View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (April 1999, week 3) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Ê Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:06:47 -0400 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Noch einmal der goldene Esel A few more thought on Randolph Peters' and Robertson Davies' Golden ass, after another performance. The singers seem to be getting into the work more. Judith Forst still pretty much carries the singing, partly by design as the top goddess in disguise, but Rebecca Caine, still cryptic, is projecting more, and I'm nearly convinced that Kevin Anderson as Lucius is meant to be gawky and inelegant, in his singing as well as in his buffed person. (The photos featuring his bottom disappeared fastest from the press table.) Michael Colvin sounds better every time in the toe-curling role of the censorious scholar who reminds us that this is rude. And the orchestra, as Leslie Barcza said, is outstanding and makes the music well worth hearing for its own sake. All of which, I'm afraid, made Theodore Baerg as the narrator look even more unfocussed and pointless. He was stuck with some duff words and perhaps over-decorated music, but his material wasn't that much worse than Judith Forst's. Davies wanted to work with Leonard Bernstein, and on reflection I think he was aiming for a Broadway/vaudeville/European cabaret synthesis that has the vibrancy of modern culture etc etc. Unfortunately, I suspect that his understanding of Broadway stops with the Gershwins' more G&S-like efforts, with perhaps a dim awareness of On the town. And he thought he could do Weber's Oberon and The magic flute at the same time, probably without seeing much difference between the two. It's true that they're both quasi- vaudeville music theatre and have themes that fit with The golden ass. Bottom in Oberon is Lucius revived, though Davies loses the point by not staging the episode of the randy matron. And The magic flute is a young man's rite of passage ending in dedication to Isis. Again, Davies muffs it slightly by substituting the triple goddess for Isis, and losing the specific parallels between Lucius' quest for his human form (to lose the donkey's phallus by eating a rose) and Isis' quest for Osiris' phallus. The ballet is there because this wants to be a classic Broadway show with an arty ballet, and Cupid and Psyche is an arty included story in the bawdy knockabout of the main story. The idea would be right if there were more main story and less verbose conventional moralizing. I'm still wondering why it's set in Carthage. I think the general idea of a colourfully diverse culture dominated by a neighbouring empire but with rich traditions of its own is the right one. But the libretto doesn't make anything of that, and the staging doesn't make much, except that the sun baked colours look pretty good. (There's a distinct lack of anyone who could have come from Africa or the middle East in the cast.) My guess is that Davies had read Apuleius' Apology, his alleged defence against charges that he was a magician at a trial that takes place in Carthage. He saw the original author of The golden ass as a cosomopolitan man of culture misunderstood by envious small-town hicks but adored and admired by the truly cultured. And perhaps Davies saw his own Golden ass as an Apologia pro vita sua of a sort. I'm not sure that it's useful to discuss Davies' Golden ass as an adaptation of Apuleius'. Davies interest in the story seems to be, first, its connection with magic and A midsummer night's dream, in the Shakespearean tradition (there's a cracking sixteenth-century English translation by William Adlington (?) that seems to provide some of Davies' verbiage), and second in its putative Jungian potential with a redeeming female principle and a "balanced" view of sex. But, while he clearly read the scholarship on The golden ass, Davies missed the point even more than some of the scholars. It's debatable whether the story of Lucius (told in the first person by a twerp, don't forget) makes sense at all. He isn't redeemed at the end -- he's conned by a highly dodgy cult of Osiris into handing over all his money and making an every greater fool of himself than he was as a donkey. And, while there are some cheerful dirty stories, the main interest of the narrative is a queasy mixture of cruelty and generally unrewarded goodness. The ass does learn pity through suffering, but there's no evidence that he remembers it for long. Davies, I think, like many other authors, sees The golden ass a a model of the big, magical realist soap opera novel. (It gets a name check or more in The satanic verses -- which Davies perhaps unwittingly redoes without the bite in this opera --, in Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter, and in most picaresque novels of all dates, as well as Cervantes' wonderful Coloquio de los perros.) He misses the darkness and horror, the complete paranoia of Lucius' existence dragged in no time between erotic highs and physically tormented abysses. And Davies' view of sex is simply puerile. He seems to think that words like bawdy, bed and pleasure will give the audience a frisson, in the way that beer does for football players or doughnuts for police officers and software engineers. The focus of the scene where Charis is brought back to the bandits' cave is are they going to gang rape her, but it's all done as a jolly joke with comic postponements. The episode where Lucius and Fotis make love onstage works quite well, because the on-stage audience asks for a love scene with luscious music. But it still reminded me a bit of Gabriel von Wayditch's The caliph's magician, a piece of pornographic pretensiousness which I hoped never to think of again. But I have to say that Davies knew his audience. The feeble pun on "stable love" (as in donkey and as in everlasting) got guffaws, and the audience postively rollicked out of the theatre after being offered the chance to answer a call of nature. But the director's difficulty getting the cast off stage at the interval, and on again afterwards, highlighted a real structural problem. I'm afraid Leslie is right that there won't be a chance to rework The golden ass, as it probably doesn't have enough going for it if you take away reverence for the departed great man. I find this a shame, as I love the real Golden ass, and I enjoyed this a lot. I agree with Leslie entirely that Randolph Peters deserves better luck next time. Maybe he'll get the chance to rework The golden ass as a seminal work of his own. Regards, Helen ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Powered by LISTSERV(R)] Back to the [CataList - online list search] LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.