Thinking on Paper

Basically, all of my ideas just need to go on paper at this point, so I will use this blog to try and organize my thoughts.

Before Maestro Levine asked him to compose an opera, John Corigliano was primarily an instrumental (albeit programmatic) composer. He was not entirely for the idea of writing an opera, citing come issues with operatic conventions (and boy does this come through in the work..). However, when the Metropolitan opera asks, you don’t say no. The work was commissioned for the Met centennial in 1979 and the premiere was set for 1983 (it didn’t actually premiere until 1991, however). It was the first work by an American composer to be commissioned after the spectacle that was Barber’s “Anthony and Cleopatra,” and critics have certainly made a few superficial comparisons between the two.

The work is based on the premise that the ghosts of the court of Versailles at the time of the French Revolution now haunt the palace. These include the ghost of Marie Antoinette, the playwright Beaumarchais (who is in love with Marie Antoinette), and her husband King Louis XVI as well as various other courtiers. Beaumarchais creates a work based on the third play in his Figaro trilogy, “La Mère Coupable” to entertain the court, only, he intends to change history with it and make it so that Marie Antoinette did not die by guillotine, but instead escaped to the new world with him.

There are two major ideas that pervade the work. The first is that the opera plays with the idea of time. The composer says it is set in three planes that occur simultaneously: a type of limbo where the ghosts reside in Versailles, the world of Beaumarchais’ opera, and the world of history, specifically the period of the French revolution. The characters of the ghost world are framed by the historical where they lived and died and they also interact with the characters in the opera, even blurring the lines between performer and audience. On a more mechanical level, Corigliano’s composition style is one that often blurs the meter or creates a sense of ‘timelessness’ in the music.

The second theme is one of subversion. Throughout the opera, Corigliano and his librettist, William M. Hoffman, subvert the expectations of the audience, making fun of operatic traditions, and specifically beliefs/roles held by operatic audiences. For example, Corigliano labels the work “A Grand Buffo Opera”, mixing traditional labels and traditions. This subversion is heightened by Corigliano’s use of older compositional styles and borrowed phrases from the Figaro operas of Mozart and Rossini. There are many points in the opera where the audience is made to laugh at itself. The opera seems to say, ‘Please, don’t take yourselves so seriously!’ To me, the work is hilarious. To many critics, it was utterly bombastic.

I think this work has real merit in the operatic repertoire. It is challenging for all of the singers, but the music is primarily accessible to an audience who doesn’t know opera (although, all of the inside jokes are intended for an opera-loving audience). Moreover, it is funny in a modern way! The difficulty in putting the work up, however, is its grand nature and the extensive effects that it requires. It was created for the Metropolitan Opera. It’s hard for most theaters to match their resources. Thankfully, there have been other productions of this opera and in answer to this question, Corigliano has created a reduced version of his work.