When most Americans think of Tuesday night musical drama, they think of the Fox TV show, "Glee."
Yawn.
I mean no disrespect to Ryan Murphy's wildly popular high school melodrama. It just can't match the intrigue in the opera I saw last night, Arabella.
In the opera, Richard Strauss's lyrical setting of a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a girl raised as a boy secretly falls in love with a suicidal man but then tries to set him up with her sister in an effort to save her financially strapped family.
And that's just the first act. For a sample of the brotherly ... er, confused sisterly love in the opera, click here.
People who don't normally watch operas forget how tawdry they can be. Rampant raunch seems incongruous with the gentility most operagoers project.
Seasoned music fans wouldn't be surprised by sexual scandal from Strauss, a titan of late Romanticism. He is, after all, the man who shocked the world with themes like necrophilia and matricide in the famous operas Salome and Elektra. Would you expect a man who looks like this --->
to write about butterflies and sunshine?
Arabella is much lighter than Strauss's tragic operas, and I saw it in an appropriately pared-down production by the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia at the intimate Helen Corning Warden Theater. A solo piano provided the accompaniment, and characters in period costumes moved around simple yet historically evocative sets that changed between each of the three acts.
I won't attempt a full review. I'll just say that the show exceeded my expectations. The young singers delivered Strauss's trademark soaring melodies with strength and emotional intensity. Pianist/music director Luke Housner nimbly navigated between the scampering chromatic lines and stately chords in the accompaniment. Overall, I fully enjoyed my evening at the opera, and I look forward to spending future Tuesday evenings with the Academy of Vocal Arts.
Sorry, Mr. Murphy.
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