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[bunj]

Recently, I seem to only post opera reviews, and even those have fallen away this season. Mostly, that's because it's been a very frustrating, disappointing season. Every opera, with the possible exception of Capriccio, has had some problems, some of them quite major. I was excited to finally see Tannhäuser, only to be disappointed by a terrible

Comments

[bunj]

I should have read more reviews before I posted. I think New City does a better job of explaining why this opera is problematic here.

[muckefuck]

So totally looking forward to Wozzeck. Did you know that was my first German-language opera?

Yeah, I kept thinking about how Passenger compares poorly to Kaiser von Atlantis. The sheer monstrosity of the Holocaust makes it very difficult to meet head on, which is why the best art I've seen come out of it tends to approach it more obliquely

[bunj]

I didn't know that about Wozzeck. After Lulu, I'm excited to see more Berg. Although, it's hard for me to imagine anyone but Klaus Kinski in the title role.

I agree that there was some tension in the story of the diplomat and his wife, but that was undercut with some clunky dialog "You were in Auschwitz! Then you must have been an overseer! We're ruined!" Some growing tension as he comes to terms with what his wife is telling him would have been useful.

I probably am being overly harsh. Weinberg and Medvedev get a lot of points for daring. It's so very difficult to grapple with something that monstrous. As you said, the best art tends to handle it obliquely (although Night handled it head on, it was a first-person account told matter-of-factly, which I think helped).