I THINK MINING

   This posting has nothing to say about mining.  I claim the privilege of writing about something that fascinates and entertains me.  Although others have written about the same subject with greater insight. See in particular this link.

This morning, four of us went to see the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Armida with Renee Fleming and six (actually five) tenors.  A trite story, but music to make your feet tap and dance.  Pure visceral pleasure from start to end.   This is what most opera must have been through the ages and maybe should be now:  a chance to sit and listen to music and enjoy a little emotion with friends. 

   This opera is not in the repertoire.  I have never seen or heard it hitherto.  This was new and amazing.  I can see why it is not in the category of too-oft-repeated operas.  Not quite like Madame Butterfly—which if I never see again, will be too soon.  Same for Turandot.    This is a bad drama, written for pure pleasure and musical entertainment.  And great entertainment it is.   The music is so tuneful that I will seek it out again for the pleasure of hearing those perfect phrases again and again. 

    Suffice it to say that the performers are amongst the best in the world.  Renee Fleming is the reigning soprano, and this performance can only cement her reputation.   She is superb.  I have all her CDs and will buy any that hit the market.   She is beautiful, a character, and a singer who takes your breath away as she rises and descends the scales of bel canto.

   I liked Lawrence Brownlee as Rinaldo, the rather stupid knight who falls for the sorcery and goes to her love-nest to enjoy fleshly delights.  He looked, played, and sang the part to perfection.   Although being Black it was corny when the White Fleming, playing a Moor sang to him: ”You Europeans think us barbarians.”  That is opera for you.  

   I am not a fan of ballet in the middle of the opera.  Too French for my taste.  Verdi gets it almost right in the Italian version of I Vespri Siciliani–the dance is part of the action as the plotters circulate preparing for revolt.   In the French version of the same opera the dance goes on for nearly 3/4 of an hour and interrupts the action and tension. 

   In Armida, we get about thirty minutes of dance to simple, yet intense music as the dancers refrain the story of the opera with an alternative ending: the knight elects to remain in the garden of love.  I thought this a far more sensible choice than the one made by Rinaldo to go back to his belligerent comrades and continue fighting the Crusades. 

   Armida, naturally is incensed, and spends most of the third act railing against her erstwhile lover, finally choosing revenge over love.  As my companions remarked: “Hell hath no anger like a woman scorned.”   Rossini no doubt did this to play to the ladies coming to the opera.  He was a shrewd composer and grew rich from his operas.  I wonder if he made more from this opera than Handel made from Rinaldo, a opera that tells the story from a different angle?

I am told there are thousands of operas sitting in the vaults that have not been performed in hundreds of years.  Armida, last performed over a hundred years ago, surely proves that we audiences can take pleasure in old, forgotten works written simply to entertain, not necessarily to impress.