This is a post about posting
This a post about posting, or rather about not posting and also an attempt to break through the not posting thing because I obviously have tons to say, and should be saying the things I have to say. When I started this blog, I had full confidence that I’d never run out of post ideas and this proved to be true; however, I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I thought I would and that’s because I tend to obsess about my posts and keep correcting and editing them and I have a ton of half-done posts I have no energy or brain space to bring to postable condition. So here’s a post that is not brought to such condition as I am trying to break the mold; I suspect that very few people will take issue with my style here, and if people take issue with the content—my posts are usually meant to be mildly controversial.
So I saw two operas recently. One contemporary, which I will not name since I am going to pan it, and then I saw Magic Flute. I’ll preface the things I’ll say with the declaration that there’s no bigger fan of Mozart in the world than I. There isn’t. I’ve checked. Having said that, I thought that the contemporary opera that will not be named and Magic Flute have one regrettable thing in common—their libretti are utter nonsense. The contemporary opera in question has a libretto that is a failure on all three levels—conception, construction, and execution; now, I thought the music of it had some redeeming qualities, brutal vocal writing notwithstanding, but I know from my own experience that it’s nearly impossible to write music to a crappy text without the music also becoming crud. I mean, there’s the option of just ignoring the text and creating an instrumental piece that just happens to have voice parts with some syllables in them, but then why bother with opera at all? Rhetorical question, of course.
(By the way, what I just mentioned about the three stages of creation—conception, construction, execution—is something that’s worth exploring. Both as analytical tool and for defining the order of tasks in a project development. Here’s another idea for a future post).
Anyway, the libretto of Magic Flute by Schikaneder isn’t much better—among other things, it’s obvious that the librettist completely changed his mind after having written Act I regarding who is the villain in the story, but didn’t bother to make any appropriate adjustments, so we have two acts that don’t belong together. There’s also all the misogynistic and racist stuff, but that can be easily edited out of the libretto and it was in the production I saw, which I absolutely support. But, overall, Magic Flute has entered the canon purely due to Mozart’s genius—that is, Mozart succeeded in writing great music to a crappy text. Yes, I just said it was nearly impossible, but leave it to Mozart to accomplish that. Still, at least for me, I’d rather see any other opera by Mozart. Yes, including Mitridate. No, not including Bastien und Bastienne. Now, as this post comes to the end, I feel that I ought to have done some more profound analysis and acknowledge/argue with the large body of criticism already written on the subject, and come up with deeper insights for this post to be postworthy, but as I said, this is the post about posting and my attempt to break through the perfectionism that prevents me from posting, and the goal was to risk the said post being mediocre, so here goes me risking it. The next one will be better… may be…