It’s been a while so let’s review-
The Rules of Opera
- It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
- The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
- Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.
Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.
The case in point is Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. It’s sometimes called the first English Opera but while it is very early indeed (1689) that honor probably belongs to his teacher John Blow’s Venus and Adonis.
Aeneas you may recognize as the “hero” of Virgil’s Odyssey rip off The Aeneid. The Roman source is actually kind of a great screaming neurotic rant of self justification about why exactly Romans were such bloodthirsty assholes.
First of all let’s talk about the psychological depravity and inferiority complex that would lead you to rewrite the seminal national text of your cultural superiors who’s land you had violently conquered and whom you were still dependent on for intellectual talent because you’re basically a bunch of frat boy barbarians so that the bad guys were the good guys and the founders of your own state.
Then let’s add the seduction and abandonment of the Queen of the nation that was your chief rival.
I think we’re in Operatown Jake.
So Aeneas, noble warrior of Troy cruelly cheated and defeated by those perfidious Greeks, especially Odysseus who’s story he’s stealing, is sailing with a boatload of refugees to find someplace new to settle down when they are blown off course and shipwrecked due to internecine disputes among the Gods related to the Judgement of Paris.
Oddly enough for this ancestor of the founders of Rome (who were raised by wolves in a sterling example of good parenting) he ended up at the gates of Rome’s great future rival- Carthage.
Dido Queen of Carthage, a widow, falls in love with him and fixes up his ships. Witches plotting against Dido conjure up a storm and when the couple is temporarily separated one of them, impersonating Hermes, tells Aeneas that he simply must hit the road and found that New Troy in Italy he’s been planning. Aeneas, being a cad in addition to a credulous dope, promptly shoves off.
Dido, despondent, kills herself. The End.
Now there were in fact heavy political subtexts to both The Aeneid and Dido and Aeneas. Virgil was not just stroking the Roman sense of entitlement and righteous justification but, because of Ceasar’s reputed descent from Aeneas, sucking up to the Julio-Claudian Emperors (it was written between 29 and 19 BCE).
With Dido and Aeneas Purcell is alluding to the (for him) recent events of the English Civil War. Aeneas is said to represent James II and the Witches Roman Catholicism while Dido represents Britain, abandoned due to deception.
Like many early compositions it’s not entirely complete and for performance various arrangers fill in the gaps in a variety of ways. This particular version is from the San Francisco School of the Arts.
Obligatories, News and Blogs below.
Obligatories
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when
we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED)the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD. And I am highly organized.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
–Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
This Day in History
News
- Iraq’s stalemate in Ramadi raises doubts about US strategy, By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press
- US-trained Syrian rebels in equipment exchange with al-Qaida affiliates, Reuters
- Court hears first arguments in case challenging bulk data collection by NSA, by Nicky Woolf, The Guardian
- Jeb Bush is the ultimate anti-internet candidate, by Trevor Timm, The Guardian
- Why I’ve written 50 posts on Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, By Chris Cillizza, Washington Post
- China announces plans to launch cap-and-trade system, by Renee Lewis, Al Jazeera
- VW scandal: staff suspended as car giant appoints new CEO, by Graham Ruddick and Sean Farrell, The Guardian
- More bad news for Germany: Berlin’s overdue airport could collapse, By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy
- After nearly five years, Boehner could never land the ‘big deal’ he wanted, By Paul Kane, Washington Post
- Obama and Boehner both craved compromise – but could never reach it, By Juliet Eilperin
- Researchers: Lead levels up after Flint switches to cheaper water supply, by Azure Gilman, Al Jazeera
Blogs
- London’s Metropolitan Police Houses A Bunch Of Criminals Who Are More Interested In Harassing Journalists Than Chasing Criminals, by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt
- Government Report Declares Broadband An Essential, Uncompetitive Utility, Wistfully Ponders If Perhaps We Should Do Something About It, by Karl Bode, Tech Dirt
- Tony Benn’s Ten Minute History of Neoliberalism, by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism
- Eskow & Black: If the Justice Dept Wants to Punish Corporate Crooks, Here’s How, by Devin Smith, New Economic Perspectives
- Private Equity Asset-Stripping Strategy Meets Charter Schools to Produce Even Better Looting, By Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism
- Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, by Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept
- Secret Surveillance Court Picks First Outsider To Get a Look In, by Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept
- “Snowden Treaty” Calls for End to Mass Surveillance, Protections for Whistleblowers, by Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept
- Fear of a Bernie Sanders presidency: How the silly elite media creates phony stories to dodge real issues, by Paul Rosenberg, Salon
- Martin Shkreli’s free-market fetish: How the drug profiteer’s pathetic excuses reveal a dangerous ideology, by Conor Lynch, Salon
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