So I married an opera lover...
One would think that with my love of musical theater it would just be a step across the line to the enjoyment of opera. However, one would be wrong...mostly...
I had never actually been to an opera before Tash took me to see a friend of ours in some obscure piece by Mozart (or was it Beethoven...I forget the title...It was The Rape (or Adbuction) of Someone (or Something) I think). Anyway...it was interesting, but not something that I was dying to see again (at least not that piece).
But since I love my wife more than anything, how could I deny her tickets to 5th row center at the Metropolitan Opera when they came our way? I couldn't, so I didn't. At least this time it would be a story I knew well enough to follow and get excited about.
Samson Et Delila is a French opera based on the Biblical story of Samson and Delila by Camille Saint-Saens. If one didn't know the story going in and didn't speak French, you'd be rather confused...which I was anyway, in spite of the neat screens on the back of the chair in front that gave English titles for the lyrics.
I really didn't know what to expect going into this. All my knowledge of opera has come from movies where its presented as this larger than life spectacle with clowns and animals (not all of them obviously, but you get the idea). While clowns have no place in the Bible (you may make your own joke now), animals are abundant. So I thought maybe we'd get to see something grand. We didn't...we got to see something weird.
When the curtain went up we were presented with a scrim that looked like pages torn from a book written in Hebrew and strewn about. as the lights came up and you could see through the scrim, we got to meet the chorus playing the Isrealites. I immediately thought these folks were a few blocks too far north as they looked like that had wandered in from Fiddler on the Roof. These Jews weren't dressed like they were wandering around the desert as slaves for years, these folks looked like they were waiting for Yenta the Matchmaker to lead them out of Annatevka.
Okay...so I can live with this. It's like watching Shakespeare done in modern times or something like that. And then we meet the Philistines and I have the same reaction. Except these guys walked off the stage of The Lion King. Men in skimpy loin cloths (I see less butt crack here at the house when the plumers are working), painted red and having long fingers parading around and corraling the Russian Jews was indeed a very odd sight. And yet it got weirder.
We then get to meet Delila as she comes out from the corn field??? A neat trick of perspective views, this was yet another oddity in what was to be a long (over 3 hours) night of them. Okay. They weren't corn fields, but the "plants" growing slightly out of the upstage area (which raked back down and gave something of a diminishing horizon look) looked really out of place. But then again, so did the casts of two Broadway musicals that had hijaked the opera singers.
Act Two is set outside Delila's home and Act Three is set in the Philistine Temple. Both sets looked like they were leftovers from the Star Trek episode "Amok Time". By the time Act Two started, I had pretty much given up on trying to appreciate this bizarre and minimalist opera and decided to concentrate on following the story.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's easy to follow whether you know the Biblical version, love opera or speak French. Sure, we know that Samson's secret is his hair...but no one seems to mention that, so it's kind of odd when Delila finally cuts it off at the end of Act Two. There's also the strangeness that bridges the first two acts. Samson leaves his people to be with Delila at the end of Act One, but at the start of Act Two she's bitching about how he has yet to show up and she's gonna get her revenge on him (or something to that effect).
There were a few things I did enjoy about this experience (aside from being with my wife and seeing some friends)...the singing was AMAZING! And while the weirdness of the actual production was not what I was expecting, I did find it all to be interesting choices.
Tash has told me that we won't be seeing another opera until we get the chance for a good production of The Magic Flute. At the rate we're going, it may be around Malcolm's bar mitzvah.
Next week...we get to see my kind of show...Spamalot.
Until then...be seeing you.
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