Opera 101—Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

Carmen, by Georges Bizet, is one of the most-performed operas out there, and its tunes pop up in myriad cultural forums, from The Bad News Bears to Sesame Street to The Muppet Show. Many people can probably hum either “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” (aka the Habanera) or “Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre” (aka the Toreador Song) without even realizing the source. My personal favorite of these iterations is Gilligan’s Island, where Gilligan performs “To Be or Not To Be” to the Habanera and Skipper as Polonius sings “Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be” to the “Toreador Song.” My childhood, let me show it to you.

As for the opera itself, my live viewing had been limited to what I not-so-lovingly refer to as “The Disco Carmen” at the Opéra Comique in Paris. Not that the performance itself was so bad, but the set was god-awful—basically a huge tilted ramp taking up half the stage with a disco ball above it. That's it. I had taken my elderly aunt out for a night on the town so I had been hoping for something really spectacular. How do you do that to Carmen, which provides such great opportunities for sets and costumes?

In any case, I was really hoping that this performance would drive that one out of my mind. Which it mostly did. Visually, at least. I thought the sets were very well done, perhaps my favorites of the season. Keeping the main outer building shell, the transitions to the smaller set pieces of the cigarette factory, tavern, smugglers’ cave, and the bullfighting arena were smooth and believable. The costumes were also impressive, as they were varied, but relatively restrained. I imagine it is easy to go overboard with something like Carmen and this production didn’t (Turandot, I’m looking at you).

Lillas Pastia's tavern. Photo by Cory Weaver.

Outside the bullfighting arena. Photo by Cory Weaver.

Unfortunately, aurally, this production left much to be desired. While Anita Rachvelishvili as Carmen had a lovely, rich tone to her voice, I really couldn’t get over her atrocious French pronunciation and appreciate her singing. I was sort of surprised at this since, although she was filling in relatively last-minute for Kate Aldrich, she seems to have played this role plenty of times. Not that the rest of the main cast was much better, both Sara Gartland, who played Micaëla, and Wayne Tiggis, who played Lieutenant Zuniga, could have used more coaching in this area.

Perhaps I’m being overly critical, but, while I accept that I’m not going to catch all the words in Italian productions, somehow I feel I should be able to follow an opera in French without resorting to subtitles or the libretto. It wasn’t until the smugglers came in that I realized “it’s not me, it’s you,” and so I want to make particular mention of Timothy Mix and Daniel Montenegro for taking such care in their roles as Le Dancaïre and Le Remendado. Also, the children’s chorus was spot on in their French pronunciation and did a great job overall. Finally, thank you to San Francisco Opera for engaging Gabriel Laude as the young guide. It was a relief to have such a long speech spoken with native accuracy.

Thiago Arancam as Don José. Photo by Cory Weaver.

Again, this is not to say that the singing itself was bad. I thought that Thiago Arancam, who held his own last year against the terrific Ainhoa Arteta and Plácido Domingo in Cyrano de Bergerac, made an excellent Don José (who let’s face it, actually carries this opera, which is really all about Don José’s journey, not Carmen’s). Sara Gartland also made the significantly less vibrant Micaëla come alive, especially in her final aria. Susannah Biller as Frasquita and Cybele Gouverneur as Mercédès made the most of their small parts and I thoroughly enjoyed their “Mêlons! Coupons” fortune-telling number with Carmen. Vocally, Paulo Szot didn’t quite live up to the power of the Toreador Song, but he had great stage presence as the matador who steals Carmen’s heart.

Paulo Szot as Escamillo. Photo by Cory Weaver.

All in all, I enjoyed this production for what it was, but I partly wish I had had the foresight of Opera Tattler to switch out my Carmen subscription tickets for Xerxes.

Carmen has two more performances with Anita Rachvelishvili on November 20th and 23rd, and with Kendall Gladen on November 26th and 29th and December 2nd and 4th.

A Spelling Bee for Cheaters

On Thursday, 826 Valencia presented A Spelling Bee for Cheaters at the Herbst Theatre, raising over $100,000 for their writing center. I went primarily to cheer on a friend (who ended up finishing second—congratulations Sunil!), not realizing it would be one of the most entertaining nights out I’ve had in a long time.

Individually (usually celebrities) or in teams, contestants raised funds for the ability to cheat during the competition. Only one person from each team competed as a speller. The cheating menu included:

• Free letter ($500): You get a one-letter hint (limit 3 in a row).

• Try again ($750): Spelled your word wrong? You get to try it one more time.

• Ask your team ($1,000): Ask your team (or the audience) for their opinion.

• Look it up ($1,500): You may consult the dictionary for 15 seconds.

• Free pass ($5,000): You may skip to the next round without spelling your word (Adam Savage from Mythbusters used this on putsch).

No cheating was allowed in the final round.

The competition was hosted by some of the creators of the Tony-award winning 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, who provided hilarious color commentary on the words and spellers, including extremely creative model sentences, as for palaestra (a public place in ancient Greece or Rome devoted to the training of wrestlers and other athletes; “What happens in the palaestra, stays in the palaestra.”), Spaniard (a person form Spain; “Billy giggled when he learned the Spaniards were once a world power.”), and kumkum (a powder used for social and religious markings in Hinduism; “Mary, put down that kumkum, we're Episcopalian.”).

Celebrities included the aforementioned Adam Savage, who made it to the final three, singer Tracy Chapman, who went out on gidgee (a small Australian acacia tree), and authors Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) and Michael Chabon—the latter going out on kurdaitcha (an Australian aboriginal word for the emu-feather shoes worn on vengeance missions) after correctly spelling kraal (an Afrikaans and Dutch word for an enclosure for cattle or other livestock) in an earlier round. One celebrity I didn’t recognize was singer Thao Nguyen, who not only correctly spelled evaginate (to turn inside out; “Evaginate.com is not the website you think it is.”), but also sang a song using one of her words, locomotive. I loved her voice and unique style and will definitely seek out her music in the future.

There were certainly a few easy words (cow, jihad, spaniard), words I thought were easy because of French or Italian (oubliette, crepuscule, cenacle), other words I might have gotten through cheating (capybara, astrobleme, kulak), but then a whole lot of “are you kidding me?” words like kurdaitcha that I mostly can't remember. It was great fun and everybody was a good sport and in good humor. This group has done this gig in other cities, so if it comes to a theater near you, don’t miss it. I also think the cheating concept alone could be scaled down to use as a general fundraiser.

Political Rhetoric

In my December post about my 2010 book challenge reads, I selected The Handmaid’s Tale, a disturbing portrayal of a dystopic American future, as the book I felt everybody should read. In my Goodreads review of the book, I wrote that “given the extremes in rhetoric we are hearing more and more in the public sphere, this may have been more chilling to me now than if I had read it ten years ago.” At the time, I wondered if that might be too strong a statement. The events of this weekend were a sad reminder that it was not.

While extreme rhetoric has always been with us, going back to the Founding Fathers, and I myself showed a certain fondness for Thomas Jefferson during the misguided war and escalating deficits of the Bush years,

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt. But who can say what would be the evils of a scission, and when & where they would end?”—Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 4 June 1798

I truly hope that the events of this weekend will have people on both sides of the aisle rethinking how they contribute to the public discourse. I know I will.

Lost in Translation

Since our Russian Roulette book salon, I’ve been thinking a lot about the art of translation. More than one person said they loved to read Russian authors because of the language. But whose language? Having taken on a few freelance translating jobs in my time, I know that it is an extremely difficult task even in its most basic form. And, when it comes to literature, there can be vast differences in language between different translators.

I had done some investigating into translation when I read Don Quixote earlier this year, settling on Edith Grossman’s version primarily because of library availability. It had an introduction by Harold Bloom, so it had to be decent right?

“Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.”—Don Quixote (Cervantes, trans. Grossman)

When I decided to tackle War and Peace, I had a few more options. Although I had to wait for it, and despite the controversy surrounded their methods (apparently they break the cardinal rule of translation, which is to translate into your native language), I selected the Pevear/Volokhonsky version. Normally, based on what I had read about it, I wouldn’t have, but their edition is the only one I found that left the French portions intact—most English editions leave only a few French phrases strewn about, like an English mystery novel, when in fact there are large chunks of discourse in French as well as entire letters. Since I had to wait a bit for the actual book, I decided to experiment with another translation, the classic version that most people have read, by the Victorian-era translator Constance Garnett, which the library had on audio. Admittedly, I also thought listening to it first would make the reading go more quickly, which it did. It also highlighted how different two versions can be. If you don’t care about the French issue, I’d recommend Garnett.

If you are wondering just how different translations can be, consider what I read earlier this week while attending a performance of Carmina Burana. The San Francisco symphony thoughtfully provided the Latin text and English translation in their program. Not knowing if they would do this, and wanting to follow along, I had brought the booklet from my CD, which used both English and French.

Here is an example from the “Swaz hie gat umbe” chorus at the end of the “Spring” section.

San Francisco Symphony translation:

They who here go dancing round

Are young maidens all

Who will go without a man

This whole summer long.

Mehta English translation:

Those who go round and round,

are all maidens

they want to do without a man

all summer long.

Mehta French translation (translation mine):

Those who go round and round there

are young maidens

They think they can go the whole summer

without a lover.

Call me crazy, but there’s a whole world of difference between going without a man, wanting to do without a man, and thinking you can go without a man for an extended period of time. But maybe that’s just me.

By the way, I love Carmina Burana in all its cheesy, overused glory and this was a very fun performance, particularly the “roasted swan” song, which was sung with more passion and personality than I have ever heard before.

West Coast Story

This week (as a sort of belated birthday present), I attended the new touring revival of West Side Story at the Orpheum. The conceit of this version is that it’s grittier and more authentic than the original, primarily through the extended use of Spanish by the Puerto Rican characters.

I thought the concept worked well as a whole, but that may have been because I was so familiar with the story and songs. Given that there were no translations made available, nor any supertitles, and that a few key plot points were in Spanish, I have to wonder if someone new to the show would be able to fully appreciate the story. However, after a day when the bilingual nature (in fact, trilingual, when you throw Chinese into the mix) of our city was on full display, with the highlighting of the Spanish-speaking announcers and players in the parade and celebration of Los Gigantes, the updated musical seemed a fitting close to the day. Of course, as someone who daily works in multiple languages, I’m always eager to see new displays of mixed language use.

I got another pleasant surprise when it turned out that one of the Jets was none other than Neil Haskell, of So You Think You Can Dance fame. It was a good thing, as I hadn’t realized just how much dancing there actually was in this musical (having only known it through the movie version). And dancing was certainly the highlight here; although, as often seems to happen in San Francisco, the rustle-tussle of the gang fighting took on new meaning. Unavoidably, given the small orchestra, Bernstein’s lovely music got short shrift, which was a disappointment. But, all in all, it was an enjoyable, if a bit overly dramatic, show.