View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (May 1999, week 2) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 00:42:47 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Semele, ENO, 13May99 (signed performance) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" (I haven't yet talked to any deaf people who were at the performance, but am hoping to do so.) I was interested to see what Wendy Ebsworth's sign interpretation of Handel's Semele would be like. It seems an unlikely piece to work. Ebsworth's performance of Parsifal was breathtaking, even to someone who doesn't know sign, because she managed to convey the organic emotional sweep of the whole work. Semele, in contrast, is essentially rhetorical. The pleasure derives from the detailed way in which the music interacts with the text, in illustrative passages like the eagle's descent and flight, and in musical developments that add layers of meaning, or pure entertainment, to repetitions of text in the arias. (Though Ebsworth's interpretation of Ariodante, which perhaps depends almost as much on musical rhetoric, impressed me very much.) Of course, there are clear moods and characters. Ebsworth acted Semele as a bimbo almost as well as Rosemary Joshua did, and was considerably more expressive as Athamas, in expression and gesture, than Stephen Wallace. This production's one misjudgment seems to me to be making Athamas a solid, dull chap. He's meant to be a proper nice-but-dim hero. He should probably be blond and square-jawed. His music is shallowly emotional, but not in the least wooden, and Ebsworth got this over where Wallace wasn't allowed to. In general, the way she expressed mood and emotion by her stance and gestures, as well as her facial expression, is quite amazing and not at all conventional. But a large part of the power of Handel's music, and Congreve's words, lies in the way they use conventional techniques as the starting point for ironic and original effects. In the event, not knowing sign, I was struck by how well Ebsworth succeeded in reflecting the tone and organization of the words and music. She seemed to create mannered architectural shapes during the initial ceremony, where the sacrifical flames flare up and die as Juno and Jupiter compete for control. The grim chorus after Semele is carried off seemed to consist of downward-directed gestures. In Where e'er you walk, you couldn't miss the sensual arching of trees in the breeze. Some of the effect of sign for those who don't know it may be based on the way some signs imitate nature (the shade of the trees) or use the same metaphors as English (upward gestures for elevated or divine ideas, downward for deathly or hellish ideas, perhaps). But Ebsworth seems somehow to embody the dramatic development of an aria or chorus, incorporating signing, gesture and expression seamlessly, as well as a sense of speed and rhythm. She signs a couple of seconds behind the singer's words, and apparently not in strict rhythm even when it would be possible to do so, but there is always a sense of the pace of the music. I wonder whether the eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship betwen musical forms and styles and emotion are not mere conventions. I'm not sure how it would work in terms of physiology or neurology. But I'm tempted to see Ebsworth's interpretation as a performance purely in the flesh (and spirit if you like) of what is there in the music so that it is transferred by the usual channels of non-verbal communication to the audience. The ENO production is worth seeing several times, by the way. The singers are all exactly right dramatically and vocally, except for the problem of Athamas, and John Mark Ainsley's lack of cosmic potency. This time I could see more of the detail on the newspapers that announce Semele's appointment as divine mistress. The subhead on one is something like "Princess in shock snatch crisis". The broadsheets are The Times, the Express and the Mail (all reworked from editions in the days when they were broadsheets), and the tabloid that Iris shows Juno (Jupiter and Semele: It's Official) is a Daily Mirror from the red-on-white masthead days. Juno's plane tickets have BA livery, but are actually BOAC -- I'd have made them Virgin. Regards, Helen - H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.