The situation is straight out of farce. The Count is chasing after a maidservant who is engaged to another and wants none of him; and this maidservant gets together with the Countess to set the Count up as the fall guy in an elaborate scheme. The maidservant is to pretend to agree to meet the Count for an [...]
Posts Tagged ‘opera’
20 Feb
Opera as drama
- You like opera? It’s almost as if I’d been discovered to be an aficionado of hardcore pornography. - Well, yes… I mutter apologetically. - Really? Opera? Isn’t it a bit … er … a bit… well, you know … Yes, I know. Indeed, it’s a bit. I try to explain myself. A bit. One [...]
30 Oct
How I became so stuffy and elitist
I wonder when I became stuffy and elitist. I’m sure I wasn’t born that way, but given how frequently that which I love so dearly is described in such terms, I have little option but to accept that, as a lover of classical music, I am, indeed, stuffy and elitist, and that there’s little I [...]
16 May
Othello and Otello
For some, Verdi’s opera is an even greater work of art than Shakespeare’s play. I certainly wouldn’t go so far, if only because Shakespeare’s Othello seems, to me, an unsurpassable masterpiece; but it may be maintained, I think, that Verdi’s Otello (or, rather, the Otello of Verdi and Boito, since the librettist in this instance [...]
1 Mar
Some Reflections on Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte”
A summary of the plot of Cosi fan Tutte does not appear very promising. Indeed, it seems no more than a somewhat misogynist barroom anecdote. Two young soldiers think their girl-friends can never be false to them, and an older man argues that all women are alike (“cosi fan tutte”), they’re all fickle. So they [...]
