Anne Midgette demonstrates the art of writing a review of a new opera:
same article, different headline/link
Domingo's tenor lifts respectable, but too literal, 'Il Postino' by Daniel Catán
As an opera, it does tolerably well. Catán’s strength is beautiful music...and he offers plenty of it here -- sometimes in odd counterpoint to the laconic words of the dialogue it’s supporting... the opera succeeds best at traditionally operatic moments, like the full-bore, Pucciniesque wedding septet. Its weakness was a dogged fixation on the overblown...The weight of the opera score crushed some of the details beneath it...Il Postino takes refuge, too often, in generalities, poetry, and lovely music. Still, there are worse things to hide in -- and worse criticisms to make than to say that Catán has written a very lovely opera
Not having heard the work, I haven't a clue whether I would agree with her, but this gives me a real sense of the work.
Although she employs the standard tick-list approach to ensure she praises everyone who needs praising, she does with subtlety, avoiding clunking truck-drivers' gear-changes.
She writes the essential paragraph aimed at readers like me who simply wouldn't be reading the article otherwise
The music showcased Domingo’s ringing tone, tapped into an unexpected tender streak with a few high pianissimos, and never carried him too far above the staff. This opera would, in fact, be destined to live forever simply as a meaty role for an aging tenor, if only star tenors, these days, didn’t tend to burn out faster than they age. Domingo, more and more, is a miraculous exception.
And just for the reader's entertainment, and to demonstrate that she is a human being rather than a dessicated musicologist, she states:
It’s certainly a grateful role for Domingo. The exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, is an ageing but still-sexy artist pondering life and art and his legacy, with world renown and magnetic charisma. Sound familiar?
I'm not in the habit of reviewing reviews, but this really is an exemplar of how it should be done. She doesn't attempt to show how clever she is musically or in her ability to use arcane polysyllabic verbiage. It's not so long that you fall asleep halfway through, but long enough to contain several paragraphs of substance.
And even though she had reservations about the music, she does not trample over someone else's right to have enjoyed a night that they probably paid for themself (which I assume she didn't, but who could begrudge free tickets to a writer of this calibre!)
It will be a long time before we read such a well-written review - which is not to diminish the quality of the several I link to below, which in general seem above the curve!
This article could have been quite interesting, but in seriously flawed by its lack of fact-checking - "Also, nudity, invariably female, is not unknown in opera, or to L.A. Opera." Erm, The Fly, much? - and concludes with something that strongly resembles a schoolboy snigger.
I have to confess that I would find it extremely difficult to watch this scene live, in public.
As this article's author points out, the nudity is contextual. In art, as in life, it normally is. I don't find a naked body per se to be sexual, and in art, as in life, I often find partly- or fully-clothed bodies often to have more erotic promise. So the thought of seeing the back view of Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, or any other soprano, topless leaves me entirely indifferent in itself.
No, what I wouldn't be able to cope with is what Anne Midgette describes prosaically
When Domingo sang Neruda's famous love sonnet "Mañana XXVII," a poetic evocation of his naked beloved, he disrobed Gallardo-Domas to the waist
or as the Culture Monster writer puts it:
Especially riveting was that this moment unfolded slowly, and quite literally, in the hands of the world’s most celebrated living tenor.
Any other singer, I'd be, like, whatever, but him. Not him! No, I think I might possibly go to pieces and into bits.I would be thinking 'I wish that were me' (purely in a contextual way, of course), and it would be far too intimate and intense to experience in a theatre in the company of strangers and acquaintances, particularly when I would suspect that some of them might well be feeling the same way.
(and that is why I think that people object to nakedness and sexual inferences in live art. The dress it up in matters of 'good taste', 'morality' or 'think of the children', as smokescreens for their inability to deal with their own reactions! Just an opinion!)
Also, prosaically, the Paris performances are too close to the Barcelona performances of Tamerlano, which are booked and paid for and may be combined with a beach holiday on a nearby Costa.
