This weekend, I saw Massenet's Don Quichotte at the Seattle Opera. It was one I'd never heard of before and so the experience was quite a pleasant surprise. Anticipation often affects the experience of a performance - for better or for worse - so there's something really fascinating about going into an opera notably naked of such. I am only vaguely familiar with some of the highlights of Massenet's Manon (which I always confuse with Manon Lescaut) and a performance of Werter that I saw decades ago and of which I have a generally favorable but hazy memory. More often, I come in humming the arias and recalling images of prior performances. The minute a familiar strain hits my ears from the overture... my heart is aflutter and atwitter and my brain works with the performance to recreate "my feeling" of the performance. I imagine this is the appeal and the challenge of staging familiar work - the audience makes it up on their own to some extent, but how do you get them to really experience what they're experiencing instead of reciting it by rote.
Of course I've been consigned to the study of Cervantes' book, but this isn't actually based on the book as much as a stage play based off of the poem. So... aside from knowing that there will be a windmill at which there shall be tilting and that somebody will be dreaming the impossible dream... pretty blank.
I can see why it is not the stock standard of opera fare - there is a lot of non-operatic moments of recitative and spoken word. On the other hand, the main love theme of opera is fairly infectious and I'm surprised to have never heard that quite before. It is also somehow a quieter and sweeter slab of sapourous sweetness than opera's occasionally more rousing fare. That sad, there will be tears - it's sweet, but in a heart breakingly sincere sort of fashion. I am not sure exactly what is so compelling about the deluded but pure-hearted character, the well-meaning old man who sees the beauty, chastity and valor intrinsic in things, and by seeing it brings these qualities out in what he views. There's a sadness in the space between delusion and "reality" that is poignant, but also a hope in it, I suppose. We love Don Quixote - pity him for his foolishness, yet also somehow envy him for his ability to be foolish when we are so cripplingly self-conscious, and simultaneously resent and adore him for seeing us as those perfect ideals of which we fall so short.
I fear waxing poetic, so I'll stray soon, but in a sense, I think that all great passion is the flip side of foolish delusion, no less valid for being so. The first few years of dance are all about learning to allow oneself to be foolish, because unless you can do this, you will never make that break through into divine. This seems to be a pretty consistent theme in almost any learning curve. Sincerity, itself, is so easily mocked that "irony" is far easier than belief in this or any other age. And it is a particularly appropriate theme for something so vergingly pompous and grandiose - yet utterly gripping - as opera.
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| Also the classical Spanish dancing was damned good |
I really appreciated the staging, which embraced the unreality of the opera and the hero's mind by strewing the sets with story books and ink wells, flickering quotes and etchings on the curtain between scenes and lighting the story in a purely fantastical manner. I also appreciated the inclusion of a live horse and donkey, who seemed magically able to clomp their hooves in time to the music.
Anyways a lovely opera and one I'm glad to have seen, since it is so infrequently staged. I was also quite victorious in escorting my snared chocolate truffles (from the special room that beckons donors and their guests during intermission) unscathed to my home. Last time, I was apparently so utterly embroiled in the shenanigans of the Barber of Seville that I managed to lean my elbows right into their hiding nook in my now retired purse... resulting in a de facto fondu for the interior of said purse and all items within it. I still have contacts dipped in chocolate sitting around my sink.
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