The 50th season of the MN Opera starts off with
Nabucco, one of Verdi’s early, but well known works. It follows the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted,
conquered, and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King
Nabucco (aka, Nebuchadnezzar).
The good is all very very good. It’s stunningly beautiful. Really. In
every way. The music, the
costumes, the sets—if you’ve seen what Hollywood thinks operas look like, this
is it. It’s elaborate, and
colorful (so colorful, I’ll talk about that more in a sec), and there are so
many people on stage, and all of them are in these lush costumes. It’s unlike all of the other MN Operas
I’ve seen in that the set doesn’t have the minimalist aesthetic that they’ve
gone for in the past—there is nothing minimal about this set. The costume design, though, calls
back to the stark color symbolism and minimalist design that the MN Opera does
well—with the Jewish folk all in whites and the Babylonians in bright jewel
tones. The dichotomy works well.
And the music.
It’s so, so good.
Here. Listen to this:
It’s meta (and I love me some meta in my fiction). I mean, this opera is…not only the
opera Nabucco, with the plot outlined above, but it is the opera Nabucco as
performed and contextualized by the singers and audiences of 1842. Complete with “tech” folk like the
gaslight guy—a fancy man who lights the gas lights at the foot of the stage
before the performance and re-lights one of the footlights that keeps going out
between acts, and the “backstage crew” in their period costumes and special
effects like a moonrise that were done the way Verdi might have done it, with a
dude (in period costume) slowly lighting candles held behind a round paper
screen that was then pulled up via ropes to hang over the chorus. And elaborately painted drop cloth sets
like the kind operas at the time would have used.
And the wings held some boxes filled with noble men and
women from the time, with their guards.
You see, at the time this was written and performed, Verdi’s part of
Italy was under Austrian occupation.
So these folks in the wings were playing the part of the Austrian
oppressors, watching an opera written and performed by Italians, about…an
invading and oppressing force taking away somebody’s rightful homeland and
kicking them out.
Confused?
Well…that’s the bad.
While the music is good, there is a
reason why Verdi had to be forced into composing for it—the words and plot
are…uh. Really, really
stupid. It doesn’t make much
sense, has a random love triangle plot that doesn’t really go anywhere beyond
the first act, relies on the people in the opera to be really stupid (more than
usual, but probably less than Madame Butterfly), and goes full bore into the
“I’m an adopted kid and nobody told me so I’ma gonna kill everyone, k?” trope. It
skips over important bits, relies on the audience reading the program summary
to explain things, and the ending is...well. I'll get into that (in detail, be forwarned) later.
Uh.
But it’s all sung so prettily.
Oh yeah, and one of the people that saw it with me was Jewish, and was
extremely confused about why the Jewish folk kept referring to god as Jehovah,
and acting basically nothing like Jews.
Silly, this is an opera.
Reality and cultural appropriation, what?
When the director added in the meta historical
contextualization of the opera, he muddied it further—and worse, since all of
that meta stuff isn’t actually in the summary, and relies on the audience to
be…well…like me, and read the whole program, or have an question and answer
session with the musical director to figure out what is the deal with these
people who don’t sing and are in wildly anachronistic (The rest of the
production tries to set itself firmly in biblical times) 1840s costumes who are
dancing on the stage between acts, and watching the production from their “box
seats” in the wings of the stage, and moving furniture, or lighting candles and
footlights, and random 1840s Austrian soldiers appearing in the background of
scenes and marching across the stage between each act, and a random encore with
the cast and “backstage crew” holding up the Italian flag…well…lets just say it
could have been clearer.
Which isn’t even going into the use of a narrative about
Jewish oppression (set in a time when Jewish folk were definitely being
oppressed by everyone else in Europe) being
used by Verdi and now the current director to talk about the Austrian invasion
of Italy. One of those things is
still fairly relevant. And it’s
not the oppression of some of the Italian people under Austrian rule.
But it was really, really pretty. Here. Some more
beautiful music.
In an effort to get you all to see the opera AND understand
what the hell is going on, I give you my own summary.
Act One:
'Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I shall deliver this city into
the hand of the King of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire' (Jeremiah
21:10)
Ok. So the
Israelites are trying to keep their country from being overrun by the Assyrian forces. The Assyrians are winning, and destroying all their temples and they aren’t doing so hot. The Israelites kidnap the invading king’s daughter (Fenena), and are
going to see what a hostage situation will do to improve their chances of not
being taken over and destroyed.
Y’know. Because invading
kings generally will give up and go home if their kids are threatened with
destruction. That never backfires,
ever, right?
Who thinks this was going to go well? Nobody thinks this, except the people
in the opera, because they have a narrative causality curse.
Of course, the daughter is pure of heart and wonderful and
the nephew of the king of the Jews (Ismaele) is in love with her because she
rescued him from prison that one time.
No, its never explained why he was in prison. Just that he was.
He keeps her from getting killed, and is going to help her escape from
his people and run away with her.
This is opera. I’ll forgive
that. This is the sort of thing
young lovers in opera do.
They don’t get far; Abigaille, Fenena’s elder sister comes
in—and she’s AWESOME and GIANT, and competent, and wants to kill everything—I
had a favorite character right away.
 |
| That dude on the ground? She walked in and slit his throat. Why? because she's a damned General, and he's an enemy fighter. Abigaille. You are awesome. |
Turns out, while Ismaele was in prison, Abigaille wanted a piece of his
adorable, tiny, tenor ass. She
doesn’t much care about love; she just wants Ismaele in her bed, like now. If he agrees, she’ll spare his people,
and won’t turn them into slaves or kill them all or nothing. She is perfectly capable of doing this.
Ismaele refuses her, because he is in love with Fenena, and
because of plot reasons. While
they have their little singing argument where Abigaille swears her undying
vengeance on Fenena and Ismaele, the Jewish forces are in a full retreat, and
behind them comes the invading king, Nabucco.
The Jewish leader Zaccaria tries to hold Fenena up as a
hostage and threatens to kill her unless Nabucco pulls back or at least lets
the Jewish folks on stage—I mean, in the temple—go free. Ismaele rescues her again, and seals
his fate as the Jewish guy all the other Jewish folk are going to blame for
what comes next—i.e. being all killed or made into slaves and all the temples
sacked and burned. At this point,
you think, ok. That is what this
opera is going to be. Love
triangle central with a side of danger.
Act Two:
'Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord goeth forth, it shall
fall upon the head of the wicked' (Jeremiah 30:23)
Act Two opens several months later, and Abigaille isn’t
bemoaning the loss of her bedmate, but instead telling us all that she is angry
that her father is off invading and oppressing some other country and didn’t
leave her in charge even though she is the eldest, or take her with him, even though she is an awesome fighter. Oh, and that she found out why he did
that—she's got a letter that says that she is adopted and the bastard daughter
of a slave. Well, now it all makes sense. Clearly, there is only
one course of action for her now—she’s already sworn vengeance on Ismaele and
Fenena and all the Jewish folk, now she
needs to kill her father, his
people, and personally take over the whole world, singing “Destruction, my rage
demands it!” and that she will rule “from the golden throne of peace, red with
the blood of those who scorned me!”
She’s clearly got the blessing of her God Baal—she and the priests of
Baal who are encouraging her decent into Awesome Conqueror of All--because gold
sparkles start falling from the sky.
 |
| “She sang sparkles down from the fuckin’ sky” –Abby Lerhke, who shares my love of Abigaille |
Elsewhere, Ismaele is feeling sad that everybody hates him
and he got people killed, and enslaved and people keep shouting things like
“traitor!” at him, but Zaccaria calms the haters down by saying that its
ok—Fenena, as the current regent of her father’s country while he’s off
fighting another war, has converted to Judaism, and is going to release all the
Jewish slaves. This is also the
last time Ismaele is at all relevant to the plot.
I’m skipping over the stupid plot point that Abigaille and
the priests of Baal decide to put it about that Nabucco is dead in order to
take the throne from Fenena, because I don’t know why the librettist decided
that NOW he needed to go for realism and not Opera Logic, and also because it
is only in the opera for about 5 minutes, while Fenena and Abigaille argue over
who should be Queen, and who is the real traitor here—Abigaille, who has her
country’s own interests at heart, or Fenena, who just converted to the religion
of the people her country just conquered.
Well, Nabucco enters just then, and is surprised to find out
that he’s supposed to be dead. He
calls everybody traitors—to be fair,
they are—and says to hell with the Jewish God, and to hell with Baal—they don’t
like him, but he’s just conquered another people and put them all to the sword,
so clearly, that means he, Nabucco, is God.
Which gets him struck by lightning. Abigaille then takes his crown off of
his writhing body and calls herself queen. I wouldn’t argue with her, and neither does anybody else.
Now. Here’s the thing.
I saw Nabucco blaspheme against TWO gods. But I was not raised Christian, so I don’t assume that
Jehovah is anymore valid a hypothesis then Baal, except that I play the Diablo
games, and I’ve killed Baal, with my own, pixilated, barbarian hands, whereas
I’ve never interacted with Jehovah at all.
The text of the opera seems to posit it was clearly Jehovah that smote him, but the director (current)
nor the librettist saw fit to actually show that in the text. I’ll
ignore that for now, but it bothered me at the time, and I still think that the
lack of textual proof that it was Jehovah makes the rest of the opera really,
really, stupid.
On to Part Three:
'Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild
beasts of the islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein'.
(Jeremiah 50:39)
So Abigaille is Queen.
She wants to put the Hebrews to death, because of reasons, and because
Baal is evil, and so is her awesome High Priest, he of the amazing fingernails.
 |
| Seriously. Look at this awesome dude. He looked like a Skeksi. He moved like a Skeksi. He was amazing. |
But she’s still just regent, because her “dad” didn’t
actually die of getting hit by divine lightning of vague origins, he just went
bonkers (this is where biblical,
literary, and operatic logic are all in agreement. Getting a divine shock makes you crazy, not dead). And Abigaille can’t just order the
death of at least a third of her country’s slaves. She has to get Nabucco to sign that order. He’s still King, after all. Sanity is not a requirement for
kings—case in point, Russia.
 |
| Ivan The Terrible, folks. He didn't earn the name by delivering cookies. |
She taunts Nabucco into signing the death warrant, and then
after he’s signed it and she’s given it to the guards to carry out—she reminds
him that his real daughter, Fenena is
Jewish now, so she’ll be put to death with the rest of them.
He’s not thrilled.
At all. Less thrilled when
she puts him in prison for his own good, because of the madness, you know. He tries to take back his throne,
saying that she’s a bastard, but she just burns up the only proof and he’s
powerless.
I told you the libretto relies on stupid people acting
stupid, right?
Then there is a scene that is all about a gorgeous song sung
by the Hebrews. The most famous
song of the show—you saw it up top if you listened to it. It’s all about the hope of the
oppressed to rise above and defeat their oppressors, even if all they can do is
die and go back to their homeland on “golden wings of thought”. Stunning, musically and
physically. It doesn’t advance the
plot, but in opera, sometimes you just have to make room for a beautiful
moment.
 |
| This was a beautiful moment. Va Pensiero. |
Part Four:
'Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken pieces; her idols are
confounded, her images are broken in pieces.' (Jeremiah 50:2)
Part Four then, is all about the comeuppance. Oh, and death. Still an opera. This act takes place in the
prison. Nabucco is wreaked with
guilt, and he can hear Fenena being brought out to the place of execution,
probably. He might be imagining
it. In any case, he converts to
Judaism, and prays to the God of the Hebrews, and vows to go out and rebuild
temples and bring his people to Judaism, if only he’ll spare his daughter. And
lo and behold, he regains his senses and his guards declare their loyalty to
him. And he sees his daughter (probably?)
killed, and then Abigaille comes to him in his prison (probably?) after taking
poison after being overcome with horror at her own actions, and declaring that
she’s also embracing Judaism. And
then…well, and then I think Nabucco dies.
At least in the production I saw. Everybody ends up dead and Jewish.
This act is where the director stumbles the most, in my
opinion. See, the program text and
the stuff that actually happens on stage…well, they don’t agree. And other synopses online…well, they
don’t agree with either the opera I saw, or the summary in the program. Here’s the language used about what
happens in the program. Bolding mine.
“Nabucco is uncertain whether he is awake or trapped in a
nightmare…[summary of events up to his
first prayer to Jehovah above]…Though believing that he has been rescued by Abdallo {the head
guard} and that his army is once again loyal to him, he sees the death decree
being carried out in front of him. He hears Zaccaria hail Fenena as a martyr to
the cause of the Israelites as she resigns herself to death. The distraught Nabucco renounces Baal
and orders the god’s idol be destroyed.
His senses failing once again, he wonders if he sees
Abigaille approaching. Having
poisoned herself in horror at what her ambition has brought upon her kingdom,
Abigaille confesses her crimes.
Slipping in and out of consciousness, she prays to Jehovah for pardon as
the Hebrews reaffirm that their god will always raise up those who are
afflicted.”
It seems to have skipped an important aspect of the basic
storytelling tenant “getting your damn message across.” Because, in the production I saw, it was pretty clear that the entire act was Nabucco
hallucinating. People randomly
appeared and said things he wanted to hear--things like that his army is his again, suddenly, and for no reason. Then Fenena comes into his cell—just
after we saw the Hebrews walk by with a dead woman raised up above their
heads—maybe that was Fenena, maybe not, but they had just been singing about
Fenena’s martyrdom before the corpse was carried across the stage, so in stage terms, this was not uncertain. If you sing about a dead woman, and then you carry a dead woman across the stage, those two dead women should be the same person.
Then Abigaille walks onto the stage,
singing about how she has embraced the religion of the Hebrews, and also taken
poison out of guilt and asks for everybody’s forgiveness—especially Fenena—even
though she’s never EVER sung about guilt or even hesitation before now. Nabucco keeps singing about how he is going to free all the Hebrew slaves, and convert his country to Judaism, and rebuild all the temples. And then Zaccaria (suddenly there) calls Nabucco the king of
kings for all time, and Nabucco falls down, clutching a stick he’s been using
as a sword, and the stage goes black.
That’s a hallucination in stage terms, followed by the death of Nabucco, I’m sorry.
But one of the synopses (bolding mine, again) I found online says, “Fenena and the
Israelite prisoners are led in to be sacrificed (Va! La palma del martirio / "Go, maid, go and conquer the palm of
martyrdom"). Fenena serenely prepares for death. Nabucco rushes in with
Abdallo and other soldiers. He declares that he will rebuild the Temple of
Jerusalem and worship the God of the Israelites, and orders the destruction of
the idol of Baal. At his word, the idol falls to the ground of its own accord
and shatters into pieces. Nabucco tells the Israelites that they are now free
and all join in praise of Jehovah. Abigaille enters, supported by soldiers. She
has poisoned herself. She asks the forgiveness of Fenena, prays for God's mercy
and dies. Zaccaria proclaims Nabucco the servant of God and king of kings.”
That’s…a bit different. Different message. Different staging.
Different tone. If the
director of the MN Opera’s Nabucco had wanted to, he could have staged this in
a way that didn’t cast doubt on the meaning of the play. We needed to see Abigaille take her
poison--or at least see the effects of it, since she is about to have a long, drawn-out operatic death, and you just can't sell that if you are walking around of your own volition. We need to see Fenena as she prepared for death, and seen her actually rescued. And Nabucco's restoration and release needed to be clearer--maybe have the prison taken off the
stage, or actually opened, instead of just moving it around Nabucco, leaving the audience to figure out if he's really out, or, since he doesn't actually leave the presence of the bars or go outside of their reach. Or even just
choose a different color for the Jews that differentiated the ones that lived
from the ones that died.
See, the
MN opera has a habit of putting the dead-person-to-be in white. White is the color of Operatic Death. White, in all of the operas I’ve seen
so far at the MN Opera, is the color of sacrifice, of righteous suicide, of death and madness. And all the folks who convert or are
already Jewish are all in white.
So symbolically, a reading could be made that all of the Hebrews and
Converts, who are all gathered in the prison cell at the end are all dead, with
Abigaille’s white interrupted by the red scarf of not-sympathetic-enough to
count as righteous suicide, but still dead.
There is no mention of whether or not Nabucco is actually
doing these things, and plenty of evidence to believe he is not actually doing them, only believing himself to do
them. Especially since the opera I
saw did not show Nabucco as someone who is capable of doing all of that and
seemed to operate under dream logic—i.e., people appearing randomly, his
(supposed) dead daughter come to comfort him, and then Abigaille comes into the
prison, by herself, after
poisoning herself.
Which doesn’t even come close to getting at the point that I
made in the second act—Nabucco equally blasphemes Jehovah and Baal. And it’s only the assumptions of the
librettist and the director that the folks watching it would be Christian (or
for modern audiences, Jewish), and assume along with them that Jehovah did the
smiting.
Well…I don’t know about Jehovah, but Baal has a nasty lightning attack.
 |
| Ok, so it’s not a lightning attack, technically it is a Mana Burn Attack, but you can make the case that a Diablo 2 Mana Burn Attack is a direct attack on the power and mind of a hero—which makes it even more likely that it was Baal who smote Nabucco, because that is what happened. His mind and power were taken from him. So yeah. Context Matters. Especially when dealing with someone who is as obsessed with that game as I am. |
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