Opera Review

The Opera House in Vienna was one of the most magnificent buildings I’ve had the opportunity to see; I was even told, by many, that the city of Vienna is a major capital of Opera. Thus my expectations for the Armide Opera were pretty high. I was not disappointed in the performance but rather befuddled, throughout the story of the play, due to my lack of knowledge and context.

Early on, thanks to the translation screen in front of my seat, I was able to follow along with the lyrics being sung. These lyrics told a story of a woman, named Armide (played by Gaëlle Arquez), who had a necromantic ability to control men with both her beauty and charm. She was unable to charm the archenemy of her nation, however, named Renaud (played by Stanislas De Barbeyrac). Renaud was a champion foe that paid no mind to any of Armide’s malevolent advances. This frustrated her greatly and she decided to take her revenge by killing him. As Armide went to take the life of Renaud, she fell in love, and she cast a spell upon Renaud: she was to take revenge by making him fall in love with her. A focal theme of the play, as was apparent to me, was seen in this revenge of Armide upon Renaud: love was regarded as a curse, and not a blessing, in this Opera; love was an evil burden.

However the story and plot of the Opera, as a whole, became difficult to follow as the show went along: Heaven and Hell suddenly played mighty roles and, by the end, all that an uninformed member of the audience – such as myself – could discern about the opera was that it was a spectacular and complicated display about the tragedy of love and perhaps even evil vs. good... I was left with the impression that the story had deeper connotations that I had no idea of… It would have been helpful to know of the composer of the Opera (Christoph Willibald Gluck), some context about his inspirations in writing such a work (Torquato Tasso’s sixteenth-century poem, Jerusalem Delivered), etc. If only context like this had been presented before the play began, with a pre-show-screening like the one I saw in the Ballet, then maybe I would have been more intelligently thoughtful about the meanings of the various acts throughout the performance since I would have been more prepared.

An orchestra accompanied this Opera. I expected this, although, I realized something quite early on: the Orchestra in the Opera was less outwardly significant than the Orchestra in the Ballet. I assumed that this was because, in the Opera, the spotlight was shown unfailingly upon the characters taking the stage. The spotlight never beamed upon the players in the Orchestra; in the Opera, the Orchestra absolutely played accordingly to the stage performers, and not at all vice versa, which was different than what I noticed in the Ballet. I credited this assumption to the fact that no virtuosos appeared in the Orchestra as they had in the Ballet performance. The only virtuosos were the Opera singers themselves, whom were indubitably the pinnacle of the show: their voices seemed to make more sound than one would think humanly possible; it seemed as though they were singing into microphones, but they weren’t! It’s safe to say that the Opera singers completely captivated my attention in terms of music. In the Ballet performance, I often had my eyes diverted from the dancers on the stage, as they were beckoned downward below or into the corner, because of the impressive performance of the virtuosos in the Orchestra. The Opera was different from the Ballet in this regard: the Opera performance kept me consistently focused on the singers as my eyes fixated upon the stage and my ears became surprised at the unimaginable range and ability of the human voice rather than the performance of the Orchestra.

In summary, the plot, albeit complex, was thought-provoking… I only wish I had more information to really understand the significance of the Opera’s story… The Opera singers were enchanting, impressive, and almost superhuman as their vocal performance took away the show and proved to be a spectacle to witness.