Ill Trovatore
What to make of all this lyric theater?
It's coming at me from all directions, pushing and shoving. Naturally, I'm shoving back. It started it.
The Marx Brothers have forever ruined me for Il Trovatore. Sorry, but once you've seen the anvil chorus with Harpo about to strike, there's no going back. Same with gypsy fireside arias. It's a bad set up, singers knocking out a story so lame with Groucho and Chico in the wings tearing up contracts. Me no like this article, rip. For one thing, the actions of the Marx Brothers couldn't be clearer. Their motivation may be surreal, their purpose Dada, but what they are doing is what they are doing. Verdi's story turns on a mistaken identity, a woman who throws the wrong baby in a fire. Whoops. And an oddly timed and interminable self poisoning. Both of these plot twists are enough to make you hit the side of your head a few times to loosen up some brain cells. Go ahead. Try head hitting. Crazier things happen in Il Trovatore.
Which would not matter if only a week or so earlier you hadn't seen three Puccini one-acts, each story complete, twisted, tragic or comic. I guess that an opera company is like any industrial plant. Once you crank it up, you sort of have to keep it going. Shutting down is costly and inefficient. Although a shutdown would be welcome. Thing is, everyone knows the Verdi music is magnificent. It's just that I need at least a month, maybe two, before I can take it, mixed as it is with all this balderdash. Even if Il Trovatore was rebranded as Scenes from the Gypsy Camp and the Guys in the Castle, I would need a break. Maybe this makes me not a big opera fan. The real question is what makes me plan to see Abduction from the Seraglio on Saturday.
As for the squeeze, well there's only so much time. I'm an aging disabled guy doing stuff in a wheelchair. And it's taking a lot out of me, this opera season. And yes, I know, lots of people would like my tickets. Actually, this may not even be true. Maybe no one wants them. Maybe I don't want them.
Which may explain why this afternoon's matinee of the Lincoln Center production of South Pacific also drove me into something of a frenzy. Not that the production isn't charming, and quite moving. The latter quality has much to do with me these days. There was something about Lieut. Cable's tortured love and the offhand way he volunteers for life-threatening military action...yes, even this clichéd story moment struck a chord. There is nothing abstract about facing death anymore, not after Marlou.
During the intermission, I blasted out of my back row wheelchair space and zipped into the disabled toilet. I was congratulating myself on this extraordinarily deft move, when someone began pounding on the door. The man not only pounded but offered advice such as "hurry up" and "others have to use this," a form of external pressure that has an inverse effect on bladder pressure, extending the men's room process. Pound, pound, pound. When I finally emerged, I wanted to run him over. He was just a guy with a cane. What sort of audience is this?
Something about the performance drove me dementedly into traffic afterwards. "Stop," yelled the theater's traffic guard, standing in front of the crowds and trying to let rush-hour traffic get by on Taylor Street. I did stop. I was dashing right into a red light. And for what reason? Too much musical theater, I think. Being too caught up in all the crescendos and schmaltzandos. While, at the other extreme, magazines and newspapers are piling up unread. I do have an occasional go at the San Francisco Chronicle which, at least, gives me a satisfying sense of having completed something. The newspaper itself having completed its own demise, more or less, stripped down to a few pathetic pages an issue.
Which doesn't explain why on Saturday I'll be back on the Opera Express, nonstop for the wheelchair space in row xx. There is a compulsive quality to my days. Not to mention an element of danger. I see the mortality part popping up here and there. Aside from that, I don't see much, except the scenery going by. The fact that a lot of the scenery is going up and down doesn't matter. At least I pay attention to the soundtrack now and then.
It's coming at me from all directions, pushing and shoving. Naturally, I'm shoving back. It started it.
The Marx Brothers have forever ruined me for Il Trovatore. Sorry, but once you've seen the anvil chorus with Harpo about to strike, there's no going back. Same with gypsy fireside arias. It's a bad set up, singers knocking out a story so lame with Groucho and Chico in the wings tearing up contracts. Me no like this article, rip. For one thing, the actions of the Marx Brothers couldn't be clearer. Their motivation may be surreal, their purpose Dada, but what they are doing is what they are doing. Verdi's story turns on a mistaken identity, a woman who throws the wrong baby in a fire. Whoops. And an oddly timed and interminable self poisoning. Both of these plot twists are enough to make you hit the side of your head a few times to loosen up some brain cells. Go ahead. Try head hitting. Crazier things happen in Il Trovatore.
Which would not matter if only a week or so earlier you hadn't seen three Puccini one-acts, each story complete, twisted, tragic or comic. I guess that an opera company is like any industrial plant. Once you crank it up, you sort of have to keep it going. Shutting down is costly and inefficient. Although a shutdown would be welcome. Thing is, everyone knows the Verdi music is magnificent. It's just that I need at least a month, maybe two, before I can take it, mixed as it is with all this balderdash. Even if Il Trovatore was rebranded as Scenes from the Gypsy Camp and the Guys in the Castle, I would need a break. Maybe this makes me not a big opera fan. The real question is what makes me plan to see Abduction from the Seraglio on Saturday.
As for the squeeze, well there's only so much time. I'm an aging disabled guy doing stuff in a wheelchair. And it's taking a lot out of me, this opera season. And yes, I know, lots of people would like my tickets. Actually, this may not even be true. Maybe no one wants them. Maybe I don't want them.
Which may explain why this afternoon's matinee of the Lincoln Center production of South Pacific also drove me into something of a frenzy. Not that the production isn't charming, and quite moving. The latter quality has much to do with me these days. There was something about Lieut. Cable's tortured love and the offhand way he volunteers for life-threatening military action...yes, even this clichéd story moment struck a chord. There is nothing abstract about facing death anymore, not after Marlou.
During the intermission, I blasted out of my back row wheelchair space and zipped into the disabled toilet. I was congratulating myself on this extraordinarily deft move, when someone began pounding on the door. The man not only pounded but offered advice such as "hurry up" and "others have to use this," a form of external pressure that has an inverse effect on bladder pressure, extending the men's room process. Pound, pound, pound. When I finally emerged, I wanted to run him over. He was just a guy with a cane. What sort of audience is this?
Something about the performance drove me dementedly into traffic afterwards. "Stop," yelled the theater's traffic guard, standing in front of the crowds and trying to let rush-hour traffic get by on Taylor Street. I did stop. I was dashing right into a red light. And for what reason? Too much musical theater, I think. Being too caught up in all the crescendos and schmaltzandos. While, at the other extreme, magazines and newspapers are piling up unread. I do have an occasional go at the San Francisco Chronicle which, at least, gives me a satisfying sense of having completed something. The newspaper itself having completed its own demise, more or less, stripped down to a few pathetic pages an issue.
Which doesn't explain why on Saturday I'll be back on the Opera Express, nonstop for the wheelchair space in row xx. There is a compulsive quality to my days. Not to mention an element of danger. I see the mortality part popping up here and there. Aside from that, I don't see much, except the scenery going by. The fact that a lot of the scenery is going up and down doesn't matter. At least I pay attention to the soundtrack now and then.
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