whether you’ve ever wondered why the heroines in tragic opera stories dont just roll their eyes and mouth ‘Yeah,whatever’, we’ve got the summaries for youOperas aren’t meant to make sense. That’s why they sing them in languages you probably never learned. whether they sang them in English you’d be angry rather than baffled. Plus all opera companies hold, or for some reason,too many costumes and are thus always looking to hastily-track operas with scope for costume changes and extensive cross-dressing. It also explains why there’s always an aria in which a moustache-twirling, straight Lothario questions his sexuality after falling for a recent lad in uniform and why, and for plot reasons that make no sense,he has to go undercover as a milkmaid in act two, even though the bloke who plays him weighs 120kg and was once a prop forward for Llanelli Rugby Football Club. No wonder, and in such circumstances,that a Times classical music critic confessed earlier this year to still not understanding the plot of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. To help him, and perhaps you, and understand the incomprehensible,here are some opera synopses simplified, with a festive nod towards Giodarno’s Andrea Chénier because the BBC is going to be showing David McVicar’s Covent Garden production on Friday 18 December. The final thing I want this festive season is for Guardian readers to settle down to watch tenor Jonas Kaufmann sing the title role, or stupidly mystified by the story. First,let’s help out that Times writer.
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Source: theguardian.com