[Magdalen] It Trittico Opera Stuff.

[Scott Knitter]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 9:20 AM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen
<magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> At the first intermission, he was asked how he liked  the
> performance.  He came back with, "I'll tell you this.  That guy  (Octavian)
> is NOT a man!"

LOL!

I've actually sung in one opera, at Michigan State University: Fidelio
(to which the customary subtitle seems to be "Beethoven's Only
Opera"). In German, TBTG, but I never really caught on to the appeal
of the music in it. I was of course a prisoner for the famed chorus
and then a member of the choir for the apotheosis scene at the end.

The staging consisted of scaffolding (suggesting prison bars, I
gather) and ramps. And surprise...it won some sort of major award. No
accounting for taste, I guess! The costuming was predictable prison
garb. We did a lot of waiting, frozen, in silhouette behind the lead
singers. I remember pressing a nearby prisoner's hand against the
floor with my foot to get him to wake up and quit snoring during the
long wait.

The final apotheosis featured all of us choir folks dressed in shiny
peach-colored jammies with pointy hats, which looked absolutely
stupid. At dress rehearsal we were gathered in the wings to make our
entrance, hold hands, and sing our bit, and the lead tenor came out of
his dressing room above us on a balcony--and just doubled over with
laughter.

Some of the same things I dislike about the music in Fidelio are what
I don't like about Beethoven's too-often-sung Hallelujah chorus from
Christ on the Mount of Olives. I don't think he "got" choral writing
the way many of his contemporaries did. I'd much rather hear a
Beethoven symphony or quartet. Some of the sung phrases in Fidelio
sound as stupid as our sateen jammies looked. One we took delight in
mocking was the lead bass' descending line "Mir beben meine Glieder"
(My members are quaking.) There were some nice moments in the
Prisoners' Chorus itself, and of course in the Leonore Overture, but
that's about it.


-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA