3h 12min | Comedy, Music, Romance | TV Movie 9 October 1962
Herbert von Karajan ... conductor
Stars: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Otto Edelmann, Sena Jurinac.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056426/
Watched online, mediocre print: ok-ish for small screen, blurry on large screen.
Wow, the big lesson from watching this: I NEED SUBTITLES. Although they provided a synopsis of the upcoming action before each act, I didn't feel like I followed what was going on. It's supposed to be a comedy, and the players look amused at moments, but I didn't SEE anything amusing, so it must have been something they said?
First performed in 1911, but takes place in 18th century.
The other thing I need to research is "trouser roles". To me, there is some significance to having a woman portray a man beyond the composer wanting a soprano voice in the role.
Perhaps I should also stop an unfamiliar opera when an Act ends, and read again what supposedly happened. That's a little dangerous, though, since whatever source I read may not be exactly what this production did.
Let me try to recap what I read about the plot. The titled woman (TW) has a young lover (YL, a woman playing a man), and to escape detection in her bedroom, the lover dresses as a chambermaid (woman playing a man pretending to be a woman). The woman's cousin (WC) comes to ask ES to have a cavalier (YL) deliver a silvered rose to his arranged fiancée. He's a bloated lesser-titled man; the fiancée is a young woman, more the age of TW. He thinks TW, dressed as the chambermaid, is cute, and flirts with and paws her(him).
YL delivers the rose, and whoops, the arranged fiancée and YL instantly fall in love.
Then I get confused. Someone in this story arranges to get revenge (?) on WC, tormenting him with people popping out of walls from behind mirrors (why did the walls have holes under the mirrors every 3 feet?), and up from a trap door in the floor. It seems to get him out of the way so the young lovers can unite. TW is melancholy about the transfer of affections, but knew it would happen. The 3 sopranos, TW, YL and the fiancée, sing a lovely trio. The end.
Nearly every woman in the story has grounds to tweet #MeToo. I'd be interested to know how much of this story was the early 20th century's composer/librettist team making fun of what they thought mores were 100+ years earlier, or whether they felt this was current behavior, just in bigger skirts. Y'know, boys will be boys.
I'm not done with this opera. Maybe not even with this performance of it, which is highly praised; that's why I chose to watch it. I don't think I'll post my rating on IMDb. The DVD has subtitles, and a rating of 4.6 with 54 reviews, no 1's or 2's. And opera buffs are finicky.
live opera, cond. von Karajan; 6
