City rain vs country rain

Yesterday was our evening for Don Giovanni, the first of the four productions we chose for our opera subscription. (It was also my first experience seeing a show at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and very nearly my first experience with traditional large-scale opera - I remember seeing a production of Handel's Semele in Anchorage as a teenager, and Brian and I went to a local rendition of Donizetti's Don Pasquale for our first date in Juneau, but while both were charming and enthusiastic, I don't think either were what you'd call world-class.) I have a whole post about that upcoming, but since I spend so much time talking about how awesome urban living is, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge a recent less-than-flattering epiphany.

Since Brian was working downtown yesterday (his current client is situated not even a block away from the opera house), and we had a couple of errands to run in the area, I got dressed in my new suit (thank you, Banana Republic's end-of-season clearance!) and headed down there around the time he got off work. And, thanks to the weather, rapidly discovered one of the big downsides to walkable urban areas - running errands while it's pissing down rain is a giant pain in the ass. (We had the car, as Brian had taken it in that morning, but driving a half-mile in downtown, and the associated issues with parking, is far more trouble than it's worth even when it's not rush-hour traffic.) We had both brought our umbrellas, and Brian had his greatcoat, so we weren't soaked, but man - the way everything gets sodden and weighted-down after only a few minutes outside is a heck of a damper to one's spirits. (And I usually like rain.)

I was, however, somewhat entertained at how the musical light sculptures on State Street were still playing something cheerful and upbeat, which was lent a certain existential desperation by the oppressive atmosphere. "Don't worry about the rain! You're not really miserable! We're still pretty! This is still a nice area to go shopping! Don't you want to go shopping? Oh god please go shopping or else our existence is meaningless!"

Anyway, we got Brian's new suit in for tailoring, and found a little Cuban place that did perfectly decent hot-pressed sandwiches for dinner. So it wasn't a loss, exactly. But given that we've both woken up this morning with scratchy throats and sore muscles, I'm starting to see why it is some people prefer to drive around the 'burbs in their climate-controlled vehicles when they have stuff that needs doing.

Do not invite statues to dinner: Thoughts on the Lyric Opera experience and Don Giovanni.

And now, the promised post - impressions from a night at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

My first observation, from the vantage point of the balcony over the lobby as people filtered in, was primarily a self-aimed one: as much as I enjoy playing with the cross-gender look, I'm beginning to think I am fundamentally a femme. I was dressed perfectly properly for the semi-formal occasion - blue sateen tailored suit, button-down shirt over camisole, black shoes, neat hair, assorted sparkly jewelry - but looking at the women in dresses I still felt underdressed. (I suspect, never having held a professional job of the sort that required a suit, pants simply translate in my head as less formal than a dress, no matter their form.) Second was that this was definitely a Midwestern event; there were at least a few folks in jeans and t-shirt, one with a fluorescent windbreaker, and they didn't get anything worse than the occasional sidelong look (and snarky Facebook post from people who have nothing better to do with their time than play Judgey Bear). Third, the opera house is beautiful (it was built in the 1920s just before the Great Depression, and is full of gorgeous Art Deco flourishes and motifs), but the auditorium was pretty clearly built in the days before the Great Widening of American Rears. Brian and I fit okay in our seats but leg/elbow room was Delta Airlines Coach Class levels of limited. I began to see why intermissions are half an hour; you need that long to get circulation back into your legs.

The show, as expected, was awesome. It's pretty amazing to see a world-class set of artists doing what they do best before a huge audience; the orchestra's timing and precision were fabulous, and the singers...oh man. They announced beforehand that the woman singing Donna Anna was feeling under the weather but had agreed to perform anyway; if that's what she sounds like ill I can't imagine how she must sound normally. The strength, clarity, and control she had over her voice astounded me in every one of her arias. She was also, I felt the strongest actor of the leads. Don Ottavio had a similarly impressive tenor, though he could be a bit stiff in the blocking; still, his rendition of "Il mio tesoro" had half the audience in tears. But really, none of the leads were musical slouches at all. Donna Elvira and Leporello had pretty great comic timing as well; during "Madamina, il catalogo è questo", where he's describing to her how Don Giovanni's faithlessness is nothing personal, there were some thoroughly entertaining bits of physical comedy. And the sets and costumes were beyond excellent; I loved the 1920s-gangland-Chicago theme.

Despite the musicianship on display, though, I think it's going to go down in my head as a strong performance rather than an amazing one. I suspect a lot of that's an inherent weakness in the libretto; the Wikipedia summary is one sentence - "Don Giovanni, a young, arrogant, and sexually promiscuous nobleman, abuses and outrages everyone else in the cast, until he encounters something he cannot kill, beat up, dodge, or outwit" - and that's pretty much the entire dramatic arc of the story as written. Judging by the translation they used for the supertitles (my Italian, alas, is not strong enough yet to interpret the lyrics myself), there's not a whole lot of ambiguity; Don Giovanni is an unrepentant psychopath throughout, and spends the entire play running amok until he's literally dragged down to Hell by a vengeful spirit. Morally satisfying, perhaps, but it doesn't do a lot to repair the shattered lives of those left in his wake. And given that what I love about characters and relationships is our rationalizations and ambiguities, the stories we live in our heads versus the stories we live in others', and the effects of our actions both intentional and non, a one-note main character who doesn't have to deal with any of the messy aftereffects of his selfishness doesn't hold a lot of dramatic interest for me.

But what was also frustrating was I could see parts where this could have been mitigated by better acting. Giovanni is of a privileged class, yes, and obviously handsome, but he has to have some charisma, or else it makes no sense that he can seduce all of these women and convince Leporello to stay with him despite the indignities of the position. And while this Giovanni was certainly musically strong, I didn't feel like he really had the strength as an actor to be charismatic as well as snaky. So I ended up just suspending my disbelief whenever he was persuading someone, which was…most of his scenes, really. I couldn’t deny the dramatic effectiveness of the big climactic scene where he gets his comeuppance; I just wasn’t entirely convinced it was enough payoff to be worth the wait.

Still! It was an impressive production nonetheless, in a beautiful setting, and even up on the highest balcony as we were the acoustics were crazy-impressive - none of the singers are miked, but I had no trouble making out 95% of the lyrics. If this is indicative of the general quality of their shows, I’m more than looking forward to the rest of the season.