It’s the old, old story: what should we do to “popularize”
classical music?
To the purists, the answer is nothing: inserting a Cuban
popular song into an already quite jazzy rendition of “Sound the Trumpet,” by
the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell, cheapens and degrades the music.
And—so goes the thinking—it makes us look ridiculous. Who are we kidding, after
all, when classical musicians venture into heavy metal? Will we ever be as
good—or as bad—as AC / DC, or whoever they are? Do we want our bankers and US
senators to wear purple Mohawks, black leather and chains?
The other side of the story, of course, is that if we keep
being purists, we’ll end up playing to six old ladies in Dwindling Light
Nursing Home. And when the fl;u epidemic carries them off, where will we be?
Tonight, we will go to the opera, taking young Montalvo with
us. But Lady will come along as well, and Gabriela. And though I say it’s the
opera, it’s really a hybrid form: the Metropolitans Line in HD, which is shown
in movie theaters throughout the world.
Since Montalvo has been sprung from puritan clutches of the
criminal justice system, there is every likelihood that he will approach the
opera with a chemically enhanced brain. It’s probably for the best, because the
crowd at the opera takes a little getting used to: there’s no disputing that
they are lovely, absolutely lovely ladies. And so it’s no surprise that they
have many friends, each one of whom will also be attending the opera. And so
the ladies will stop and kiss, compare notes on their most recent trips to
Gstaad, and invite each other to their villas in Nice. This will take time, of
course, but it will also take place in the absolute middle of the lobby, and
since there will be three or four such pairings, the lobby will be completely
impassable. And so there we will be, wondering if it would be really low-class
to cough, murmur “excuse me,” and wade our way through.
Raf’s mother, of course, has solved the problem for us,
since she uses her walker on the ladies as the train uses the metal triangular
device on the cows. My point? Montalvo has become an adept at the opera:
“didn’t we see Kristine Opolais in
Manon Lescaut,” he asked recently. We told him he had, and he went away. The
next day he posted a video of a pre-paraplegic skateboarder performing
death-seducing feats. And the music? The worst of Reggaeton!
It’s an open world for Montalvo, in short. And does anyone
think, by the way, that whoever the “singer” of the Raggaeton will be singing
“O mio Babbino Caro” tomorrow? Of course not!
What an extraordinary cowardly people we have become!
Because tonight we will see La bohème, the plot of which is a familiar as the tears that
will spring from my eyes. Yes, Mimi will lose her keys on the dark
stairs, Rodolfo will find them but pretend not to have, since what has
happened?
Really,
do I need to tell you?
Montalvo,
of course, will snort at this, since in his mentally-unenhanced state, while
under the wing of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, well, he had been rather
different.
“He
was high as a kite last night at the poetry slam,” said Lady. “And really, he
was totally cool: chilling, relaxed, good with the world. Is it too terrible to
say that I like him….”
I
knew just what she meant….
“I’ve
noticed that these bitches always get their way in these operas,” he snorted,
when he was in an unimproved state, several months ago.
“You
know,” I will tell him, “this opera is the absolute best way to get any woman
to…well, be where you want her to be. It’s a total aphrodisiac for them. You
take her out, ply her with oysters and champagne, and then, bam! Hit her with
Puccini!”
“Panties
off!” he will respond, probably in a voice that will carry through the lesser
Antilles, and be heard in Caracas.
“It’s
a bit easier than winning the Nobel Prize for literature,” I will tell him.
“Though also a bit more expensive. Anyway, it’s a definite plan B….”
These
are the fatherly tips that it is my duty to confer….
So
we will see the opera, and I know everything but when it will be set.. Because
the stage director has to do something, after all, to ear those juicy
Metropolitan bucks. So it may be that the whole thing will be staged in
ancient Mesopotamia, or mayber in a
distant planet in a far distant time. So Mimi will lose her keys in a
spaceship, and….
It
won’t be quite that bad, of course. Though I have seen a clip of Philippe
Jaroussky covered in motor oil—supposedly—and singing Monteverdi. Oh, and in
the same production, poor Cecilia Bartoli had to sing “Piangero, La Sorte Mio” wearing a canvas hood. Wonderfully—opera singers
have such good training—the sound was quite unmuffled.
Well,
Montalvo at the opera is definitely as good as the opera itself, since he has
proven himself completely capable of giving a “popcorn shower” to the woman in
front of him. Just as, of course, I immediate countered by proving that a 6’3”
man can quite easily cower under a movie seat….
Stay
tuned!
