Iphigenie - Viki's take

Before I get into the meat of this post, I'd like to thank all of you for your hilarious comments on flip flop girl. Just for the record - she's still wearing them. All who agreed that she wouldn't get it if I said something subtle are correct, and whoever said that maybe she saw my blog and had someone else be that anonymous poster but then decided that she wasn't smart enough for that, you're right, too. She isn't doing as many dumb things as she did right off the bat (or maybe I'm just getting used to it) but I'm still going nuts with the whiney, sorority girl-like tone she speaks with all of the time. Anyway...

Iphigenie en Tauride on Tuesday night was really incredible. Trey agreed that the music was fantastic - more baroque (think Bach & Handel) than classical (think Mozart) even though it premiered in 1779 (Mozart's dates are 1756-1791). The title role was sung by Susan Graham, and she was amazing - it's such a heavy singing role, but most be one of those that's easier and fun to sing once it's in the voice because she sounded incredible all the way to the end. Perhaps one of the neatest things about the music was that at the end, the girl singing Diane (the Greek goddess) sing from the balcony, so as to seem like she was singing from up above where the gods dwelled. I guess that's one good part about having our nosebleed seats - she was right there. :-)

As for the set, I know Trey didn't like it, but I thought it was very effective. It was essentially a black box, and the artists did use chalk to draw a few things, but at later points used water to wash them away. At the beginning they wrote the name of Iphigenie, her father Argamemnon, and her mother Clyminestre in chalk on the side walls and later while the singing went to I's family history and its disintegration, the names were erased. I thought it was very effective.

Something else cool was that everyone was in black, which made for much more effective lighting and just plain-old theatrical style. At one point one of the characters was singing about feeling as if snakes were crawling around him, and the 'dead bodies' on stage turned into 'snakes' but this was much more poignant because of the red lighting and shadows created by the angles of the lights.

So, all in all, I thought the minimalistic take on the myth was very effective theatrically, and it really enabled much more in terms of dramatic effect. Furthermore, it is my opinion that myths and legends are timeless, and therefore should be able to take place in most any setting and still keep the story in tact and have it make sense, which is a big part of why the production didn't bother me one bit. I also thought that they way it was done allowed for the viewer's imagination to run a bit more freely, though I would admit that I might have enjoyed this aspect more because I was not at all familiar with the opera and therefore didn't have any preconceived notions of the way it 'should' be done. Finally, if you look at the etching of the stage at the premiere, everyone was in late-18th century garb, which tells me that the composer really didn't feel strongly about the setting being in ancient Greece.

Now, Trey will argue that you wouldn't change the music or the lyrics, so how can you change the setting? My argument there is that it's the composer's name on the opera, and it's the music that fundamentally makes the opera what it is. Rigoletto wouldn't be the same opera without Caro Nome or La Donna e Mobile (both songs you'd know if you heard them). You can't very well change the lyrics either, especially because the composer probably chose at least some of the words/vowels to happen at certain points because they worked well vocally and were easy for the singers. The stage directions, however, are very different. If you've ever looked at an opera score, very little direction is generally given on that end. Directors and singers always have a lot of room for interpretation.

Ok, that's probably enough for now. Bottom line, in my opinion it was a really vocally stunning and theatrically captivating performance.

Next opera is Il Trovatore (crazy gypsy seeks revenge on the guy who killed her mother and everyone ends up dead) and then Salome (Salome is the object of King Herod's affections, but is obsessed with John the Baptist, who is later beheaded and who's head is given to Salome on a platter - fantastic stuff!), which we are very much looking forward to!