Subject: Holiday opera on UK TV / Platee

This year's opera on TV over Christmas was somewhat unseasonal. I suppose
there are those for whom Puccini is always a treat, and Mitterand's Madame
Butterfly (which I didn't see) probably kept them happy. But the rest was
generally grim thematically, and not exactly wonderful otherwise.

Channel 4 came up with a cheery Verdi's Requiem on Christmas afternoon. The
performance, recorded earlier in the Festival Hall, was billed as Verdi's
Requiem with Pavarotti but Alagna stepped in at the last moment. Renee
Fleming was the soprano. I always find it cathartic, and it's uplifting in
that sense, but still an odd choice.

In the evening, C4 had the ENO Damnation of Faust. This has some comic
touches and jolly tunes, but David Alden's production is full of
existential angst and ends with Faust not damned but completely catatonic.
Which is probably what a lot of people feel like by mid evening on
Christmas day, but not what you want to watch. I actually thought it
transferred well to television. In fact, I wondered whether Alden didn't
have the broadcast in mind all along, though some details still weren't
completely clear -- I got Marx (K.), Eistein and Wagner, and maybe
Beethoven on the shelf, but not two or three others.

On Boxing day, Salome, in Luc Bondy's production at the ROH, was the one
complete success of the holiday, and just about based on scripture. The set
was dark and neutral with the usual stairs and platforms, and the costumes
were conventional biblical (except for Salome's fishnet body stocking for
the dance). The characterization was also straight, thinking Vienna 1903 or
so. Herod had a touch of Peter Ustinov -- you were never sure whether he
might have been a nice guy in another life, or how twisted he really is --
and Anja Silja as Herodias was supremely nasty. Catherine Malfitano as
Salome really let go, acting like an abused adolescent who's finally lost
control. Bryn Terfel's Jokanann was bible black repressed, and the high
point (mainly from underground) of an excellent cast, which also included
good performances in the various smaller roles. My one problem was not
thinking of The life of Brian.

BTW, this was the first dance of the seven veils I've seen where she wraps
herself up in them.

For me, the real pits was the RO Merry widow, on BBC2 on the afternoon of
Sunday 28 December. In the interval, Graham Vick said (rightly) that it
would be completely impossible today to depict the Pontevedrans as funny
Balkan foreigners. He decided to do the operetta as a parlour comedy with
some vaguely ethnic dances. But the whole point of it is being rude about
funny foreigners (and women), so it seems to me that it's better not to do
it at all. Having said that, I enjoyed watching Thomas Allen, whose timing
and delivery are impeccable even when Jeremy Sams' translation is feeble.
And Allen and Felicity Lott as Hanna nearly got a sentimental moment out of
the waltz. But the whole thing is light because it's totally without
substance.

The RO hope to get a West-End success from The merry widow, as the National
Theatre did with Guys and Dolls. But this broadcast isn't going to have
people rushing to see it. They would have been better off doing 12 more
performances of Paul Bunyan.

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Paul Bunyan was one of the nice surprises of this year. The sharp upturn at
the ENO was another, and much more important. Their new productions of
Falstaff and (particularly) From the house of the dead were high points.
Though the best thing I saw at the ENO all year wasn't an opera, but Mark
Morris' L'allegro which makes up in euphoria what it lacks in content and,
beautifully sung, was definitely the most cheering experience of the year.
There wasn't anything to match Peter Sellars' Theodora in 1996, except
Peter Sellars' Theodora at Glyndebourne (my first visit) which kept its
impact in spite of a bland blond Theodora and Didymus, mainly because it
uses the Glyndebourne chorus so well. And because Sellars' production is so
well conceived, getting at the exact historical context. And because the
music is so beautiful.

But what I really liked best was Morris' production of Rameau's Platee,
conducted by Nicholas McGegan. As Dave Hall pointed out recently, Rameau
needs the full works, especially dance and decor, and this production had
it. It's complete fluff, but (unlike The merry widow) highly literate and
full of weird but beautiful music.

One thing that's bugging me about Platee is why Platee is the name of the
swamp nymph whom Jupiter (temporarily) pursues to show Juno her jealousy is
pointless. I think I can see why she's a swamp nymph, and why it's set in a
swamp -- it allows a chorus of frogs as in Aristophanes (energetically
hopped, along with a lot of other water beasties, by Mark Morris' dancers)
and provides an inversion of the toasted earth of Calisto. But Platee
(Plateia, presumably) is a name unknown to dictionaries or encylopedias.

I decided to finish reading Roberto Colasso's The marriage of Cadmus and
Harmony by the end of the year, and there in the middle of a discussion of
sacrifice is a story from Plutarch's de defectu oraculorum (on the lack of
oracles in modern, Greco-Roman, times, a favourite text of the
Enlightenment): Hera goes of to sulk in Euboea and the world falls apart,
as with Oberon and Titania. So Zeus pretends to marry someone else, a
veiled wooden statue, and drives through the town of Platea with "her" in a
fake marriage procession. Hera attacks the statue, Zeus says "fooled you",
and they are reconciled. Though the people of Platea inevitably repeat the
procession and destruction of the statue every year after.