I've been thinking about opera a lot lately. Well, more exactly, I've been salivating over Materfamilias' wonderful blog posts on behalf of the Vancouver Opera. Or perhaps I've been wasting my energy on idle wishes such as dreaming of going to New York to see Nixon in China at the Met. It is an impossibility of course. My carriage reverts to a pumpkin at 11 PM, which allows me no time for an evening performance and my Saturday is already spoken for. The caregiver situation has not been settled enough that I am comfortable negotiating exceptions nor am I ready to go to the opera and leave my spouse sitting at home. Perhaps there will be another opportunity, but then I missed Nixon twenty-some-odd years ago at BAM as well. I gave up my forays to BAM upon marriage. I seem to have survived the loss.
Instead I must content myself with recordings and the pleasures of the music alone. It is not such a dreadful fate but the simple truth is that I much prefer the visual stimulus of seeing an opera as well as hearing it. The exceptions, the operas I do listen to repeatedly, all seem to be contemporary. I am not sure if this is because they are sung in English (at least the ones I listen to are in English) and hence easier to follow narrative-wise, or if I personally find modern music easier to follow and understand than more classical forms. It is a probably a combination of the two.
Currently I have been spending a fair amount of time listening to an opera by Jonathan Dove called Tobias and the Angel. I don't know anything about the composer. I came across the opera upon the recommendation of one of those website algorithms that tries to predict things you might like based on past searches. In this case, I was looking for a recording of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde, and when the recommendation appeared on my monitor, I was simply taken by the cover photo and decided to play a few snippets and see what I thought.
Aside from being one act operas based on religious themes, Tobias and Noye have nothing in common although I suspect that the algorithm is not sophisticated enough to make its recommendation on the actual music, but was rather looking at something along the lines of "modern religious opera". All this reminds me of a period years ago, back in the dark ages before PCs were in common use, when I worked for a computer time sharing company. Many of our clients were arts organizations, theaters, and regional symphony orchestras, and one of the things we were able to track was not just whether someone purchased tickets for opera or plays or magic shows, but something more along the lines of "attends Adams, Glass, Schoenberg, will attend most opera but avoids Wagner". We felt this allowed the organization to specifically target groups that might support particular endeavors and would be very helpful in sussing out what kinds of programming might be most successful. Unfortunately this was the hardest thing to sell and most of our clients were perfectly happy simply classifying their lists along broad themes, which they were able to easily do even on early PCs.
But back to the opera. I find Tobias and the Angel to be a rather enchanting opera. The characterizations are clear and beautiful performed and the story is beautifully realized by the performance. Although I tend to recall the actual apocryphal story of Tobias as a rather somber lesson on suffering the importance of patience, the opera is much more fun and joyous with a rather witty libretto and charming score. In this performance Tobias is a carefree n'er do well mostly concerned with dancing and having a good time and his journey with the angel represents his journey to adulthood and learning to see and listen to the world and to adjust priorities and expectations so that he can eventually find love and be reunited with his family. Just as in the story, Tobias overcomes the all the normal obstacles to growing up -- wrestling with and defeating a giant fish, saving his wife from her demon lover, collecting and protecting his families inheritance, and eventually healing his fathers blindness after sparrows have pooped in his eyes.
The music is vibrant and, for the most part, incredibly approachable and evocatively joyous moving from a hint of Bartok in the begging to an infectious mix of bright choral music, Jewish fold melodies, religious themes and a bit of Fiddler on the Roof thrown in for good measure. There are enchanting choruses of singing trees and mountains, the waves of the Tigris river, and wonderful effects such as the morning wake-up chorus of sparrows, sung by children, the sonority of the organ-reinforced aria sung by the demon, and Tobias's increasing frustration as he moves from the dismissive "I think I hear nothing" to his increasing frustrations at being unable to grasp the lessons "I hear NOTHING".
I find this opera really charming and I am happy to have discovered it.
