Mefistofele: All'erta, è la battaglia incerta

Mefistofele and the empty world.
Photo (c) Staatstheater Mainz/Martina Pipprich

Arrigo Boito's under-performed Mefistofele seems to be enjoying a revival of sorts (there's a run in San Francisco and an upcoming concert performance at Carnegie Hall.) It also served as the stirring season opener of the Staatstheater Mainz, where I've just basked in its gloriously ambitious romanticism. Mainz boasts a strong cast, and a production where unexpected coups de theatre build emotional as well as dramatic suspense. More production photos can be found here, but they convey only a fraction of what actually happens on stage. The singers worked well together, as well as exhibiting individual commitment, and the cumulative effect was quite impressive. Boito's Gesamtkunstwerk is filled with the deliberately anarchic, the musically unexpected; that it all adds up to an intriguing, exciting whole is not the least of its surprises.

Son la Gioconda!

William Berger, in his entertaining Puccini Without Excuses, quipped that "there seem to be more exclamation points in the libretto of La Gioconda than in all other libretti combined."  Hyperbole, but he has a point: many of the exchanges in this fraught drama appear to consist almost entirely of impassioned outbursts.  (Exclamation-ridden libretto (by Arrigo Boito, no less!) here, Wikipedia synopsis of the wild plot here.)  The friend whom I met in the Rush Tickets line is currently singing Enzo, so with his inspiration and with his help finding recordings and a full score, I've spent some time working on connecting with and appreciating this work.  And as a reward, I got to hear performances with the New York Opera Forum.  (There is a lot of opera lurking around this city!  That may become the topic of a post at some point.)  Not insignificantly, I think, the liner notes for the remastered first full recording lament that "it is easy, though mistaken, to regard it as a less than excellent opera."  Based on my own experience, I would say that it can be easy, and may well be mistaken.  But it has certainly moved me to think about what I expect of opera conventions, and what the merits of lavishing loving investigation on not-quite-masterpieces may be.