Operatic Ecstasies

I had breakfast with some friends today and the topic of favorite operas came up. I mentioned “Figaro,” which I do love but one friend started talking about all of the “bits and pieces” of operas that she loves. This got me thinking. . . my favorite bits of opera can’t be confined to one composer and definitely not to one opera. My favorites come in tiny moments of sound, little smudges of voice, and those brief, fleeting moments of compositional genius when the emotion mixed with the perfect combination of instruments, of harmony, of voice-types creates an instant physical reaction – that puts me in a sweat or a frenzy. Following are a few that come to mind:

The first one I always think of are those last few bars of Britten’s “Death in Venice.” That little final tremolo up in the stratosphere finally fading into nothingness as Aschenbach lay dying is so simple and so fleeting, but it hits me right in my gut and all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

I love the moment in Puccini’s “La Fanciulla Del West” when all of the miners, from their gruff recits at the beginning, break into the sweetest pianissimo waltz refrain. Singing only “la” over and over and clapping out the “2,3” they sing a sweet simple version of the waltz theme for Minnie and Dick until the orchestra takes over with the first satisfying swell of said theme indicating the moment that Minnie and Dick fall in love…Of course that swell is undercut almost immediately by a looming darkness as the male chorus comes back in under the waltz wailing “Allacio” (sp) – “Hang Him!” as one of Dick’s cronies is brought in. In that 45 seconds of music, Puccini shows us tentative flirtation, love’s bloom, and that horrible foreshadowing of a relationship’s demise. Brilliant.

The prayer in “Hansel und Gretel,” “ Abends, will ich schlafen gehn,” makes me burst into tears every time I hear it no matter where I am, what I’m doing, or who I’m with. Perfection in its brevity and its mixture of sadness and hopefulness.

“Akhnaten,” Philips Glass’s Egyptian Opera yields two moments in my aural memory – perhaps because it was my first opera and such an amazing experience for me. The first is the transition into the first scene where the narrator, speaking of a pharaoh’s passage to heaven after death, yells out “On the wind. ON THE WIND!” and like a lightning crash those drums begin smacking out that syncopated heartbeat of triumph laced with a bit of fear, a bit of grief… The second is the first strains of the “Hymn to the Aten,” which make my heart swell, and then when the chorus joins in towards the end of the hymn when that swell finally bursts.

The trio of Gilda/Maddalena/Sparafucile in “Rigoletto” always blows me away… There’s something about the build at the beginning with the three of them in their own private hells…it’s a maddening trek up the hill and oh, so satisfying as the trio actually begins with Sparafucile’s proclamation and that huge crash from the orchestra. Eventually, as everything breaks loose, their voices and torment couple with the orchestra to create the perfect storm. Verdi gives it time to warm up, however, which is where his genius comes in. Like a teasing lover, he leads the music nearly to climax, and then pulls back to nearly nothing . . . to three little knocks and a tiny scared voice, to confusion among the siblings as they recit for the final time . . . He does this twice until you’re twisting in your seat, waiting for that little death, and finally with that final vocal cutoff he unleashes an orchestral tempest that trumps all three swells. Fabulous.

“Pensieri Voi Mi Tormentate” from Handel’s “Agrippina” is Handel at his absolute best. He starts out following the ABA form we all know so well, but then jumps into a tortured recit and returns to the A form again for one final blow. My favorite, tiny, moment is the beginning of each A section when “Agrippina” wails out “Pensieri,” and the oboe echos her in that hollow, horrifying strain. Each return to the A allows her a more ornamented version of “Pensieri” and the oboe is right there with her, like a twisted musical representation of her tortured thoughts, boring right into her brain.

In a completely non-operatic piece, Reinhold Gliere’s other-worldly, off-tempo Charleston from his ballet “The Red Poppy” is horrifying and life-changing. It’s written as if Master Gliere had never actually heard a Charleston, only read about it. It’s got the right time signature, the rhythm and basic structure but it carries a sense of horror and dysfunction inside of its joviality that makes the whole thing a little mixed up and tragic.

Most recently, the moment that knocks me out is the death sequence in Carlson's "Anna Karenina" where a distraught, drugged Anna stands at the train tracks in a trance and sings out, "How bright it is," letting the word "bright" linger on a downward spiraling scale. Her despair is pervasive and horrifying in that moment.

And finally, coming back to “Figaro,” the moment that gives me goosebumps is at the very, very end when the Count pulls everyone on stage and starts to call out the Countess before he knows the joke. From right after she reveals herself to him and the violins start to go nuts and the guys start singing piano (under their breaths), “Oh my god, I can’t believe this,” until their final “non so” and that long fermata where you’re not quite sure what the Count’s going to do, I am in goose-pimply frenzy.

There are many more delicious moments but these are the ones that sit in the front, easily-accessible place in my mind. The more I work in this business, the more moments I will add to my storehouse.