If you’ve ever wondered why the heroines in tragic opera stories don’t just roll their eyes and mouth ‘Yeah, whatever’, we’ve got the summaries for you
Operas aren’t meant to make sense. That’s why they sing them in languages you probably never learned. If they sang them in English you’d be angry rather than baffled. Plus all opera companies have, for some reason, too many costumes and are thus always looking to fast-track operas with scope for costume changes and extensive cross-dressing. It also explains why there’s always an aria in which a moustache-twirling, straight Lothario questions his sexuality after falling for a new lad in uniform and why, for plot reasons that make no sense, he has to go undercover as a milkmaid in act two, even though the bloke who plays him weighs 120kg and was once a prop forward for Llanelli Rugby Football Club.
No wonder, in such circumstances, that a Times classical music critic confessed earlier this year to still not understanding the plot of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. To help him, and perhaps you, understand the incomprehensible, here are some opera synopses simplified, with a festive nod towards Giodarno’s Andrea Chénier – because the BBC is going to be showing David McVicar’s Covent Garden production on Friday 18 December. The last thing I want this festive season is for Guardian readers to settle down to watch tenor Jonas Kaufmann sing the title role, stupidly mystified by the story. First, let’s help out that Times writer.
The plan goes wrong when the count stumbles into the room while Cherubino is getting into his disguise
Some poor people press their noses against the windows begging for crusts, or preferably something from the cheese plate
I haven’t yet seen an Elvira mouth “Yeah, whatever” and roll her eyes heavenwards at this advice but I’d like to.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that the bird outfit might explain his lack of success with the ladies.
Continue reading...