Don't Hiss at Mozart

People, please.

I went to the opera on Tuesday night to see die Zauberflaute with my friend Susan (Mila and Eric having both begged off). It was good but strange. The music was all enjoyable, though it lacks the sort of Carmen/Madama Butterfly/Nozze di Figaro aria that you find yourself humming for days afterwords. The production itself was a bizarre pastiche — the same bizarre pastiche they showed last time I saw this opera, just a few years ago. Why is the boat suspended in the air? Why is there a sea monster dancing with the woodland creatures? What the hell was up with the white sox pennants? And of course the story the opera tells is a bit mysterious... we think the Queen of the Night is good and Sarastro bad, then we find out the opposite is true, then Tamino goes on a heroic journey that takes place partly offstage, then we build up to a great battle that never happens because the Queen of the Night and her minions fall into a hole and are vanquished.

I know, we don't come to opera to worry about plot holes — we save that for movies like the Matrix — opera is about music. (And emotion. And fabulous wigs.)

Which anyway brings me to my point: the opera is sexist. It is. And more forthrightly so than most: characters say things like "your womanly emotion needs to be tempered by manly rationality". And then, at each of these lines, somewhere in the audience people are hissing at the stage. "Ssssssssssss!"

Why?

Are we voicing our disapproval of societal prejudices from over 200 years ago? Do we think the Lyric is giving a mouthpiece to these moldy views, thereby endorsing them?

I don't recall anyone hissing at Carmen or Madama Butterfly. Are these operas not also at least a little bit sexist?

Anyway, I could go on and on, but it would be boring. My point is: feel free to hiss at the conductor, the tenor, and the wigmaster, who may at least hear your criticism and respond; don't hiss at Mozart.

Labels: personal

posted by Tony at 9:10 PM