life, the universe, and everything
The American Opera Theater makes its New York debut this weekend at BAM with Charpentier’s remarkable 1688 opera David et Jonathas, featuring the Ignoti Dei period orchestra conducted by Timothy Nelson and joined by the Chamber Singers of Virginia Tech. Per the America Opera Theater’s press release, “David et Jonathas explores the relationship between three timeless figures and probes the nature of man’s relationship with the universe.” Or, as Mae West used to say in her curtain speech after Catherine Was Great, “I do the best I can in two and a half hours.” Friend of the Box Anne Midgette reviews the show in today’s Washington Post.
Hadn’t heard about the surtitles controversy — they were certainly called for in an unfamiliar work with no clear story line and a highly vague staging. But I’d have settled for a synopsis. I arrived to find, first of all, a line sixty persons long for will-call tickets, just one person sorting through the ticket packets and lists, and this about five minutes before curtain time. Oh, and they’d run out of programs containing a plot synopsis. They’d already given them all out. Since the audience was about 200 people, scrunched in the front of the orchestra level of the theater (the rest was closed off), one did wonder how many had been printed, or ordered.
It was a very unprofessional company – on a par only with the less competent Juilliard and Manhattan School stagings. Laughable really. It put us in a very resigned mood by the time the music actually started (20 minutes late), in which an overactive smoke machine was by far the most significant force. Since I had not read a synopsis and did not get a list of singers till the intermission, and my French, while passable, was not getting the finer points, I plead guilty to general confusion. It seemed, for instance, that Saul was homoerotically inclined towards David, which is, I suppose, the fashion for opera queens who run small opera companies when they’re not out of their 20s. Imagine my surprise when David was mortally wounded! Well, it turned out he was Jonathas and not David at all. But he was nearly dead before I guessed that part. Also, was it my imagination, but it certainly seemed that all the guys who sang with their shirts off had the weakest voices in the cast, but I am used to that from a certain baritone at the Met who shall be nameless. (Hardly surprising that Lancelot, who keeps his shirt on, is the most competent performance he’s given in years.)
And I’ve read the Book of Samuel, and I fail to see ANY homoerotic resonance in this story whatsoever.
Also: I realize this is a fairly youthful work, but there was nothing in the score that suggested the composer would produce “Depuis le Jour” a mere 200 years later.
But I stayed. I stayed and, once Saul had rubbed blood on his (not uninteresting) chest — far better developed than his voice, and much flatter too — and the buxom girls playing Hebrew warriors (or were they Philistines?) had waved flags around in a tradition borrowed from the Met’s worst impulses, TO EVERYONE’S SURRPISE the music was just lovely and several of the singers (notably David – I mean Jonathan – well the one who was sung by a girl – and also the blonde in the chorus who did NOT sing the Witch) were quite delicious upon the ear, and if one closed one’s eyes (as was often necessitated by glaring lights right into them), two and a half hours of blissful Charpentier fell happily upon the senses and one could almost believe it was Les Arts Florissants on a (virtual) off night.
I mean it was good; it was an enjoyable concert. What the story was about (not much of the Book of Samuel) and what the text was about and most of all what the staging was about and what the company producers thought they were doing were never clear, amateurish at the most charitable estimation, but it was a most enjoyable concert.
I wish Tim Nelson’s company well and respectfully suggest they begin by getting rid of Tim Nelson.
Never mind all that , Hans.
Were there a lot of (sturdy, strapping) young people there? Was there rhythmic applause?
hans: you picked up pretty much on the same things i did; to my surprise, perhaps im just more forgiving!
i didn’t specify what about the lighting was wrought, but you said it well.
some (some) of those front-of-house problems of course are BAM’s, not AOT’s … and in any case were absent friday.
the homoeroticism in samuel is of course subject to interpretation, but having spent four years at a jesuit university, and 10 years in leadership positions in a group for lesbian and gay catholics, i can assure you many serious theologians really do debate it. some feel like appear to; many dont, however. a lot of it has to do with translation issues, but much of it has to do with the fact that the notion of constitutional homosexuality is modern; ancients wouldnt recognize it. so if they werent “here and queer”, what exactly were they?
im not asking you to answer the question — so far, there isnt one. but i am trying to explain the ambiguity that others see in the relationship.
i also think you were hard on tim, but this is opera as a blood sport!
finger spaz — “some feel like appear to” should be “some feel about the text what you appear to”
Actually, in Tom Horner’s book, David loved Jonathan, a very believable point is made that D and J did in fact have a relationship of a homosexual nature. He asserts that Aristotlian notions of classification weren’t viable at the time, and with idolatry still fairly present, in fact our modern notions of what “gay” is existed then.
So, there.
Tom Horner is not in the biblical canon that I am aware. (Neither is Aristotle. Or, inexplicably, Sacher-Masoch.)
My feeling is that two men (both of them married and fathers, and at least one of them with a nationally notorious nose for pussy) can indeed feel that their most intense link is with each other, but that to insist such feelings are necessarily sexual is to cheapen the entire concept of love. When David says the love of Jonathan surpassed the love of women, he doesn’t mean he gave better head, he means that male bonding meant more to him as a spiritual and mental connection than anything that happened between the sheets.
Let’s see. David stole Abigail from her old husband, David took Michal from her husband, David got Bathsheba preggers, David used Abishag as a heating pad when he was old, and Solomon killed Adonijah when Ad wanted to marry Abishag. Lots of women around Dave’s place. And there was Amnon and Tamar and Absolom doing their bad stuff.
again, the notion of constitutional homosexuality as we think of it today would have been as foreign to an ancient as the notion of a queer with a nose for pussy (to borrow some of the earlier imagery) would be to us.
“gay” aint what it used to be …
confusion amassed:
wrought:
1. Archaic except in some senses. a pt. and pp. of work.
–adjective
2. worked.
3. elaborated; embellished.
4. not rough or crude.
5. produced or shaped by beating with a hammer, as iron or silver articles.
#3.