Opera does love a black leather coat

[nineveh_uk]

I have never seen the film Reign of Fire, long may such a state of affairs continue, but I remember Jonathan Ross’s summary of it as “The London Underground with dragons” (which is what it is), and subsequent riff on the theme that adding the phrase “with dragons” can make almost anything sound cooler. This is largely correct. The only things not made better by imagining them with dragons are those that already have dragons, which are largely dreadful unless they are, or are inspired by, Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Then there’s that other phrase, the one reached for by directors who want to be cool in a more ‘gritty’ way. About a month ago, I went Kidlington Amateur Opera Society’s production of The Merry Widow** (which did not involve dragons).* Humming the tunes, I naturally then turned to YouTube to see if there were any complete versions on it, which there are. I clicked on one that looked as if it was not made in the era of orange hair, and did the “move the cursor forward a random amount to see what it is like” thing. I was slightly surprised to discover when “what it was like” was a bloke on stage looking surprisingly like David Mitchell*** in the “Are we the baddies?” sketch.

Yes, someone has made The Merry Widow with Nazis.

It had to happen eventually. There’s Lehar, Hitler’s favourite composer. A libretto that contains rather a lot of cynical references to the Fatherland. Opera’s general liking for dramatic costumes and a bit of updating. It’s still kind of bizarre. The Merry Widow is not darkly political stuff. It’s fluff. Glorious fluff, but basically fluff. Who looks at it and thinks it needs political realism of any sort, let alone updating to occupied Paris c. 1944?

Actually, I can see exactly how it happened:

Company member 1: What shall we do next? Our finances are looking a bit rough, so let’s make sure we get a good audience. Something popular with the old folk, small cast, good tunes. Not too complicated scenery.

Company member 2: How about Die Lustige Witwe.

Other company members: Groan! Too staid! Too conventional! Too Viennese!

Company member 2: No, wait! We can make it exciting. You know how the characters are always going on about the Fatherland?

Other company members: Ye-es?

Company member 2: We set it in the Third Reich! Think of Danilo’s first aria. What if he’s a disenchanted SS officer, the black uniforms will look great on stage. Zeta’s a French collaborator. Hanna’s a film star, like that woman in Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter. Oh! And Rossillon can be in the Resistance and Valencienne a secret sympathiser****. It can’t fail!

Other company members: I suppose we could give it a go…

In the event it worked pretty well, though as it was in German and my copy of the libretto omits some of the dialogue, I wasn’t always able to identify where changes had been made to the text (or I could identify a change, but not exactly what it meant). It’s certainly an awful lot better than the hideous San Francisco Opera production I saw on a library DVD, which was so arch you, could drive a chariot through it. Some of the interest for me lay in the choices made by a German company in terms of representing Nazi characters and insignia on stage. So the uniforms have the SS rune and the death’s head cap badge, but the swastikas are modified, and the salute is done with the arm position as usual, but the fingers open as in a Vulcan salute. But not being a German viewer I don’t have the nuances of why particular choices are made (I know there are legal issues, but I get the impression that these are also not straightforward in all contexts). I expect my next dose of The Merry Widow, a Metropolitan Opera cinema broadcast, to be rather different.

To finish on a random note, when I went to The Girl of the Golden West with antisoppist last month, I remarked that it had got me thinking about what replies various opera characters would get from agony aunts. It strikes me now that Danilo would be the perfect match for Captain Awkward, since he actually does need the message “Use your words”.

*It was surprisingly good. I hadn’t gone with high expectations for the singing, because I’m not an idiot, and so it was adequate. What greatly exceeded my expectations was that they had a director who could direct and a musical director who whipped a 24 piece orchestra on apace and in tune, as a result of which it went at a good clip, played the comedy well, and was thoroughly entertaining.

**Not that I would be surprised by TMW with dragons, given opera production concepts.

***He really does. It is quite hard to watch light opera when all the way through you are thinking that the male lead looks like a slightly thinner version of a British comedian.

****Valencienne actually offers the singer and director a surprising amount of space for characterisation choice. Opera North implied she was a former grisette who really did want to keep to her side of the marriage deal out of loyalty.

Comments

[clanwilliam]

I'm now thinking of things with dragons.

Wimsey fic - with dragons!

The Chalet School - with dragons! (Turns out that it wasn't a metaphor they were using to describe Matey.)

And for antisoppist, Swedish paper mills - with dragons!

[antisoppist]

The paper mill is managing OK without dragons this morning. A file entitled "working environment - health and safety when working alone in the forest" turns out to be a dramatic account of a (female) forest worker who was attacked by a bear.

[nineveh_uk]

You can't leave that hanging. What happens when a forest worker is attacked by a bear? And what advice is given to people for the future.

[antisoppist]

Bear attacks are really really rare and she is fine. Avoid bears. And shout at intervals. And carry your tracking device that calls the emergency services via satellite. I am not sure how this helps really if a bear rushes out of nowhere and suddenly attacks you.

[nineveh_uk]

Phew. though I wonder how reassuring she and her colleagues find this helpful advice. I can just imagine the Daily Mail on the subject.

[nineveh_uk]

The Chalet School definitely needs dragons.

[legionseagle]

"Well," Harriet said thoughtfully, looking at the smoking ruins of the East Terrace, "that was a bit unexpected."

Peter was looking rather white around the eyes, hardly surprisingly, but rallied a little at the sound of her voice.

"Never was litotes more judicially applied -- you know, it does make one feel all sorts of a bally idiot to have not suspected what was going on all these years. When one has eliminated the impossible, and all that --"

"My dear! Given his scepticism about vampires in Sussex, I don't think even Sherlock would have bet on a Norfolk dragon. Even if he'd met Helen before -- before she displayed her true colours."

"There is that," Peter agreed. "Even so - poor old Jerry, what? I mean, I can't see what else he could have done -- damn brave of the boy to lead the Squadron against a flying lizard that's doing its best to incinerate all of East Anglia --"

"Yes. And of course no-one could have betted it was going to turn out to be his mother all along."

"Viscount St-George and the Dragon, "Peter mused. "The law of nominative determinism strikes again."

[pensnest]

Oh, I say! Well done.

[nineveh_uk]

Brilliant. I particularly like Peter's disappointment in his detective failure, even in the moment.

[clanwilliam]

Oh, wonderful!

[antisoppist]

*applause*

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Brilliant!

[pensnest]

I cannot think of any fandom that would not be improved by the inclusion of Dragons! (There is a Dragon Big Bang in progress at the moment, but sadly I think the fandom selection is limited at present.)

[nineveh_uk]

You can see why I remembered it, it really does work (even if it only works in theory because a particular execution doesn't live up to the promise).

[antisoppist]

I still think there is a lot of mileage in Opera Characters Write To Agony Aunts and still want Captain Awkward to Madam Butterfly and Mariella to the entire cast of the Marriage of Figaro.

The available DVDs are the problem I've been having over trying to find a production for my dad to watch - because he likes the music whenever it turns up on Classic FM while he's milking the cows but wants to know what actually happens, apart from there being some girls who dance at Maxim's. I need to find a cinema he can cope with to see the live from the Met one in January.

[nineveh_uk]

You should write them! Though I think that Figaro and Susanna may need advice from ACAS...

It is an irritation in these days of everything supposedly available, how much is not in fact available.

[aella_irene]

Oooh. I think I will go to The Merry Widow live from the Met. It was the first opera I ever saw*, for reasons best known to my parents, and I love it very much.

I once saw a production of Der Rosenkavalier which had been inexplicably set in the 1920s. My mother kept muttering 'But if you do that, all the small children should be in school!' And I kept being distracted by the Awful Decor, and the fact that part of it appeared to take place in a sex dungeon, which was unhelpful.

*...unless the first one I saw was the one with the Evil Hungarian landowner seducing/kidnapping someone. I'm not sure.

[nineveh_uk]

I love TMW. Great music, soppy story, funny if done well. The first one I saw was the Marriage of Figaro, which is definitely a good starter. Either strike me as preferable to Bluebeard's Castle!

and the fact that part of it appeared to take place in a sex dungeon, which was unhelpful.

I can imagine many things, but not how you could set Rosenkavalier in a sex dungeon? Unless that was where Ochs has booked for his final act rendevouz I suppose.

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

In the event it worked pretty well, though as it was in German...

Ahahaha! I knew that as soon as you said The Merry Widow with Nazis.

The simple answer is that our stage directors like thinking highly of themselves as producing thought-provoking and politically relevant messages, instead of, you know, funny entertainment for the unenlightened masses...

Though Lehar's behaviour under the Third Reich was more than a little dubious. While his wife was Jewish and only avoided deportation by the fact that she'd been declared an "honorary Aryan", I think one of his friends died in a concentration camp, and Lehar didn't even try to use his favour to save him. But The Merry Widow was written long before the Third Reich, and I'd rather have a traditional production and a good and critical biography of the composer.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I do get the distinct impression from you and from azdak that German theatre is very keen to Say Something (which is not necessarily the same as make any sense). This made a change from tradition, but it was a bit surface, really - you could perhaps make more insightful critical analysis by being less obviously Shocking.

I went to Lehar's house in Bad Ischl on holiday some years ago, but don't really know much about him beyond that his wife was Jewish. I can appreciate that as an individual he could plausibly have been worried that if he rocked the boat something would happen to her, but that doesn't get you very far when everyone behaves like that...

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

German theatre is very keen to Say Something.

Oh is it ever!

Can I tell you my favourite example to illustrate that point?

A couple of years ago, I went to see a German stage production of Much Ado About Nothing here in Munich. I generally rather liked it, but it was set in some Sicilian mafia milieu, beginning with the on-stage executions of a rival gang/dangerous witnesses (can't remember which). And then it ended with the men storming off for the next blood feud, with shots and screams in the background.

The local theatre critic then proceeded to dismiss it as a "harmless feel-good production that is just currying favour with an intellectually lazy audience". And that's all you need to know about German theatre.

Basically, it's not a good production unless someone is rolling over the stage naked, smeared with faeces, and reciting from some sort of political manifesto.

I think there's a Nazi version of Die Fledermaus as well. Nazis are dreadfully dull by now, if you ask me.

Yeah, maybe I'm being too strict with Lehar, but I Heard It Somewhere (TM) that he was really good at schmoozing up to Hitler, too. But it's easier to have the moral highground if you aren't the person living in a dictatorship and married to someone who might be up for killing any time soon.

At least he did stand by his wife. Not all people with Jewish spouses managed that leval of loyalty and decency (though many did and risked a lot to save their husband/wife).

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That is a brilliant anecdote, and I feel it is almost certainly everything I need to know about German theatre!

I think there's a Nazi version of Die Fledermaus as well

??????????

There have been a couple of good productions of Tosca set in Fascist Italy, but that one actually makes sense - the original really is set in a totalitarian state, Scarpia really is not simply personally corrupt, but part of a corrupt system, and though individual religion may be sincere, the church is also going along with the bad guys. So the updating and drawing of parallels actually brings something to the narrative. (I am not anti-updating in general. I can be perfectly happy with the cast in suits rather than period dress, and then the baddie will usually have a black coat and that's fine. Other interesting things can be done with the production. But Nazis are rather specific, and as you say, can get dull. Which is surely not the point.)

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

I think there's a Nazi version of Die Fledermaus as well

??????????

I stand corrected. It was the 2001 production for the Salzburg Opera Festival, and it was set in the period of 1930s austro-fascism rather than in the Third Reich proper. It caused a bit of a scandal, though - but it also had some pretty good reviews.

Actually, you could quite interesting things with the clash between the gaiety of the music and the visual cues, and I think I would quite like to see such a version - at least once, just to compare it with the fluffy one. Tosca in Fascist Italy rather makes more sense, though, since it's a tragedy in a somber setting anyway.

I don't dislike modernizations, either; I just don't like the implication that any conservative, solid, entertaining interpretation of a play is automatically bad and inferior.

(Fun fact: In the TV show Slings & Arrows, one character is a parody of the avantgardist Regietheater director. He obviously adores German theatre, and he's a bit infamous for once staging The Tempest with swastikas everywhere. I found him scarily accurate.)

I saw people compalining about Der Rosenkavalier set in a BDSM sex dungeon on the DW post. German directors also love A Midsummer Night's Dream. I saw one production with the fairies in skintight black latex/leather and Titania simulating bestiality on stage (I think Zettel was a guy in a donkey costume dry-humping her - which kind of reminds me of your latest fanfic.... :P).

[caulkhead.livejournal.com]

I saw what appeared at first to be a fairly standard modern dress Fidelio in Stuttgart which progressively got weirder and weirder until it ended up with the entire chorus trying to climb out of a sealed wooden box while wearing wedding dresses.

I never did find out why.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That definitely sounds wierd...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't dislike modernizations, either; I just don't like the implication that any conservative, solid, entertaining interpretation of a play is automatically bad and inferior.

Quite. There can be really good modernisations, but they aren't inherently better by being modernisations. I saw a terrific Tosca that put Scarpia in an Inspector Frost mac, gave him pizza to eat and turned up the sleeze to 110%. It was brilliant, really putting the focus back on the character's actions and taking away the glam. But if it hadn't been done well, the idea alone would not have made it good.

I think I might have heard of that production of Midsummer Night's Dream even here!

(Must watch Slings and Arrows when I can get it.)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I saw the black leather coat headline and the Merry Widow with Nazis link and kept reading on the assumption that Stirlitz would show up :) Where is he???

The new Met production looks like it's going to be quite lavish and plenty fluffy.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm very sorry to have disappointed you. Though now you mention it I may keep the idea in mind.

The new Met production looks classic fluffy lavishness. Which is fine as long as it doesn't drag and has a good translation. I will be in the mood mid-January for fluff.