, is a countertenor with a really high voice. I'm guessing this is true to life and that Wilde himself had a high voice, but it got really grating when that voice was carrying the whole show. But I could have dealt with that had the show itself not been too long and full of itself. I really wanted to like it - my neighbor V was in the chorus! But alas no.
Oh, and it was narrated by the ghost of Walt Whitman. See, pretentious.
The opera was Oscar, about the life of Oscar Wilde, which was indeed a tragedy worthy of being enshrined in operatic form. Wilde fell in love with a young man when he was middle-aged and married, and he got drawn into a series of legal battles ending with Wilde being convicted of "gross indecency" and sentenced to two years' hard labor, from which neither he nor his literary work ever recovered. In the first act the opera centers on the moment when Wilde, released on bail the day before the verdict is to be delivered, has the opportunity to flee England for a life in exile on the continent. Wilde in his pride chooses to take what comes to him, and the second act shows Wilde suffering in prison.
The first strike against this opera is its running time: two hours and 40 minutes. It's LONG. For those keeping score, a matinee starts at 2:30, and my and my mom's trains home are on the 8s and the 16s respectively. If an opera is much longer than two hours, we start running into problems, because we want to catch our trains in the 5 o'clock hour; waiting until the 6 o'clock hour means neither of us will be home until after 7, which means dinner happens late and, in my case, F is stuck with the kiddo for an extended period. So we like operas that run no longer than 2 hours 15 minutes tops, and even then we are sneaking out to run to the restroom while the cast is still doing their curtain calls.
And then while we watched the first act, we discovered why it was so long. Poor editing! The first act could have easily been cut by a quarter to a third. There was a lot of Wilde and his two friends standing around making casual small talk, and a lot of Wilde imagining his beautiful young lover waltzing around him. The imaginary lover wasn't terrible, but the small talk - there were no SONGS in this opera, it was all sung dialogue ("recitative", which I knew and had to look up the word for). Stylistically, over an hour of this was just super annoying. Also, the climactic moment of the first act is when, resting in the nursery room in a friend's home, the toys all come to life to act out the trial Wilde will experience on the morrow. We couldn't decide if this was the best moment of act 1 or just really pretentious. It was sort of both at once.
After the first act, we decided that, instead of staying for the full show, we'd cut out halfway through act 2 to catch our 5 o'clock trains, so I didn't see the full second act. However, from what I saw, the second act was better than the first, simply because there were more characters: the cruel governor of the jail, the guards, the other inmates, etc. Giving Wilde's character others to interact with was helpful. But it still wasn't worth staying for the whole thing.
The sets, as always, were fantastic - they really got the prison in particular and made it very cool-looking. The performer playing the handsome young lover was a dancer rather than a singer, and I thought they used him to good effect with the set a few times - there was one moment when he leaps onto the bars of Wilde's cell that was just great. And vocally everybody was very good, although David Daniels, the performer playing Wilde, is a countertenor with a really high voice. I'm guessing this is true to life and that Wilde himself had a high voice, but it got really grating when that voice was carrying the whole show. But I could have dealt with that had the show itself not been too long and full of itself. I really wanted to like it - my neighbor V was in the chorus! But alas no.
Oh, and it was narrated by the ghost of Walt Whitman. See, pretentious.