Frédéric Savoir’s cinematic Ariodante, performed by the baroque performance group Les Arts Florissants – along with recent events – remind me that sublime and ridiculous are very close in life and in art and never closer than in classic opera.
Getting opera right as artefact, as an old work of art, getting a balance of the sublime among the (now-strange truth) and the ridiculous isn’t enough talked about, at least not in a way that satisfies me. But Les Arts Florissants, founded by William Christie back in 1979, has been talking about it by trying to get it right for better than 40 years.
For instance, the troupe recently put Amala Dianor, one of today’s strongest beyond hip hop choreographers (“Dub”: Amala Dianor’s sparkling and energetic hip hop fusion ballet consecrated in Paris) to write dance for Gesualdo Passione [of Christ]. Carlo Gesualdo, an Italian nobleman, wrote sacred music, was ahead of his time in his use of chromatic language, is part of Les Arts Florissants Baroque project. The combination a cappella Krump seems more spot welded than quantum entangled but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a brilliant idea – there is a point of convergence hip hop/Baroque/Passion someplace.
Les Arts Florissants’ approach to Handel’s Ariodante is part of what I see as a general mission to develop the feeling and esthetic – a sensibility – of what the troupe’s founder(s) see(s) as a civilizational phenomenon: Baroque sensibility: Baroque space time, Baroque nature. Baroque civilization could castrate a slave boy in order to obtain a widely appreciated highly-specialized form of voice and sincerely invoke and imbibe God’s sublime presence in the world while doing it.
Embracing a sensibility allows Les Arts Florissants to generate for Ariodante what I think of as an and-and opera experience: ridiculous and sublime: laughing and crying, giggling and sniveling, crying while laughing and laughing while crying.
An audience can enjoy mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre’s fine work, including her fine singing, and the material fact of her as a bitty slip of a woman with stick-out ears who obviously savors the complexity of doing a (presumably) Scots prince called not “Malcom” or “Macduff” or even “Ainsley”, but “Ariodante”, otherwise a castrato voice. Desandre is performing – not just singing.
Performing is continuous respect for the artefact: the narrative, sense, sound, movement, and both the archaic and current audiences.
That’s why, in Les Arts Florissants’ Ariodante, the obvious vocal gifts of the 40-something LUCKY BRIDE Ginevra, and her attendant, Dalinda, and wonder why Dalinda is so MADLY HOT for the Duke of Albany, Polinesso, that she’s ready to dress up like the LUCKY BRIDE for the chance to BANG the Duke of Albany. Clichés, memes, boilerplate thrills for people who still have no car chases and explosives?
The Duke’s AMBITION IS ALL, but he sings a mean countertenor and has cooked up just the most hare-brained scheme of SHOCKING BETRAYAL that, presumably, pushes every possible emotional button before twisting into a most UNEXPECTED happy end. Are characters types - still? Is this scheme really hare-brained or is it projection – or do I just not perceive the hare-brained nature of contemporary schemes of SHOCKING BETRAYAL?
And. Not before a little contemplation of the practice of the theory of kingship with the King of Scotland, a VERY MODEL OF A KING and a bass baritone. And a LOYAL BROTHER Lurcanio, a formidable tenor, for whom HONOR IS ALL and who is a knowing CUCKOLD and, and. And. It occurs to me that all this imbroglio may indicate that, notwithstanding the Duke’s scheming, Ariodante’s suicide and a king’s power, anyway it’s all in God’s hands.
A lot of people have trouble believing that the United States has been BETRAYED into the hands of Christian reactionaries who SPURN modernity and want a HOLY Alliance with more GODLY powers in order to TURN BACK the evils of HUMANISM. Such skeptics would be less sceptical if they watched more opera.
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