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[Fortinbras Armstrong]

87. Oh, there are bad operas

Last edited Fri Mar 28, 2014, 10:19 AM - Edit history (1)

And I don't mean operas which are badly performed, which is a different topic, but operas which are bad in themselves. My introduction to the works of Alban Berg consisted of my being taken to a performance of Wozzeck. I walked out in the intermission; I had to make my own way home, but I considered it a small price to pay to be delivered from the ghastliness being perpetrated in the opera house.

I tried listening to a recording of Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron. I already had a bad opinion of Schoenberg -- my reaction to his Pierrot Lunaire was "If he is trying to develop feelings of mild nausea in the listener, he is succeeding brilliantly" -- and this opera did nothing to change my opinion. I turned it off after about ten minutes.

There aren't enough "o"s in boooooooooooooooring to properly describe Phillip Glass's Akhenaten. Peter Schickele, DBA PDQ Bach, once tried to parody Glass. He demonstrated that Glass cannot be parodied.

I listen to opera to be entertained. Give me a good Carmen, and I am delighted. I agree with Soren Kierkegaard that Don Giovanni is "a work without blemish, of uninterrupted perfection". I like most of Verdi, but believe with Rossini that "Wagner has good moments, but awful quarters of an hour". (In Götterdämmerung, notice that when Alberich and Hagen have their conversation, they actually have exactly the same conversation three times.) Speaking of Rossini, The Barber of Seville is my favorite comic opera, and his other stuff is also very good.