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A year and a half later than expected, La Bohème will finally reappear at Seattle Opera. La Bohème was supposed to conclude the 2019/2020 opera season with a run of performances in May 2020. Well, we all know how that May turned out. Seattle Opera heroically transformed into a film company and put together a season unlike any other last year. But now they’re back on stage at McCaw Hall with the long-delayed La Bohème. I got to see it on the second weekend.
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It’s kind of a no-brainer for an opera company based in Boeing’s hometown (and sponsored by that company) to take on the production of an opera set in an airport. When the pandemic shut down travel, it made the opera even more timely. Although set at an airport, Flight is not a story about mobility but of confinement, as a bunch of travelers are stranded by storms, temporarily sharing the circumstances of a refugee who can neither travel on nor go back. A year ago, that was an interesting concept. Today, it’s the story of all of us.
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This year, for the first time since I aged out of the Bravo Club, I bought season tickets to the opera. The season is one unlike any other ever programmed by Seattle Opera – or any other opera company for that matter. Seattle Opera’s Fall 2020 season is entirely online. It kicked off with a semi-staged performance of Cavalleria rusticana highlights (available online by subscription through October 16). Last weekend they posted the second event, a recital by Frederick Ballentine.
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One of the most frequent – and most valid – arguments against the contemporary relevance of classical art forms like opera and ballet is their heroine problem. Misogyny is an unfortunate and unavoidable conclusion when the canon is littered with stories whose female characters are subjected to the virgin/whore binary and who usually end up dying for love regardless of in which category they are placed.
But then I watched the Met’s stream of Norma – a bel canto exception filled with strong, complicated women. In that opera, Pollione, the male romantic lead, starts out as one of the most obnoxious men in theater, a real dick. But he repents and redeems himself with an act usually reserved for the soprano – dying for love. His character development is so unusual that it got me thinking about men in opera. Women might get short shrift, but men aren’t portrayed very nicely either. Normalizing their bad behavior is another facet of misogyny, but the fact remains – if you believe the classics, men are just dicks.
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Nina Yoshida Nelsen and Hae Ji Chang in the world premiere of An American Dream. © Philip Newton c/o Seattle Opera
Seattle Opera is one of Seattle’s biggest, most “establishment” arts organizations, but they are appropriately progressive to our left-coast city, relative to other major opera companies around the country. American Dream is the perfect example. I’m a little late in talking about American Dream, since I attended the very last performance. I think it’s still worth talking about it, even though the performances are over, because it completely inverts the typical opera experience. Read More