What the hell was the Republican-fascist playing friggin' Pavaroti's bellowing of "Nessun Dorma" at Trump's Nuremberg rally last night supposed to be about? I wondered.
I suppose not one in a thousand of those who heard it knows that the song is the dictatorial command of a cruel, tyrannical and murderous princess (Ivanak's plans for the future, no doubt) commanding that no one is allowed to even sleep until they reveal to her the identity of a prince who has the hots for her, from Puccini's Turandot, one of the dumbest of operas from one of the more decadent opera composers.
I'd go into the reasons it is a piece of horrible crap but if you're interested, read the libretto from the point of view of the only decent person in it, the slave girl Liu who gives up her life to protect the total asshole of a prince who is the hero of Puccini's telling of what is, in other tellings a far more complex story.
I think that it could only be decently told in the way my dear old Latin teacher analyzed Euripides' Alcestis "You son of a bitch, getting your wife to die for you". The prince and the princess are total assholes, both of them but since they're royalty, Puccini knows the decadent opera audience of his time would know they were supposed to be heroes. The slave girl who is the best of all of them is disposable and once gone is quickly forgotten except as a bit of sentimentality. That is the way of so much of the theatrical presentation of the lowest of the low, presenting them with nothing more than sentimentality and as disposable ephemera.
I've heard that the BBC sports department can be blamed for the fad of everyone singing and playing Nessun Dorma because they popularized Pavaroti's bellowing of it during a World Cup series. Classy, huh? Which is I'm sure all the Trump gang took it for, like Mae West satirized in Goin' to Town when decided to prove she was classy by "throwin' an opera". Only she knew the difference, the Trump gang don't. In looking at this I see that in 2016 the fucking Trump assholes presented it as "a song of victory".
I actually wondered what that song was. I couldn't hear any of it, NBC talked over it and hastily returned the airwaves to their local stations (where some of us were much more concerned with the hurricane than with Trump's Nuremberg Rally). I figured I didn't miss much, but I did wonder what was going on.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of this being used in any context. And I'd have figured Wagner was more appropriate, just on guilty-by-association terms. Then again, while I have recordings of Kiri Te Kanawa and Frederica Von Stade and, well, others...what I really know about opera is zilch. My preference tilts a little more strongly toward songs than arias, anyway. Not by much, and not by education; but I find I tend to enjoy those recordings more than the ones of familiar opera numbers.
I'm more into plainsong anyway.....
My last New York friend, a bass in the Met chorus sang the role of one of the Sapienti in a really vulgar, gold leaf set version of it which looks like Donald Trump's taste in interior decor. I watched it on TV, it's a pretty terrible opera, Puccini didn't finish it, there have been several attempts at finishing it, I think the one they did was the "official" one commissioned by Ricordi.
DeleteI was never a Pavarotti fan, he had a glorious voice but no artistry or taste at all. After the revelations about one of my former musical heroes, James Levine and the far far superior singer, Placido Domingo, I'm kind of off opera.