“What I want to know is why all these damn women get their fucking
way at the end of the opera? I mean, I’m starting to notice it now: They always
get the guy they want. And in this case, it wasn’t even really a guy!”
It had been an afternoon where reality—never in abundance at
the opera—had been completely shredded, and though the music was great, the
plot? Well, even Joyce DiDonato admitted it: It was more than a little off.
What there was of it, which wasn’t much. Here’s what we had
to work with, or endure, as Montalvo might have said, since we had taken him to
go hear Joyce DiDonato sail her way through Rossini’s deservedly obscure opera
La Donna del Lago: Elena (DiDonato) is the daughter of Douglas, the deposed
king of Scotland. So Elena meets somebody-or-other who is pretending to be a
lost hunter but is actually the new and deposing king. Then Elena takes the
lost hunter / real king to her humble but love-filled home, where she gives him
wine and guess what? He falls in love with her, which is a problem because she
is in love with a man who is played by a mezzo soprano who is pretending to be
a man—all the while hitting those brilliant high Cs, which might, had this not
been opera, be a clue: A kilt does not a man make. Anyway, the second problem
is that Elena’s father is dead set: She’s gonna marry Rodrigo-or-somebody, and
that makes sense because the guy is rousing up the troops to go fight the
usurping king. So he gets bounty, in the form of Elena, see?
However abhorrent, it was the only thing that made sense in
the opera. Nor did it help that the usurping king was Juan Diego Flores, and
here, to brighten your Monday morning, is the goods:
Right—and put this guy in a king’s costume, and he becomes
mouth-wateringly sexy. So the mezzo-soprano who had conquered Elena’s heart?
Well, it must have taken 100 or so spinning wheels most of the winter over
there in foggy and peat-smoky Scotland just to provide enough fabric to cover
the poor mezzo, and however wonderful she was vocally, well, she made Eleanor
Roosevelt look sexy.
“So why the fuck was she wantin’ to get it on with that,”
Montalvo was wanting to know at the bus stop, and I have to remind him: This is
opera, where a heroine quite naturally can ignore a sex god and go off with a
cow impersonating the male sex.
“So what would you have done,” I tell him, “if you were
writing this libretto?”
Montalvo is just minted 22, so he has the answer: “I woulda
killed everyone of those guys, starting with that bitch Elena.”
Match in the rum factory, “How dare you call Joyce DiDonato
a bitch?”
“I’m not calling her a bitch, just that Elena chick.
And she’s a complete cock tease, too.”
OK—even I wondered, as I watched the darling Elena
innocently invite the dashing Juan Diego Flores to repose in her humble
abode…well, was that quite wise? But parenthood brings the need to champion
innocence, so I tell him, my young son, “Surely you don’t believe that dear
Elena will be ravished and tarnished by the first king masquerading as a lost
hunter she encounters in the Scottish woods!”
His look could have started a forest fire….
Then we go on to discuss the ending, which did nothing to
get the derailing train back on track. Because the usurping king wins the
battle, and thus Douglas is vanquished again, and decides to go offer his life
if the others will be spared.
“What the fuh? He’s gonna offer his life? The king
fucking owns him! The king won! The king shoulda offed his head then and
there, along with that other Niggah, who that bitch Elena got killed. But no, Elena
sails in and tells the king to spare her father AND allow her to marry the fat
cow, and so what does the king have to do? Look, any real guy would tell her,
“listen bitch, you’re spoils of war, you know that? And your father and
betrothed? Toast, baby!”
Right—Montalvo grew up in a slightly less refined
neighborhood than either of the kings involved. That doesn’t mean, however,
that his view of reality isn’t a bit more likely.
In fact, Montalvo’s reality was already significantly
absent, since we had watched most of the crowd disembark from subtle black cars
driven by chauffeurs: I suspected they were chauffeurs because how many white
ladies over the age of 75 have black guys in their thirties as husbands /
lovers? So we had taken the bus, which was fairly non-conventional, but
Montalvo? Well, he arrived carrying his conveyance into the opera, since where
could he park a skateboard?
“This is going to require massive amounts of Coke and
popcorn,” I told him, since we had arrived at intermission, and after one and a
half hours, what had happened? Not much, except for endless arias about the Highlanders’
love of Scotland, and the eternal love of the new king alias lost hunter for
Elena. You try to make an hour and half out of that!
So we munched through the second and final act, and even
though I told him, “WAIT! There’s more!” it was clear: What else could happen
after the King had pardoned the life of Elena’s father and blessed the union of
Elena and the mezzo? Presumably, in an act of complete self-immolation, the
king could give up his first-born son to be raised in the simple and humble
abode of Elena and the mezzo, and would return to gaze upon his son secretly
and anguishedly, as he herded the
goats and scratched his open, pus-oozing sores.
“It’s over,” cried Montalvo in a voice every bit as loud as
Juan Diego Flores’ voice, and what else did he do? Right—I should have known
that he was saving that last round of popcorn for the finale, and if it had
only been us, showered as he heaved the contents of the bag heavenward? That
would have been OK, but remember that crowd I was telling you about? The kind
that get driven to the opera, and the kind who find it quite amazing that that
little girl would want money for their sushi and bottle of wine, since at
home, well, the girl gives them that for free. So it’s always a little problem
at the theater since really, it takes these lovely and elegant ladies about ten
minutes to grasp the situation, and then they have to peer into their purses,
and locate what they dimly remember to be money, and then isolate it, peer at
it again, smile sweetly at the girl, re-examine the money, inquire as to the
price again, smile sweetly, turn to look and see if anyone in line is seeing
this degrading spectacle, kiss two or three friends or acquaintances or just
anybody who is obviously the same social status as they, recall that a
transaction is taking place, smile again at the girl, hand the money—didn’t
think we’d get there, did you?—to the girl, move away, spill some popcorn, be
recalled by the girl, proffering money in return, look at the change
uncomprehendingly, be explained that the popcorn and soda was $5:99 and the
change is $14.01, since the elegant lady had presented a twenty—“that should do
it, don’t you think?”—to the girl, never imagining that she might actually make
change, since the girl at home never does, so why should this one?
Right—that was the woman, or her better-heeled
sister, whom my young son had chosen to popcorn-shower / blitz at the end of
three hours of simpering Elena!
“You can NEVER do that again,” I hissed, from underneath my
seat, and who knew that a 6’3” guy could cower under a movie seat? Wonderful,
what man is capable of, in times of danger or terror.
Well, I’m happy to say that the lady acted considerably
better than anyone in my neighborhood or—especially—Montalvo’s, and more since
the popcorn landed on what was the cotton-candy equivalent of hair: Heated and
spun and twisted and colored into something so unnatural, and yet so lethal, since
it had stopped being soft as hair but instead become a kind of razor-sharp
helmet, which could have slashed us mercilessly had she charged. But she
stalked away—the popcorn glistening like artificial pearls on her hair; she
looked improbably like Elizabeth I as she stormed out of the theater.
So we deconstructed what little there was of the opera at the
bus stop, and then the bus came, picked us up. Montalvo tails us, making faces
at us through the window as he glides gracefully on his skateboard. And that’s
when I realize that the social conservatives were absolutely right about the
need for a two-parent environment for raising children, since how else could I
have said had it not been for Mr. Fernández, my co-parent in crime?
“Your side of the family,” I tell Mr. Fernández, and we both
gasp as Montalvo expertly shoots past a car intent on slaughtering him and
sails over a pothole that would qualify, after the next heavy rain, for the
sixth Great Lake. So we gasp, and clutch our lace handkerchiefs to our breasts,
and Montalvo--operaed and Rossinied but still intact—sails into
the distance.
Right--check out the king, and tell me he's not dreamy….
