Thursday, January 24, 2013
George Eliot weighs in
"The opera is a great, great product -- pity we can't always have fine Weltgeschichtliche dramatic motives wedded with fine music instead of trivialities or hideousnesses. Perhaps this last is too strong a word for anything except the Traviata. Rigoletto is unpleasant but it is a superlatively fine tragedy in the Nemesis. I think I don't know a finer." -- letter to Sara Hennell, 11 July 1863.
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Keep these coming, Madam! I wonder what she'd said of Wagner.
ReplyDeleteThat girl needed an opera blog! The above passage notwithstanding, she could be frustratingly reticent about her opinions. I can tell you she thought the third act of Tannhäuser dragged :-)
DeleteShe probably had to be careful what she said about Wagner (and where she said it) because she was hanging out with Liszt. But my impression is that she was a champion of the work without quite being a fan.
Ah, right, I had forgotten about the Familia connections.
DeleteShould be required reading for people who think Verdi should be presented like an episode of Downton Abbey.
ReplyDeleteHa! Think GE would say should be required reading for people who think Verdi should be presented at all :-)
DeleteBut it begs the question of when and where she saw Traviata and how it was presented -- i.e. did she see the original La Fenice production, where they Downton Abbey-ized it into historical fiction so as not to offend anybody, or did she see it later in London, and what was the production like then? A rabbit hole!