Great moments in opera: The Mikado

If there is a spectacle of song and stage more delightful than The Mikado, I do not know what it is. Oh sure, the premise is ridiculous, the plot is inscrutable, and the characters — bearing names like Pish-Tush, Yum-Yum, and Nanki-Poo — are, at best, caricatures. But the music is so good, and the text is so witty, and it is all served up with such warm-hearted humour that audiences have found it irresistible ever since its 1885 premiere.

The story is set in Japan, in the town of Titipu. The ruler of Titipu, The Mikado, has decreed that in his jurisdiction flirting is to be punished by death. I forget why. The people of Titipu, naturally distressed by this decree, have contrived a clever remedy. They arranged for . . . well, they thought about it, you see, and . . . just a moment. Oh yes, they . . . hmm. How about I let Pish-Tush explain? Here is Our great Mikado, virtuous man [text]:

They are right, I think you’ll say, to reason in that kind of way. So that’s clear enough.

We are soon introduced to three young ladies, Yum-Yum, Peep-Bo, and Pitti-Sing, who, judging from their song, are on their way home from school. This, I must say, is one of the most memorable of all of Gilbert & Sullivan’s songs. In fact (if I may make a private disclosure), on those not infrequent occasions when I spontaneously burst into song, it often happens that this is the song I sing. In any case, it seems that few can hear it without making remarks. (i.e. “Stop singing, Daddy.”) Here is Three little maids from school [text], excerpted from the film Topsy Turvy:

Yum-Yum, it turns out, is betrothed to Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, but she loves the minstrel Nanki-Poo, who loves her in return. Clear? This puts Nanki-Poo in a bit of a tough spot, for not only is he tempted to flirt, he is tempted to flirt with the Executioner’s fiancée. The situation calls for tact, and Nanki-Poo hits on a brilliant tactic: flirtation under cover of the subjunctive. Here is their love duet, Were you not to Ko-Ko plighted [text]:

These happy affairs are interrupted by a directive from the Mikado: at least one person must be executed within the next month. I forget why. Talk around town turns to the question of who it ought to be. In this trio, I am so proud [text], each of Pooh-Bah, Ko-Ko, and Pish-Tush argues that it ought not to be him. I am especially fond of the closing section of this excerpt:

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

Complications ensue. Deals are made. New, but still distressing, bylaws are discovered. Things fall out, as they will. Along the way we are treated to a few quiet moments with Yum-Yum, in which she sings The sun, whose rays are all ablaze [text]. I consider this to be among Arthur Sullivan’s greatest achievements as a melodist. It is a lovely song that would not, I think, be out of place in a grand opera.

In the end, Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo somehow obtain the blessing of the Mikado for their marriage. I will not attempt to explain how this happens; it is one of life’s little mysteries. It is enough to simply enjoy the closing chorus, For he’s gone and married Yum-Yum [text], which is as rousing and joyful a chorus as you are ever likely to hear. Here again is an excerpt from Topsy Turvy:

Great moments in opera: Pirates of Penzance

The Pirates of Penzance followed the success of H.M.S. Pinafore, receiving its premiere (in New York, interestingly) in 1879. Like its predecessor, it is one of Gilbert & Sullivan’s most beloved works. It has the wit and charm characteristic of their most successful collaborations (even if, in my opinion, it is not quite as good as Pinafore and The Mikado).

The story is quite silly, as you would expect: a young man must serve a term of indentured servitude to a raft of pirates before he can marry his true love. Complications ensue.

Each of the clips below is taken from a 1983 film adaptation, starring Kevin Kline and — if you can believe it — Angela Lansbury. I am reluctant to use these clips because they are sort of odd: the voices are not recorded in a natural acoustic space, and there is something vaguely robotic about their sound. But there are not many clips of decent quality available, so I am stuck with these.

No doubt the most famous section of Penzance is the patter-song “I am the very model of a modern Major-General”. It is one of Gilbert & Sullivan’s great hits, known (I imagine) to anyone who knows anything about any of Gilbert & Sullivan’s music, and much beloved.

The popularity of this song has led to many, many imitations. A few that I could find: about Obama, transhumanists, psychopharmacologists, and the periodic table.

**

It is sometimes not appreciated that Gilbert & Sullivan are occasionally poking fun at the operatic hits of their time. Penzance provides some good examples, and the particular target is Verdi’s Il trovatore.

Consider “With cat-like tread”, in which the pirates sing a rousing chorus about how quiet they are. This is a parody of the so-called “Anvil Chorus” in Il trovatore, which was much ridiculed for doing the same thing. It is really quite funny:

Another good example is the Policeman’s Chorus, “When the foeman bares his steel”. This is funny all the way through: it is a double-chorus, first for a group of men (the policemen) and then women (the Major-General’s numerous daughters); the men are confessing their fear at confronting the pirates, and the women are giving them, well, some sort of encouragement, I suppose. Towards the end the two choruses join forces in a contrapuntal tour de force, but the music ensnares them: they are singing about going on their way, but the music itself prevents their going. This is likely a parody of “Di quella pira” from Il trovatore, in which the same absurdity occurs. But it is certainly humorous enough on its own terms:

Great moments in opera: Roméo et Juliette

Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette had its premiere in Paris in 1867. It is a quite faithful adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, even following the five act structure of its model. Though not an extremely well-known opera, it apparently enjoys greater popularity in France than elsewhere. I had never heard it before sitting down this week with a DVD performance. My first impressions were mixed; it has its beauties, and of course the story is good, but there is something about nineteenth-century French opera (and, for that matter, eighteenth-century and seventeenth-century French opera) that leaves me cool. Nonetheless, a few ‘great moments’ presented themselves.

In the first Act, Romeo and his friends attend the masked ball at the home of the Capulets. When the party has ended, Juliet sings Je veux vivre dans ce rêve (I want to live in this dream), which is sometimes simply called Juliette’s Waltz. It’s a popular recital piece, sung in this clip by Diana Damrau:

Early in the second Act Romeo approaches Juliette’s balcony and sings a lovely cavatina, Ah! Levè-toi soleil (Ah! Arise, fair sun), in which he expresses his love for her. She is inside at the time, and only emerges when the song is completed. Here is a concert performance by Juan Diego Florez:

The burden of Act III is to get the two married, and Act IV opens with the lovers awaking after their wedding night. Naturally, they sing a love duet: Nuit d’hymenee, O douce nuit d’amour (Night hymeneal, O sweet night of love). This goes on for quite a while, but it is pretty. Here are Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna. I believe this production is from the Met. Thank goodness they don’t fall off the bed!

We all know what happens in the final Act. Here is the tragic finale, sung again by Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna, in a clip with English subtitles. This is pretty great:

Great moments in opera: Hänsel und Gretel

My opera education continues with Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, which was first performed in 1893. I had heard this opera once before, on a famous 1953 recording, but otherwise I did not have much knowledge of it before sitting down with a recent DVD performance. The clips below are all from this same DVD.

The opera has a reputation as a Christmas favourite, and it is easy to see why. It has everything we expect from Christmas: drunkenness, child negligence, starvation, homelessness, nightmares, mass murder, and cannibalism. I know the story of Hansel and Gretel, of course, but even so I was surprised at how violent and gruesome the opera is. (I am even more surprised to hear, in interview segments accompanying the opera, that Humperdinck’s libretto plays down the dark elements of the Grimms brothers’ original. I may reconsider my plans to read those fairy tales to my kids.)

The real reason for its association with Christmas may be the sparkling orchestration, which brings to mind the glitter of tinsel and Christmas lights. It is one of the best sounding operas that I have heard in quite a while. (Consider the overture above as a sampler.) Perhaps part of its appeal is in the contrast between the sparkle in the music and the darkness of the story. I note with interest that the premiere performance was conducted by none other than Richard Strauss, and that Mahler gave the Hamburg premiere the following year. Humperdinck evidently had the respect of his time’s great orchestral masters.

The libretto of Hänsel und Gretel is unusual insofar as it is — almost? — entirely metrical, arranged into rhyming couplets. This in itself gives the music a lilting quality, like a nursery rhyme or a children’s song (and indeed many of the melodies sound as though they were lifted from or inspired by metrical folk songs). The story focuses on the two children: first at home, where they have nothing to eat; then in the forest, where they have encounters with various supernatural beings; and finally in the witch’s candy house, where through trickery they narrowly escape being turned into roasted kid.

The most popular piece in this opera is the Abendsegen, or Evening Prayer, sung by the two children as they find themselves in a dark forest at nightfall. The prayer asks that angels keep them safe through the night, and it has a hushed charm that is quite attractive. It is sung here by Angela Kirchschlager and Diana Damrau. This clip also shows the attending angels come in answer to their prayer.

The story ends, of course, with Hansel and Gretel turning the tables on the witch, popping her into the oven intended for them. This breaks her evil spells, and dozens of captured children pour out of the freezer and cupboards to sing a song of joyous triumph. Hansel and Gretel’s parents show up — sung in this production by Thomas Allen and Elizabeth Connell — and the opera comes to a close with the witch, now converted into gingerbread, being pulled from the oven and devoured by the happy children. Here we go:

Great moments in opera: Les Troyens

I was about halfway through Berlioz’s monstrous Les Troyens — that is, I had watched two full hours of it — when I began to worry: was it possible that the whole gargantuan spectacle could play out without a single ear-catching melody being heard? Perhaps I was just in the wrong frame of mind — although, to be fair, I did not seem to be. This opera is regarded as one of Berlioz’s masterpieces, and even as one of the most significant operas of the nineteenth century. Evidently I was not getting it.

It is certainly an ambitious work. For his story Berlioz turned to Virgil’s Aeneid. The opening acts concern the fall of Troy (from Aeneid, Book I), and we then follow Aeneas to Carthage and the court of Dido, where (as we know) she falls in love with him and kills herself when he leaves (Aeneid, Book IV). The libretto departs from Virgil’s model insofar as it introduces a major role for Cassandra, who foresees the fall of Troy and tries to warn the Trojans, to no avail. Les Troyens calls for a huge cast, and the two principal female roles, for Cassandra and Dido, are extremely demanding. Berlioz himself was never able to hear the entire work staged on account of its length, technical difficulty, and logistical challenges.

A good story is all too rare in opera, and Les Troyens certainly has one. I am struggling, therefore, to understand why I found it so tedious. It was not just the length — 4 hours — although that may have been part of it. More serious was this: most of the libretto, which Berlioz wrote himself, is exposition. Almost none of the action of the story takes place on stage. Instead we hear about events, and even about conversations, from on-stage soloists and choruses. This saps the drama. The music is also not very interesting, or at least was not to me. I’ll grant that it is stately and dignified, sometimes tragic, and (to say something positive) it avoids some of the excesses of nineteenth-century French opera, but it is also slow and strangely colourless. This is true even of the orchestral part. This is Berlioz! He is supposed to be one of the great wizards of orchestration. But Les Troyens did not impress me in that respect. (However much I may complain about Wagner, it is at least true that listening to his orchestra is almost always interesting.)

Yet, as it turned out, my patient waiting for a lovely melody was eventually rewarded. At the end of Act IV (of V), Dido and Aeneas sang a love duet, Nuit d’ivresse, that was everything I had been hoping for: lyrical, melodious, and entrancing. It is sung in this clip by Susan Graham and Gregory Kundehe, from a recent Parisian production:

That is lovely, and, in context, very nearly worth waiting for.

Great moments in opera: H.M.S. Pinafore

Everyone, I suppose, has their favourite Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Most of the time I am inclined to name The Mikado as mine, but in those moments when I crinkle my brow at the thought of ladies attending seminary, or sink wearily under the weight of faux-Japanese gibberish, it is H.M.S. Pinafore that crests the waves and comes to my rescue. From start to finish it is packed full of good humour, sharp wit, and infectious melodies, with hardly a misstep anywhere. It is really hard to imagine a more winsome combination.

This week I had the good fortune to view, for the first time, a stage performance (on DVD) of the work. As I watched, I was embarrassed to realize that, despite the fact that I could sing along to a good portion of the music, I did not actually know the story, for I had never before heard the dialogue that comes between the musical numbers. The plot is essentially a love triangle with a good bit of class consciousness thrown in, with the various difficulties being magically resolved at the last moment by a ridiculous contrivance. This story, as always with Gilbert & Sullivan, is ludicrous, but still it was enjoyable to learn how the various songs fit together in context.

One is spoiled for choice of good music in Pinafore, but unfortunately the same cannot be said of the clips available online. This operetta is, it seems, a favourite of small-time musical societies the world over, each of which posts a grainy, dark, out of focus, and muffled recording of its performance online. I have had a horrendous time sifting through them to find something decent. The DVD I watched was from Opera Australia, and it was superb (recommended without reservations!), but I could find only a few clips from it.

Here is one. This is I am the Captain of the Pinafore [text], an introductory number in which we get to know the Captain and his right good crew. The Captain is sung here by Anthony Warlow.

When I was a lad [text] is probably the most famous song in the piece. In it, the First Lord of the Admiralty describes how he rose to his position of eminence. The part is sung here by Drew Forsythe:

I am fond of the finale to Act I, which is quite jaunty and has some nice contrapuntal surprises, but I cannot find a decent clip. Alas.

Alas the more: good online clips of the best numbers from Act II elude me. I am thinking in particular of Never mind the why and wherefore [text]. I shall have to make do with this audio-only clip (albeit from the best available recording):

If H.M.S. Pinafore droops anywhere, it is in the finale [text]. That’s a bad place to droop, obviously, but there you have it. Sullivan weaves a medley of tunes we’ve heard before, but prominent among them is a grand (that is, rather dull) chorus on the theme “He is an Englishman” — where “Englishman” is understood to mean something like “As Good A Chap As You’re Likely To Find”. Our hearts are supposed to swell with pride at hearing this chorus, but mine does not, and so the finale fizzles for me. Fiddlesticks.

The [text] links in this post all go to the Gilbert & Sullivan Archive. My thanks to them for making the libretto available online in such a convenient and readable format.

Great moments in opera: The Fairy Queen

Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen is based not, as one might expect, on Spenser, but on Shakespeare. Designated a semi-opera, it is structured around a loose adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Shakespearean frame being elaborated with music, song, and dance. By convention, the elements of masque belong to the world of faerie, and so Purcell’s contributions pertain, in greatest part, to the strange and mysterious world of Oberon and Titania, through which the Athenian lovers flit like fire-flies.

Some of the music of The Fairy Queen has an incidental quality to it, designed to provide accompaniment to dancers, or to play over scene changes. It is lovely in itself, and pleasant to hear, but not particularly memorable. But some of it is made of sturdier stuff. A number of the songs, for instance, have become popular as recital pieces. In this post I’ll sample a couple of those.

A few years ago, to mark the 350th anniversary of Purcell’s birth, the whole of The Fairy Queen was staged at Glyndebourne, with William Christie in the conductor’s seat (and he did sit), a starry cast of singers, and an atmospheric production. The clips below are taken from that event. (It was a fine production, but marred by some incongruous directorial choices. It is remarkable to me that a production which, on the musical side, takes every care to cultivate the ‘historical authenticity’ of the music, the instruments, and the manner of playing, will then, on the theatrical side, inject a jarring post-modern sensibility into the stage action in order to get a cheap laugh. I won’t go into details.)

First, to illustrate how the music of Purcell is integrated into Shakespeare’s play, here is the scene in which Oberon bedews Titania’s proud eyes with the juice of that herb which maidens call love-in-idleness. It is more typical of The Fairy Queen that Shakespeare’s lines be delivered without musical accompaniment, but here the orchestra contributes some atmospheric effects to heighten the moment. The segment I have in mind lasts about 90 seconds; if you continue watching you’ll see a good example of the masque elements of the production.

A piece that has become popular with recitalists is If Love’s a Sweet Passion. Though not part of the original play, the sentiment of the song is apt enough:

If love’s a sweet passion, why does it torment?
If a bitter, oh tell me, whence comes my content?
Since I suffer with pleasure, why should I complain,
Or grieve at my fate, when I know ’tis in vain?

A second, and perhaps slightly more famous, excerpt is O let me weep, which is also sometimes simply called The Plaint. I first learned this song from an old Alfred Deller recording. I believe that the singer here is Lucy Crowe.

O let me weep, for ever weep,
My eyes no more shall welcome sleep;
I’ll hide me from the sight of day,
And sigh, and sigh my soul away.

Not very cheery, but, my goodness, these Elizabethans did melancholy like nobody else.

Great moments in opera: La bohème

It is one of the most popular operas in the repertoire, and has been since its 1896 premiere. It is a wonderful piece: tender, tragic, big-hearted, yet written to a human scale, and awash in gorgeous melodies. There are few operas that I enjoy more than this. In my opinion it is Puccini’s best.

The first Act is a marvel. It opens with a scene of warm, intelligent, and heartening male camaraderie, the likes of which we do not often see in our contemporary popular entertainments. This yields to the first meeting of the opera’s principal romantic leads, Rodolfo and Mimi. Mimi knocks on the door of Rodolfo’s flat, her candle having gone out. The two arias in which they introduce themselves to one another must be among the greatest back-to-back arias in the operatic tradition. Rodolfo begins, singing Che gelida manina (What a cold little hand), and, with hardly a beat wasted, Mimi responds with Si, mi chiamano Mimi (Yes, they call me Mimi). The music of both arias is integral to the score of La bohème, reappearing in various guises as the story develops.

Here is Che gelida manina, sung by Luciano Pavarotti, with English subtitles. This clip is long; the aria begins at 4:25.

And here is the young Mirella Freni singing the response, Si, mi chiamano Mimi.

After a short transitional section, the first Act closes with a famous duet for Rodolfo and Mimi, O soave fanciulla (O gentle maiden), in which the pair sing of the love that has suddenly blossomed between them. It is probably my favourite section of music in the opera. It is sung here by Jussi Bjorling and Renata Tebaldi, in a performance from 1956. No subtitles, but you can find the text and translation here. Don’t neglect to listen to the off-stage high notes at the end!

Act II takes place in an open air Parisian cafe, and introduces us to Musetta, a fiery beauty whose on-again, off-again relationship with Rodolfo’s friend Marcello plays as counterpoint to the tender romance of Rodolfo and Mimi. The big showpiece in this Act is “Musetta’s Waltz”, Quando me’n vo’ (When I go along), sung here by Adriana Martino in a performance from 1965, with English subtitles.

The third Act takes place on a cold, wintry night at a lonely toll gate to the city. It is a wonderfully atmospheric segment of the opera. Several months have passed, and Mimi has grown ill with tuberculosis. Rodolfo, overcome with grief at her suffering, is tempted to separate from her, fearing that he will be unable to bear her further deterioration. But he resists the temptation, and he and Mimi vow to remain together, at least until the spring. The Act closes with a splendid quartet, Addio, dolce svegliare (Goodbye, sweet awakening), in which the faltering but resilient love of Rodolfo and Mimi is celebrated against the background quarreling of Marcello and Musetta. Neil Shicoff and Ileana Cotrubas sing Rodolfo and Mimi, and Thomas Allen and Marilyn Zschau sing Marcello and Musetta, from a Royal Opera House (London) performance from 1982.

In the fourth and final Act Mimi’s illness has worsened. She and Rodolfo have a lovely duet, Sono andati? (Have they gone?), in which they reminisce about their first meeting (from Act I). Their recollections are happy ones, but sorrow hangs over them; as listeners, we suspect that they have turned to memories because the looming future is so unbearably sad. Here are Luciano Pavarotti and Fiamma D’Amico, from 1986. This clip actually continues straight through to the end of the opera.

The closing pages of La bohème are devastating. For the first time since the opera began, the orchestra falls silent for an extended period, so that we begin to hear stage noises, footsteps scuffling on the floor. The singers drop into spoken dialogue, frantic and halting. By these means, Puccini achieves something quite remarkable: he conveys something of the sheer eeriness of death. When it is done well, the effect is unforgettable.

Great moments in opera: Anna Bolena

Yesterday I was able to attend, for the first time, one of the Met Live in HD broadcasts. (This is a programme whereby the Metropolitan Opera in New York broadcasts live via satellite to movie theatres around the world.) I saw Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, with Anna Netrebko singing the title role. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It’s a good way to see an opera: you get the excitement of a live performance, but with close-up visuals of the singers, plus some backstage footage, including interviews with the principals. I’d like to go again someday.

Anna Bolena is not one of Donizetti’s most popular operas, though it does retain a toe-hold on the periphery of the repertory. He wrote 70-odd in total, so it is not surprising that not all are in wide circulation. Anna Bolena was his 35th, and was, I am told, his first big success. That’s resilience for you. The story is about the fateful last days of Anne Boleyn. There are five main roles: Anne, as the troubled Queen; Henry VIII, her (gratifyingly) villainous husband, who is looking for an excuse to rid himself of Anne in order to make room for Jane Seymour; then there is Jane, of course, a confidant of Anne but also secretly carrying on with Henry; Lord Percy, in love with Anne for many years and now returned from exile; and Smeaton, a royal page, also in love with Anne, whose fantasies become the occasion for her downfall.

I am not a connoisseur of bel canto opera; though I may listen for ever so long, I cannot really tell my Donizettis from my Bellinis and my Rossinis. There is certainly something formulaic about the music of Anna Bolena, but it’s a winning formula, and I am not complaining. Donizetti wrote the entire thing in about a month. It falls easily on the ear, is full of beautiful lines and brilliant high notes, and includes a smattering of dramatic duets and trios. At just under three hours in performance, the argument could be made that it goes on longer than it needs to, and the second act (of two) in particular could be profitably edited for brevity.

The relative rarity of this opera translates into few available video clips, and none (as far as I can find) with English subtitles. Here is a duet, called Va’, infelice (Go, unhappy one), for Anne and Jane, from Act II. Anne, condemned by Henry and awaiting her fate, offers forgiveness to Jane for her betrayal, but Jane receives the forgiveness like a burden. “Your pardon is worse than the scorn which I feared.” The two roles are sung here by Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca, from a Viennese production staged earlier this year. It would be hard to imagine two more glamorous sopranos in these regal roles!

The most famous scene in the opera is probably the ‘mad scene’ from near the end of Act II. It is not so famous as Donizetti’s other mad scene, from Lucia di Lammermoor, but it is fair to say that it is Anna Bolena‘s big hit. Anne is in prison, and has gone mad. She sings about how her wedding day has finally arrived, the king awaits her, and so forth. A chorus of ladies comments on how sad is her plight. Then she thinks of Percy, and of death, and imagines a scene of pastoral beauty: a quiet river, and green trees, where she can forget her troubles. Anna Netrebko sings again, from the same Viennese production.

Finally, here is the last scene in the opera, in which Anne, facing execution, and in response to pitying comments from the crowd, asks God’s mercy on those who are taking her life. It’s a moment of heroic magnanimity, played rather too vengefully by Anna Netrebko here. But I like the final gesture. The closing moments of the Met production were even better: Anna exposed her neck, and then began to rise, on a platform, toward the menacing figure of the executioner, high above the stage, as the curtain fell. Terrific.

Great moments in opera: Ariadne auf Naxos

Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos has a special place in my heart: it was the first opera that I ever bought, and perhaps (I don’t quite remember) the first that I ever heard from start to finish. It was Herbert von Karajan’s well-regarded 1954 recording that I bought, with its starry cast of singers: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Rita Streich, and Irmgard Seefried. It is a recording that I treasure still.

In some respects Ariadne was an odd place to make an entry into the world of opera; it is not a work that is widely sampled on ‘Opera Hits’ collections (though it does have one truly spectacular virtuoso aria; see below). I might have been better to start with Don Giovanni or Tosca. With hindsight, though, perhaps it was not so bad a beginning after all: the work is, to borrow a useful anachronism, a tragicomical ‘mash-up’ of operatic traditions, blending elements of the opera seria and opera buffa genres, and liberally spiced with Strauss’ own voluptuous hyper-Romanticism. I wasn’t able to hear all of those elements at the time, but I can hear them now.

The story, to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, concerns the staging of after-dinner entertainments for a wealthy patron. Both a tragedy (an opera seria on the tale of Ariadne stranded on the isle of Naxos) and a comedy (a song-and-dance burlesque) are planned, but at the last minute the performers are instructed that, due to time constraints, they must perform simultaneously. Hence the mash-up. The backstage preparations are portrayed in a prologue, with some spoken sections, and then the performance — an opera within an opera — follows.

The music of Ariadne, as befits the story, is a mixture of styles, ranging from stately and elegant to jaunty and raucous. For this post I have selected two sections, one from the tragedy and one from the comedy. First up is Ariadne, singing “Es gibt ein Reich” (“There is a realm”). She has been stranded on Naxos by Theseus, and in this section she longs for death to deliver her from her endless torment. It is sung in this clip by Jessye Norman, in a production from the Metropolitan Opera. I don’t know about you, but Jessye Norman scares me: it doesn’t seem right that one human body should be able to produce that much sound. It is only slightly reassuring to see that she is working pretty hard here: watch her sweat. English subtitles included.

In response to Ariadne’s lament, Zerbinetta, a comic actress, bounces in with some advice: the best way to get over a man, she says, is to get another. It’s a darkly humorous clash of worlds: the passionate death-wish of a tortured soul answered by the sassy quips of a glamour girl. Zerbinetta’s aria, “Großmächtige Prinzessin“, lasts nearly 12 minutes and is one of the most difficult in the entire operatic literature: it is a taxing tour de force that defeats all but the greatest singers. My Kobbe’s Complete Opera Guide notes, rather dryly, that “the vocal writing parts company with what is normally considered advisable to write for a singer”. I’ll say. It is sung here by Kathleen Battle. The audience gives her a tremendous ovation at the end, as well they should. No subtitles, but you’ll get the idea.

Is that not amazing?

As an addendum, you might enjoy watching some short rehearsal clips from the same Met production. I have sometimes thought that James Levine, being the head of one of the world’s busiest opera companies, must be a figurehead, showing up for performances, but leaving the detail work to others. If these clips are any indication, that is wrong: he is working personally with his stars (Norman and Battle, as above), preparing the orchestra, and directing action on the stage as well. Impressive, and fascinating too.