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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.