The Death of Klinghoffer

The chorus was magnificent. This might have been the finest choral work I’ve ever heard in an opera production. Every word was intelligible and every measure was pitch perfect and the intensity was palpable.

Conductor Michael Christie was a joy to watch in the pit (as he was during Ghosts of Versailles) and he had the orchestra and the chorus in perfect balance. There were times during the very difficult music that every eye in the chorus was trained on him and he brought them through safely.

If only I had liked the music they were singing.

I’m just not a fan of John Adams’ music. So it is high praise indeed from me when I say that I, at points in the performance, thought that I’d like to hear the choral pieces again sometime outside the confines of the opera.

The opera opens with the chorus singing the “Chorus of Exiled Palestinians” and then moves immediately into the “Chorus of Exiled Jews”. The chorus never leaves the stage. I would guess it was close to a half hour of choral singing. And I tip my hat to costume designer James Schuette because with the adjustment of a shawl, a change of handbag, the losing of a hat, the chorus changed identity so completely between the two pieces that they might have been different people.

After these two long choral works the action of the opera begins, if you can call it action. This is, of course, the story of the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by a group of Palestinian terrorists and the killing of wheel chair bound, American Jewish tourist Leon Klinghoffer. The two long choral pieces at the beginning set the stage for the political situation.

OTSL’s production of this opera is the first staged United States production since it was staged in 1991. This is, apparently, a controversial opera. OTSL spent a great deal of time and money on community outreach. OTSL General Director Timothy O’Leary described it as “educational events designed to help the production inspire the kind of informed, thoughtful dialogue among diverse groups that the arts have a special power to help create.” I didn’t go to any of them but I know people who did go and found them very informative.

My biggest problem with the opera wasn’t the subject matter. It was the libretto. During most of Act I we are told what happened to characters but are seldom shown what happened. I’ve noticed this a lot with modern opera librettos. Characters stand on stage and sing at the audience, telling them a story. Let’s face it, most operas involve singers standing on stages and singing at audiences. But usually they are singing about their interior lives. Usually love. Often rage. Sometimes despair. But modern operas seem to eschew the steamy emotions and prefer to simply tell us about the character’s actions. So we hear … And then I went to my stateroom and there I washed my face and then I went to find some lunch. It’s like Facebook status updates set to opera music.

I find it really boring. And when it is combined with John Adams minimalist style it is usually a recipe for me to go to sleep and most likely leave at intermission. I barely made it to intermission when OTSL did Nixon in China. So the fact that I stuck it out to the end of Klinghoffer tells you just how much I enjoyed the chorus.

Of course one reason that this particular group of chorus members may have sung this particular opera so well is that the blocking for this particular opera was also minimalist. Mostly non-existent when it came to the chorus. They often stood in rows on stage, facing the conductor, and sang. They didn’t have to sing and dance around and interact with other each other and the main characters. They just had to sing. And they even, at one point, sang touching each other’s arms which must have been a huge help in timing their breathing so that the long, utterly beautiful, sustained notes just floated around the theater.

It would have been nice to have some choreography or, at least, a little more movement. But at least we had the glorious sound of their voices.

Kudos also to Christopher Mageira, who played the Captain and who was outstanding. The others in the cast were also quite fine.

In the end, I would say this was a brilliant production of an opera that I never intend to see again. But I’m glad that I saw it once.

Here’s a link to OTSL’s multimedia preview of this opera (although I can’t get it to play correctly on any of my computers).

Torchwood: Children of Earth

Ok, everyone was right.  Children of Earth was a game changer for Torchwood.  Before CofE Torchwood was an enjoyable but uneven program that couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to emphasize science fiction or detective story.  After CofE Torchwood is a Serious Television Show.

When all the children on earth freeze for minutes at a time and then start to recite the same words together, well that’s a clue that something is going on that might not be of this world.  So far, pretty typical.  But then the writers set us up to believe that a new character is going to join the Torchwood team only to reveal that he is part of a group working against Torchwood.  Then we find out that the government has ordered a hit on Captain Jack because … well, we don’t know why.  Then the government tries to kill Captain Jack but he can’t die, even when he’s blown up.  Then they decide to encase him in concrete.  It’s all very exciting but all the time there is a big scary alien coming that has something to do with the children. 

Then when Torchwood finally manages to force its way into the situation and take control of the situation, it all goes horribly wrong.  And the ending.  Captain Jack had a hard choice to make and he made it. 

Lots of deaths.  Lots of people important to Jack dying because of Jack.

After all that, who can blame him for deciding he needed some time away and beaming up to the nearest starship a la Arthur Dent.  He must come back to earth though because I hear he’s in the new series that starts next month. 

Last time I wrote about Torchwood I said that they needed to create either a Big Bad institution or a Big Bad person for Jack to go up against.   I also said I didn’t think that Ianto and Jack didn’t have any chemistry and I wouldn’t be sorry to see him go. 

They created a governmental Big Bad that was a bad as anything I’ve ever seen.  There is a scene where the government is trying to decide whose children to sacrifice to the alien and they decide it can’t be the children of the elite, not their children.  It was a pretty chilling scene as they made the decision that it was the low achievers who had to go.  So it was a good Big Bad to put Jack up against.  It allowed Jack to be Jack without any necessity of toning down his act.

And they got rid of Ianto.  I admit that I was sad when he died.  But I still didn’t think that he and Jack had chemistry.  I’m going to admit here that it went through my mind at the end of Season 2 that Ianto was a double agent sent to infiltrate Torchwood and be a honey trap for Jack.  I never believed that he really cared for Jack. He had more passion for the robowoman in Season 1 than he ever showed for Jack. But, in CofE I did believe that he cared for Jack.   I still didn’t think they were good together but I stopped thinking that the writers had some evil plot that hadn’t yet been revealed.    But now that he’s gone, I’ll drop it and just say I’m sad he had to die a horrible death.

So now we wait for the next season, which I won’t see because I don’t have cable.  Coming off of CofE, I have high hopes.  Plus Jane Espenson is one of the writers.  Plus they are moving part of the action to Los Angeles.  Normally I wouldn’t be excited by that but I think Jack in Los Angeles could be fun.  Los Angeles is BIG and Jack is BIG.  And the people of Los Angeles … well they seem kind of alien to me.

I continue to think that Jack plays better in a setting that is a little, oh, less than normal.  Los Angeles is certainly that.

I tried to watch Torchwood and Doctor Who in the order in which they aired.  So I saw the last few Doctor Who episodes after the end of CofE.  In the episode where the Tenth Doctor dies and regenerates, he has a chance to visit all of his friends one last time and do something nice for them.  In one scene he looks up Captain Jack.  Jack is in a space bar (very reminiscent of Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars).  So the Doctor gets to see a lot of the aliens he has encountered in this lifetime as well as Jack.

It seems right that Jack is in a bar.  He’s lost Ianto and he’s lost a member of his own family.  He’s sitting at a bar drinking.  He’s not the same Jack. And the Doctor gives him a little push to get back into the human scene.  Sure, this scene could have been a Torchwood scene.  But Torchwood took place in Cardiff.  He would have been sitting in a bar in Cardiff and the lighting would have been dark.  Very Torchwoodesque and dark.  But since this scene took place in Doctor Who, they could set it in a space bar and make it Really Fun!  And that’s what Jack needs – a really fun setting.  Because his character is Really Fun.   And as I watched that scene I thought …. Yeah, this could be Los Angeles.

See what I mean:

There was this guy …

I’m still in the throes of Tenth Doctor withdrawal. 

Here’s the lovely scene where the Doctor says goodbye to Sarah Jane … finally!  Only six Doctor Lives after he should have said goodbye properly.  David Tennant was only a child when the Fourth Doctor left Sarah Jane behind on earth.   I think he played this scene with Elizabeth Sladen beautifully.   And it makes it even sadder to know that she recently died.

It’s funny.  I don’t have any desire to go back and watch old Doctor Who episodes for the old Doctors.  But I might want to go back and watch Sarah Jane.

Goodbye to Ten. It has been an honor.

I’m now up to the Eleventh Doctor in the Doctor Who Series.  Before I jump fully into Matt Smith’s version of the Doctor I want to take the time to think about David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor.  I’m really going miss Ten.  What a terrific Doctor. 

In David Tennant’s first episode an alien invader demanded of the Doctor “Who are you?” and the Doctor bellowed back in a mocking voice “I don’t know!”  This was literally true because the Doctor was still in the midst of regenerating, leaving behind Christopher Eccleston’s excellent 9th Doctor and becoming something totally new. But it was also the theme that the writers and David Tennant would spend the next few years exploring.. 

The series was given the gift of a highly talented actor in Tennant and the writers took full advantage of that in crafting situations that really stretched the Doctor’s concept of who he was. 

Spoilers ahead.

As I said before, Tom Baker was my Doctor.  I didn’t grow up with him as a child; I was in my early twenties when PBS was re-running Doctor Who.  But he was my first Doctor and he shaped all my expectations.

Of course, in some ways it is silly to compare them. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. The nature of television has changed over the years. There are new production values.  Audiences tolerate more.  Audiences demand more. The Tenth Doctor couldn’t have existed in the 1970’s any more than the Fourth Doctor would excite audiences in the 21st century. So at some point I stopped comparing them in my minds and simply accepted that they were different.

It was good to ease back in with Christopher Eccleston as the 9th Doctor, before being bombarded with Ten.  As we picked up the story line with the 9th Doctor, it seemed that many of the Doctor’s existential battles over whether he had the right to exterminate the Daleks had been long ago fought. Not only had the Doctor exterminated the Daleks, in doing so he had exterminated his own race and was the last remaining Time Lord. 

The 9th Doctor is very much alone when we meet him.  He is a Doctor who is still dealing with the immediate personal after-affects of his choices even though he doesn’t doubt he has done the right thing. Even after he takes Rose on as a Companion, he is still dealing with the arrogance in his nature that it took to wipe out your own race. He is a Doctor who, in an early episode, decides against all advice that it was a good idea to let a race of aliens arrive through a time rift to inhabit (even temporarily) human corpses, and then he must watch as that decision turns into catastrophe. He is a Doctor who pleads with some unknown power in the universe for a group of little computerized nanogenes to recognize the DNA of a mother and turn her son back into a human boy; this Doctor pleads to the universe that Just This Once Please it will turn out well and people will live. He is very much living day to day and doesn’t seem to be thinking ahead to what he should become.  And yet, every time Rose makes him laugh, you can see that the essence of the fun loving Doctor is in there somewhere. And he learns how to dance again.

Eccleston seemed like a Doctor who wasn’t so pleased with life that he was sad to leave it.  It is only his interactions with Rose that makes him sad to move on; but his exit is stoic.  Nine seemed at peace with the idea of regeneration perhaps because he had never been completely comfortable in his own skin.  

Yes, Eccleston’s Nine was a good transitional Doctor. 

And then came David Tennant’s Ten.  David Tennant inhabited the Doctor completely and totally in a way I haven’t seen since Tom Baker and in a way that Tom Baker didn’t.  In the end it always comes down to the words on the page and the actor’s ability to convey the words and their essence to an audience. And. He. Nailed. It.  He killed it.  Yes, the fact that he is an award winning actor certainly helps. The fact that he’d wanted to play Doctor Who all his life probably helped.  But the main thing was that he seemed to love being the Doctor.  Which is, perhaps, why it was particularly poignant when it came time for him to move on.  “I don’t want to go” were his very last words. And I believed him.

Ten was a multilayered character in what was essentially a children’s cartoon series.  Think about how hard that is to pull off.  Let’s face it.  Doctor Who has never been a series for sophisticates.  It has always required an audience willing to completely suspend disbelief in the face of cheesy 1950’s style monsters.  And the updated Who didn’t update the monsters very much.  The Daleks and the Robomen were shinier but were still cumbersome robots.  That’s why it was nice for the writers to make Ten’s final foes live actors.  I always think human actors are more fearsome than cheesy robots. 

No, Doctor Who has always relied on the character of the Doctor to carry the show.  And the writers gave Tennant a character that he could fully inhabit from the beginning and then they and he began to stretch that character as far as it would go. Ten’s Doctor was a Doctor who spent almost the entire first episode asleep because the regeneration was so difficult.  This should have been our clue that he was coming back a fully new man, unlike any Doctor we’ve ever seen. 

This was a Doctor who, from the moment he appeared, was funny and sort of whacky but then could be utterly ruthless when necessary.  He believes it is always necessary to give everyone a chance and sometimes those chances could go on for a very long time.  Butthere are  “No second chances” he said in the first episode as he ruthlessly killed the alien with nonchalance.  In one episode he patiently went into hiding from a group of aliens who are out to get him.  He strips himself of his Time Lord powers and becomes totally human so that they won’t detect him.  Is that because he is afraid of them?  No.  By hiding he was giving them a chance to move on and not incur his wrath.  They don’t and ruthlessly takes care of them.

Ten is a Doctor who takes delight in the wonders of the universe and sharing those wonders with everyone around him.  He is unabashedly outgoing, he seems to be a born people person.  And yet the fact that he is alone permeates every scene and he is, ultimately, so lonely.  And Ten is a Doctor who is angst ridden in a way that the Doctor is seldom angst ridden.  And clever.  Too clever:  “It's not like I'm an innocent. I've taken lives. And I got worse, I got clever. Manipulated people into taking their own.”

And boy could he talk.  Words just spewed out his mouth as thoughts raced this way and that way through his mind.  It was hard to keep up with him.  He could be a lot of fun. 

Where Nine seemed to wonder why he bothered so much with the human race (so backward, so irrational, so helpless). Ten unabashedly loved earthlings. He loved them even when he disapproved of whatever they were doing. Love was, perhaps, the defining feature of Ten and that made his wrath so powerful.  Ten was perhaps the most godlike and the most human of the Doctors - all at the same time. 

All of that is makes for a difficult character to write and a difficult character to act.  It requires a character to change on a dime and it requires a character who can be moralistic one moment and a great pal the next. And Tennant did it, seemingly effortlessly. 

I’ve seen multiple Doctors regenerate and I admit that when Tom Baker ended his run it was a scene that brought tears to my eyes even though I knew in advance it would happen.  But I was unprepared for how emotional the end of Ten would be.  The end of The Death of Time left me unabashedly crying.   The look on David Tennant’s face as he moves from joyous wonder that he is still alive, with music soaring in the background, to the look on his face the next second when he hears the four knocks that prophecy his demise was worthy of an award all on its own.   The light literally went out of his eyes and they became blank as he (and the camera) turned to face his fate. 

And how appropriate that Ten didn’t die saving the entire human race (again) but died to save one man.  One useless old man who even told him – leave me.  I’m old, leave me.   And it is true.  As Ten says, “look at you, not remotely important. But me... I could do so much more.” Oh, how Ten railed against his fate.  He does not go quietly without a fight, even if the fight is only with himself.   It’s not fair! he shouts.  He is so human at that moment.  But no one is forcing him to do it, no one CAN force him to do it.  It is his choice.  Or perhaps he realizes that it is one of those fixed moments in time that cannot be changed.   It is his time.  And he faces it with grace.   “I’d be honored.”   I think the moment he says that pretty much sums up the Tenth Doctor.

After watching that episode I wondered if Russell Davies was a long ago fan of Jesus Christ Superstar.  Because that scene had a touch of Gethsemane about it.  Very much gospel channeled through rock opera.  

And then another surprise.  He’s not gone.  This is a long slow death that allows him to come back out of the death chamber and walk among his followers once more for a limited time.  Leaving them something to remember him by.  If it sounds very archetypal it was.  And it could have been terrible but it all worked.  I weeped.

But that was at the end.  I also laughed, I laughed a lot, through all the seasons.  So I want to end with some general thoughts picking up where I left off the last time.

• Donna annoyed me at first but she grew on me.  I thought what happened to Donna was sadder than what happened to all the other companions who were simply left behind.   On the other hand, even though she grew on me I was ready for her to move on and I was glad she didn’t carry over into a Companion for the next Doctor. 
• Whatever were the writers thinking when they wrote the end of Journey’s End?  They should have left Rose well enough alone where she was.  This is Doctor Who – we all knew they couldn’t end up together.  They had a very poignant goodbye at the end of Season 2.  Leave it at that.  It was ok to have that little moment at the end of the End of Time when the Doctor tells her 2005 is going to be a really great year.  That was nice.  But having her end up with the Other One? That was just dumb.
• I loved that Sarah Jane was brought back to the series.  She is still my favorite Companion.  I hope that at some point the writers recognize the death of Elizabeth Sladen by making the Doctor mourn the death of Sarah Jane.   In the first episode she appeared in, the moment when David Tennant sees Sarah Jane across the room was just magical.  He played it so well.  I wondered if they were going to write it so that she never knew he was the Doctor.  But having her find the TARDIS and then realize it was him was perfect.  And the end of that episode when he called her “my Sarah Jane” and hugged her was somewhat cathartic, after the Tom Baker episode where he showed almost no emotion when she left.   And her other cameos was nice too.
• I still think “Blink” was one of the best episodes of television ever.
• I loved how the first David Tennant episode had the Star Wars reference with his hand being cut off a la Luke Skywalker and the last David Tennant episode had the Star Wars references with them shooting at incoming starships (not to mention the space bar with Captain Jack).  Nice balance.
• Rude and not Ginger.  Why do I think Ginger is going to be an ongoing theme – yes I’ve seen three episodes of the Matt Smith Doctor.   Here’s the brand new Doctor discovering he’s rude but no red haired.

• Here’s another scene with with Martha (who I really liked) that also includes Captain Jack AND Sir Derek Jacobi (I was really excited when he appeared in an episode).  The whole hand thing always did creep me out:

On to Eleven.  From what I’ve seen so far he will be fine.  Although he seems soooo young.  

Oh, and Torchwood to follow at a different time.

The Big Man has left The Band

Rest in Peace Clarence Clemons.   You will be missed.

Torchwood

A number of weeks ago, when I had finished watching all the seasons of Stargate Atlantis on streaming Netflix, I said that I was going to start watching the new Doctor Who. I was a Doctor Who fan back in the Tom Baker days and I stayed through most of the Peter Davison days too. But then I stopped watching and then it went off the air. I don't have cable so I never got to see the new Doctor when he regenerated but through the magic of streaming Netflix I can now catch up.

I was told by people I trust that I should also watch the spinoff, Torchwood. I was already intrigued by Torchwood because I had heard that Jane Espenson, my favorite television writer, was scripting part of the next season. So I looked up the lists of episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood, figured out the order they would have aired, and started in.

At this point I've seen the first three seasons of Doctor Who and the first two seasons of Torchwood. I wouldn't usually write about them in the middle of watching all the seasons but I saw that Alyssa Rosenberg is also watching Torchwood, to catch up in anticipation of the new season. And then I saw that Ivey West at Cliqueclack is also catching up on Torchwood. Both of them are writing about it while in the middle and I found myself agreeing with some of what they are writing. So I thought I'd throw out my thoughts after two seasons and then see if they took any of my advice for season three.

First, I love Captain Jack. But I loved him more on Doctor Who. I was sad when the Doctor and Rose left him behind at the end of the first season of new Doctor Who, but I assumed that they didn't know he wasn't dead. When he showed up on Torchwood I understood why the writers didn't want to give away his entire background and make him mysterious to new viewers and leave some mysteries for Doctor Who fans. Such as ... how the heck did he get to the 21st century from the future where the Doctor and Rose left him?

I think the reason that I liked him more on Doctor Who is because he is such a BIG character as written and John Barrowman really took that character and ran with it on Doctor Who. Of course he could do this because whoever plays the Doctor, they always play him BIG. So the BIG Doctor and the BIG Captain Jack could play off each other. PLUS they were travelling through time! There isn't really any reason to play Doctor Who as a realistic show - it isn't. It never has been. It's like a cartoon or a comic book so the actors can play the characters BIG like a cartoon character or a comic book character.

But Torchwood is stuck in the 21st century (at least most of the time). And all the people who work at Torchwood are just regular people who happen to believe that aliens exist exist and the earth needs to be protected. And Captain Jack was stuck on earth beginning in the 1800's (don't ask) and all through the 20th century. I he had acted as BIG as he acted on Doctor Who .... well, it's beyond belief that he would have been able to fit in. So, of necessity, the writers had to tone him down and Barrowman had to play him a little smaller. I understand that. But I like him when he's BIG.

I think the show needs a regular character who plays it BIG. Maybe a big bad. Or a crazier member of the Torchwood team. When James Marsters guest starred it was magical. The character was written BIG and nobody can play BIG like James Marsters. And that let Barrowman loose to play Captain Jack BIG. Wow. And that made the reaction of the other normal members of the team even more realistic. At the end of season 2 it was clear there were going to be cast changes and I hope that means that they came back in Season 3 with a BIG new character.

The other thing I think they need to do is to anchor the idea of Torchwood better than they have. Season two of Doctor Who gave us lots of hint dropping about the Torchwood Institute and most of the publicity was negative. We were led to believe that the Torchwood Institute was not necessarily a good thing - although it wasn't an unqualified evil either. It was very ambiguous. But the concept of Torchwood doesn't play off that. The Cardiff branch of Torchwood is (apparently) the only branch of Torchwood left after the Canary Wharf war and they are trying to "do the right thing". It would be much more exciting if they were fighting the system. Even the unabashedly militaristic Stargate often showed the Stargate team in conflict with the institutional military. And was better for it. Alyssa pretty much says the same thing:

Similarly, the fact that Torchwood Three appears to be the only functional branch of the institute isn’t actually a good thing for the show. We don’t get a training montage that really introduced Gwen to Torchwood’s practices and traditions, which would be both a fun thing to do, a great way to introduce viewers to the world the creators are building, and a good way to establish the constraints Torchwood agents work under. Without constraints, it’s hard to know what it means to be a Torchwood agent. As is, they’re basically private dicks who know that aliens are out there. My understanding is that we get more context later for why Torchwood Three is what’s left. But even if, and especially if, they’re what remains of a tradition, that should be an interesting burden to carry out, a legacy to carry on, something that should be part of Gwen’s experience and ours.

Maybe they'll pick up on this in Season 3.

Those are my main issues with the series. I really like the character of Gwen and I think they can do more with her. And I really like her boyfriend/husband. Tosh and Owen are obviously off the show after Season 2 and I don't think I'll miss them. I liked the quietness of Tosh's character but it just didn't play well with a Captain Jack who needed to be BIG. Same with Owen. The same characters without a Captain Jack may have worked although it would have been a totally different kind of show. But if they are going to have Captain Jack they need characters that set him free.

Truthfully I'd be fine if they'd ditch Ianto too. I don't think that he and Jack have any chemistry. Which is weird because Jack has chemistry with pretty much everyone else who crosses his path. He especially had chemistry with James Marsters. But I just don't feel the chemistry with Ianto.

But on the whole I've really liked it and I'm looking forward to watching Season 3. It was a surprise to find that Doctor Who and Torchwood are only 13 episode seasons. After watching the 22 episode seasons of Stargate, this seems too short.

I also really like the new Doctors (both of them). Tom Baker is still MY doctor but I think David Tennant is coming in a close second. I was tired of Rose by the time season 2 ended and was glad she was gone. And I totally object to the whole love interest issue - this is Doctor Who for gosh sakes. THE COMPANIONS AREN'T LOVE INTERESTS. I was irritated that they had Martha hitting on him but at least he wasn't interested - which is as it SHOULD be on Doctor Who. It's a kid's show. No kissing!

But I've pretty much loved it. Even the rehabilitated Daleks, which remain just as corny as ever. And I think that Blink was one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. Right up there with the Buffy episode Hush.

I've just started Season 4 and I'm pretty sure that Donna is going to drive me crazy. But at least she isn't hitting on the Doctor. Whew.

Gotta go watch another episode.

Don Giovanni

Two years ago, Opera Theatre of St. Louis produced the most exquisite production of Mozart’s Il Re Pastore.  As I said at the time, the voices were perfect.  Clear, with perfect diction.  I think that people can have different ideas about what constitutes the perfect voice to sing Mozart.  In my book, the singers in that production of Il Re Pastore were the perfect Mozart singers.

Last year, OTSL produced Mozart’s  The Marriage of Figaro.   I wrote that, although I enjoyed the performance, I thought that it was, musically, a little bit sloppy. And although I enjoyed a few of the voices, I didn’t like Maria Kanyova’s performance because her diction was poor.  And the orchestra and the singers didn’t seem together sometimes.

This year, OTSL is producing Mozart’s Don Giovanni.  Don Giovanni is a womanizer and possibly a rapist, who murders the father of one of his proposed victims at the beginning of the opera.  Throughout the opera he is unrepentant and at the end a statue of the murdered man comes to life and tells him if he doesn’t repent he will go to hell.  He goes to hell.   It’s a long opera (as are most Mozart operas) and there is a lot of decadence and carousing and people impersonating each other during that time.  It isn’t my favorite Mozart opera and I think I’ve only seen it two other times.  But it is Mozart and I’ve always enjoyed it before.

I thought about not even writing about this production.  As Thumper’s father said, if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.  But I do have a few nice things to say.  It was worth the price of admission to hear David Portillo’s Don Ottavio.  He had what I consider the perfect voice for Mozart – clear, ringing and perfect diction.  I wouldn’t say he was the best actor of the bunch, but Don Ottavio is a bit of a stiff character anyway.  Kathryn Leemhuis was also very good as Zerlina, a country girl who is spotted by Don Giovanni on her wedding day but manages to fight him off.   Andrew Gangestad was The Commendatore, the statue who comes to life, and he was so mesmerizing in his scene toward the end that I didn’t even notice that the conductor disappeared at some point to be replaced by someone else in the pit.  His voice was simply perfect, although I rather wish they had staged him up on a pedestal so he would have been physically more imposing.

The other singers worked very hard to put on a fine performance in less than ideal circumstances.  The fact is that they all had lovely voices – they just weren’t my ideal Mozart voices.  If I had been casting this opera I would have cast others.  But they did a fine job.   Maria Kanyova, who I adored in Ghosts of Versailles, gave a moving performance although she was once again plagued by terrible diction.  Although when she was singing with David Portillo he seemed to bring out the best in her.  

If the production behind the singers hadn’t been such a mess, I would be telling you that it was a fine production despite the fact that the voices were not my perfect Mozart voices.  But it wasn’t a fine production.

It isn’t even the problem that I didn’t like the set or the costumes or the lighting.  Although I didn’t.  The costumes were all from different time periods and didn’t go together.  That was just weird.  The set was boring and the lighting was too dark and it made me want to go to sleep.  Which is not something you need in an opera that is over 3 hours long.  And while I get that Don Giovanni was hosting an orgy – the background “choreography” in the scene at the end of the first half was just far to distracting.  Background actors should enhance the lead actors and NOTHING should distract from the music.  The choreography did both.

But I might have even been able to get beyond all that if it had been a clean production.   I often go to productions that I think are OK even when I don’t agree with the choice of set or costumes, etc.  But the production last Thursday was just a mess, beginning with the overture. The overture to Don Giovanni is pretty famous and it sets the tone.   And at OTSL the orchestra is made up of the Saint Louis Symphony so it isn’t as if there are a bunch of amateurs playing.  But the overture was muddled.  Then the first 10 minutes of the opera were almost unintelligible.  The diction was so bad that even the recitatives were beyond comprehension (and for some reason they don’t put supertitles for the recitatives, so we had no help).  I’m inclined to blame the conductor, Jane Glover.  And since she disappeared before the end of the production I’m wondering if she wasn’t feeling well and that affected the performance.  The final sextet was the clearest and most cohesive bit of music in the production and it was done under the direction of whoever it was that took over in the pit and the singers had their eyes glued to him.  Other than that sextet, there wasn’t a moment in the opera where I listened to the voices blending and didn’t think – “but they aren’t blending!”

But the absolute worst moment in the opera was toward the end of the second half when Maria Kanyova was singing a lovely and melancholy aria.  The scene was being changed behind the curtain and it sounded for all the world like the entire cast had donned army boots and were marching up and down behind the curtain.  There were loud sounds as scenery was moved.  It almost became funny.  All the people around me were looking at each other with their eyebrows raised.  

I didn’t go on opening night so it wasn’t as if there were still kinks to be worked out.  I delayed writing this.  I don’t really like to write anything about OTSL that is not mostly glowing.  This is the 25th year that I’ve had season tickets.  So  I thought that maybe as I thought about it more this week I would feel less irritation.  But I didn’t.   Maybe the other performances will be cleaner.  I hope so.  Because OTSL has a reputation to maintain. 

Oh, one other good thing about the performance last Thursday.  As we walked into the theater one person in my group said that she had never seen an audience at OTSL with so many people who were younger than us.  Which is great!  It’s a shame they didn’t see OTSL at its best. 

Click here for a video about the production.  And no, I have no idea why OTSL doesn’t produce videos that can be embedded.  But they don’t.