Mini-reviews of opera and film

I've recently stepped out of my theater comfort zone to check out some opera and film.  Oh, wait, opera is very theater-y and the movie I saw was a live filming of a play.  So maybe I didn't step TOO far out of my comfort zone... ;)

Last week, I went with my British-actor-loving-friend (the pal with whom I saw Pinter's Old Times) to see Benedict Cumberbatch in the National Theatre's live filming of Hamlet.  I know Cumberbatch is all the rage, and my pal worships him, but I've never actually seen him in anything (well, I guess I technically saw him in the film of August: Osage County, because I 'watched' it on a plane once, but I slept through nearly the entire movie, so I can't remember him at all).

photo credit: Johan Persson

Anyway, I enjoyed the viewing, or at least most of the acting, but I thought the production 'concept' was really dumb and I didn't like a lot of the staging or the cuts to the text (really, we're not starting with the watch and hearing about the ghost?  confusing.).  And, wow, did the intermission come awfully late in the proceedings.  But Cumberbatch was quite compelling as Hamlet, very intelligent and clear, with a lot of wit and charm alongside his grief and confusion.  The close-ups from the movie cameras only helped with his excellent interpretation of the character.  All of his soliloquies were beautifully done, with such clear insight, that occasionally it felt as if I were hearing them for the first time.  I was very impressed with him.

I also enjoyed Ciaran Hinds as Claudius - he was very over-macho and devious and constantly held my attention.  Jim Norton was also terrific as Polonius.  I did not enjoy the gal playing Ophelia in the extreme, though I will say that the wackadoodle concept did her no favors, nor did the filming close-ups.  And you know I wasn't completely engaged when I became obsessed with Horatio and his backpack.  Horatio carried a backpack in every scene.  Why?  Was there something in there he might need immediately?  Was he afraid Hamlet would steal it?  Would he pull out something to save Hamlet at the end?  I was completely befuddled by the backpack, which totally indicates that I wasn't on board with the direction.  I have friends who think I should write a play called Horatio's Backpack.  I'm seriously thinking about it...

Seat neighbor report:  I was sitting next to one of the most unpleasant people in the world.  Everything was 'so stupid,' 'overrated,' or the 'worst ever.'  Anything that appeared on the big screen during the pre-show was poo poohed by this guy, who yelled at his date for not calling his correct cell phone number to confirm their attendance.  SO unpleasant.  He slept through most of the movie, snored quite a bit, then at the intermission, stood up and declared (so everyone could hear him), "well, that was underwhelming."  I wanted to say "how would you know, you snored through most of it!", but didn't.  Thankfully, he left.  But, gosh, that man was seriously cranky and should perhaps stay home from now on.

A wonderful old friend from grad school sent me a note recently, telling me that a friend of his from undergrad would be making his Met debut in Rigoletto, and if a group was put together to see the show, would I be interested?  I thought about it and said, sure!  I've never seen that opera, I know next to nothing about opera, and it would be fun to see it with a gang of pals.  The planning process has taken quite a while, but finally, we were there to witness a Met debut.

photo credit: Richard Termine

I've never seen Rigoletto before, but I've heard some of the music before.  I knew it was one of the grimmer operas out there, with no real redeeming factors for most of the characters.  I was surprised to hear this was a new production taking place in 1960s Las Vegas.  I guess I hadn't heard about it before.  To be honest, I had a hard time with the concept.  To me, it made the inherent ugliness and misogyny palatable and even funny.  To see these lounge lizards just made people laugh, which, for me, negated the sadness and the impact of the opera.  But, I guess that was just me.  It seems to have gotten excellent reviews.

Even though I didn't like the packaging of the opera, I thought it was very well-sung.  Stephen Costello was a terrific Duke, very smooth and devious, with a gorgeous voice.  His "Donna e mobile" was gorgeous, on the surface, until you understood the lyrics to be quite chilling.  And to hear the reprises at the moments they happened were filled with even more dread.  Olga Peretyatko was a fantastic Gilda - her shimmering soprano was both intelligently acted and soaringly sung.  She caught many layers of this young girl who is betrayed by nearly everyone she knows.  I was also taken with Stefan Kocan and Katarina Leoson as the treacherous brother and sister - the quartet they sang with Gilda and her father, Rigoletto, was fantastic.  Actually, musically, the opera was first-rate.  I just couldn't wrap my brain around the Vegas motif and the ring-a-ding-ding libretto coming across the supertitles.  Again, it was probably just me.



My friend's friend made a wonderful debut as one of the Duke's henchmen.  It was fun to see someone I knew onstage and he had a couple of terrific moments.  Plus, during the curtain call, his fellow henchmen made a big deal over him so the audience would know to salute his debut.  It was lovely.  The whole evening was terrific, actually.  Before the performance, our big group had a nice dinner at the Met's restaurant, the Grand Tier.  Yes, I am normally wary about eating before I see a performance, so I did try to eat pretty sparingly, and I was happy to have an aisle seat for the second and third acts (I sat in a broken seat for the first act, which was a bit annoying).  Anyway, I had a delicious appetizer of pumpkin soup, topped with an incredible gruyere foam.  Yummy.  For my main course, I got the roasted chicken, mainly because I wanted to have the leek and mushroom bread pudding on the side.  And boy, did the bread pudding live up to my expectations!  It was spectacular!  As was the chicken, which was moist and tasty, served with a chicken jus gravy and a squash puree along the side.  But this dish was enormous, so I couldn't finish it.  Ah well.  After the first intermission, we hurried back down to the restaurant for our dessert (as you can see from my photo at left, we were pretty high up).  It was preset for us, which was nice since we only had about 20 minutes or so.  I got the cappuccino gateau, with a chocolate cake bottom and silky mocha-y mousse on top.  It also had a crunchy cocoa nib thing going on.  This was a pretty yummy dessert and provided a little sugar pick-me-up for the rest of the opera.



Afterwards, we were lucky enough to go to the Met's green room to toast my friend's friend.  That was also very exciting and it was nice to feel the love throughout such a big group of people.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime evening, I think, and it definitely exceeded my expectations of how exciting it would be.  I'm terrifically glad of that.  I have more eclectic things coming up, so I'm hoping to have more exciting experiences in the near future.  Here's hoping!