Sanctuary

AHHHHH!

Okay, for someone of limited means, I've been to a lot of operas in my life, especially compared to most. The cast I saw on Thursday night was simply the best I've ever seen live.

Don Carlo is not an opera for the beginner. In fact, it's an opera I rarely listen to all the way through, and when I see it on DVD, I often skip past parts. Verdi looooves to linger in this. Rodrigo takes two arias to die--one before he gets shot, one after. With extreme melodrama (people fainting from great emotion) and constant angst, it's about what people imagine when they think of opera cliches. So why go see it? Here's the thing: although there are parts I'd consistently skip past, the parts I listen to I listen to over and over again, and get chills every single time. Verdi really makes you weep for an old king who is forced by the Grand Inquisitor to live friendless and even loveless, even when said king regally watched people being burned at the stake in the scene before. It's NUTS.

Last night...well, okay, I wanted to sit down with the stage director and give her an earful about just having people stand in a line and sing when an opera is a STAGE DRAMA, but everything else was incredible. The conductor caressed the music. It was so obvious that he loved it. The orchestra absolutely sang for him. It was magical. The guy who played the Grand Inquisitor was visibly startled when he walked onstage during the curtain call and slammed with uproarious applause, but I wasn't surprised. He had the biggest, juiciest, most coffee-black voice I've had the privilege to hear live. Continuing up, the lady playing Eboli was the most incredible mezzo--the perfect vocal weight and color for Verdi, but had those devilish high notes like nothing else. The baritone playing Rodrigo was the only lyric (light) voice in the main cast, but he still held his weight with all the heavier voices, even the tenor playing Carlo, who SOUNDED like a baritone but had the range of a tenor (he was mmmmmmmm). James Morris is a rougher bass than I prefer, but it was epically stirring to listen and watch during his ten-minute aria (my personal favorite part of the opera). I was not disappointed. In fact, I was under a spell during the entire time, and keep coming back to it in my imagination. He wasn't Ferruccio Furlanetto, but I still wanted to wrap myself up in that aria, underplayed just perfectly with only the barest sob toward the end, almost more like a hitch in his breath. I tend to prefer the aria to be sung almost like he is sleepwalking, since the music portrays the emotion perfectly and hamming it up only distracts from that (an occurrance that rarely happens in opera), but he was marvelous. It's one of those rare moments in life that I just wish I could carry with me, hold on to, keep it perfectly preserved and unfaded by time so I can revisit it at will. I think I breathed four times throughout the whole ten minutes of that aria.

But it's not just about the bass. Moving on!

Angela Brown was in absolutely perfect form as Elizabeth. She's the only one of the singers I'd heard before, and that was while she was still only a rising star at the Met and not a full-blown star. She has a huge, dark, creamy voice and sang like the part was tailor-made for her. The aria I normally find to be long-winded was so wonderfully sung I was sitting forward in my seat and cherishing each note.

Still, throughout I was thinking about how differently I would direct each scene. For one thing, it irks me when there's action in the music but not on stage. I hate it when people stand in one place during an ensemble and sing to the audience. Also when Elizabeth faints and Philip calls for help, no one actually HELPS her. Eboli sings pitifully about how remorseful she feels, Rodrigo stands there, and Philip just looks nervous. No one even touches the poor unconscious girl. Why not? While Eboli sings about remorse, Rodrigo could be carrying Elizabeth to a chair or a couch, and Philip (being old) could fret a bit more, since he WAS the one who made her faint and Rodrigo's calling him out on it and this has to be very embarrassing. I did love that Elizabeth slammed her hand on the table while arguing with Philip, and only assumed the expected "submissive wife" attitude when he glowered at her--first time she seemed like a real woman in the whole opera. I'd've liked to see a bit more of that, almost, even if it would be inappropriate for the time period and her class for her to be THAT feisty. Since Philip is accusing her of adultery, and this could result in major repercussions, I'd like to see her have a strength more equal to his--lack of propriety can be excused in her mind since the situation is so desperate. What's more, Philip is shown as being so vulnerable in this scene already, so I'd like to see their argument as having more of a back-and-forth quality, but in the end he has a bit more force, since he's already lost a battle with the Grand Inquisitor and he sure as hell won't lose this one--only he loses it and she freaks and passes out. I always like it best when he completely loses all his fight when he sees her faint, and feels like the big jerk he is. I've seen her fall into his arms when she faints, but I actually like it better for her to fall to the floor and for him to stand there stunned, like he's afraid he'll make it worse by touching her. I'd also make Elizabeth's reaction a bit less shocked when Eboli confesses to sleeping with Philip, 'cause seriously--did Elizabeth think Philip was being as chaste as he expects her to be? He's the king. Of course she's shocked at Eboli for being a hypocrite, accusing her of adultery when she's the adulteress herself, but Elizabeth practically doubled over in shock in this production, and that's just not very regal. It was the one thing I liked about Mirella Freni's depiction of this character--her reaction to that revelation is to become a marble statue, frozen like the last friend she thought she had just abandoned her and this was how she could cope--by becoming scary. It's sort of a chain of scariness--Philip loses to the Grand Inquisitor, Elizabeth loses to Philip, Eboli loses to Elizabeth. I'd actually like for Elizabeth to be anticipating this news as Eboli keeps stammering bits and pieces of the confession. This whole scene in the king's study is my absolute favorite in the opera, to the point where I've said it'd be my favorite opera if it were only THAT scene, and I'd like to see it done really well. It was sung perfectly, but the director needed to have more imagination. And so did Schiller, who wrote the original play.

EBOLI: Remorse! I slept with the king your husband!

ELIZABETH: ...WHY? He's like eighty!

EBOLI: Um...remorse?

ELIZABETH: Well, you're fired, yeah, but EW. Even I don't sleep with the king when I don't have to. Anyways, exile or convent, your choice, but sleeping with him might've been its own punishment. Ick.

EBOLI: In history, he was only like thirty when he married you.

ELIZABETH: What does history have to do with this opera?

EBOLI: ...Remorse.

I'd've liked to see Elizabeth and Eboli both played as real women instead of The Virtuous Heroine and The Smoldering Temptress. But it's a romantic opera, so that's hard to do. I've seen it done, but it's hard to pull off. I also prefer Carlo to be poisonously sarcastic when Rodrigo comes to visit him in prison. I mean, he believes Rodrigo, his best friend, betrayed him, and suddenly he's going on about how great it is for Rod to visit him in prison. This being the most WTF of Verdi's major operas, it's not the weirdest thing to happen onstage, but STILL.

I hear some arguments against the new Star Trek movie, almost exclusively from Trekkies, that character development and Gene Roddenberry’s vision were sold in favor of lots of action and explosions and fight scenes and cool special effects.  These are my thoughts on that.

I’m a Trekkie myself (I use the term in the non-derogatory fashion, since the show’s creators came up with the term).  Nevertheless, I felt more empathy for Kirk and Spock in slightly over two hours of this movie than I have in over forty years’ worth of movies and syndicated TV episodes.  Maybe it’s because this Kirk isn’t merely altruistic—he actually goes through a process in the movie to become so.  Spock I can relate to as a human being now, instead of seeing him as a kinda cool dude who can knock people out by pinching their necks.  Having an occasional struggle with vivid emotion as a plot device is okay, but for that struggle to be constant, everyday—that is something I can empathize with.  That, to me, is exciting.

As far as actual character development goes, I watched Kirk go from being a thoroughly unlikable person to a grown-up who doesn’t give a thought about putting his life in danger for the greater good.  To achieve that in a single movie without making it seem contrived is miraculous, and they did it by implying that this aspect of Kirk was always there, dormant, and merely came out when he had the chance to be what he needed, in the most basic part of his character, to be.  All this happened, and they never sacrificed his flaws.  I watched Spock begin to accept that emotions do not always respond to logic, and that there are ways to find peace with them without forcibly suppressing or denying them.  I can feel for him.  I watched a few lines of thoroughly organic dialogue turn some guy who climbed aboard a shuttle into Leonard McCoy, an irascible doctor who is terrified of space travel but has nowhere else to go because his ex-wife took everything from him in the divorce.  I watched Sulu go from being a nervous, somewhat shy young helmsman who makes basic mistakes to a bold swordsman and then to a confident pilot—and he was one of the least developed characters.  In her first scene, Uhura was shown as a confident, intelligent young woman who, while openly uninterested in the idiot hitting on her in a bar, isn’t too good to be flattered by his advances or laugh at his jokes without compromising her original answer.  She’s entirely disgusted with the twerps trying to ‘defend’ her, as much as she would be with anyone participating in a senseless bar fight.  She takes crap from no one, but like the original Uhura, she’s neither a fighter nor a leader.  She’s simply and comfortably herself.

Gene Roddenberry’s vision was of a future in which we are a better society, and where compassion and humanitarianism are more important than pride or greed.  J.J. Abrams admitted that, while he’s not a Trek fan, Roddenberry’s notes were moving and inspiring to him.  I don’t think there’s anything in this movie that compromises that vision, besides the fact that there appears to be money or at least some sort of credit system in this future, and that is only implied and not a basic motivator of mankind (which was the point in not having money in canon Trek).  It remains an optimistic future, which is always marvelously refreshing and one of the best things about Star Trek.  Remember how Chekov was a sign of Roddenberry’s hope that the Cold War would end peacefully?  Remember how the Cold War ended peacefully?  Yeah.