I have been listening to the opera Rigoletto in preparation for seeing it live a little later this month. It is a strange thing, listening to the opera in the new age of the Me Too movement. The Duke could be any one of the males in the entertainment industry whose predilections for waving their cazzi around for the fawning admiration of any woman in the vicinity has disappeared them from their former realms of power. Like these erstwhile movers and shakers in contemporary American society, the Duke in the opera blames his victims; in his most famous aria, he tells us that women are as fickle as feathers in the wind, as well as simple, and prone to lying to get what they want.It is the role of Gilda, the doomed soprano, that has taken on a new psychological resonance in our more (supposedly) enlightened times. Her decision to do what she does at the end of the opera (go listen to it!) rings ever truer through the lens of survivor's trauma in a society in which slut shaming is the national sport.
I was always entertained by this opera, one of my favorites now for about thirty years. Before listening to it again recently, I wondered if it had been rendered ridiculous, meaningless, an embarrassment, with the passing of time.
It has not.
L'inferno qui vedo, indeed.
We hear, we age:
ReplyDelete__ I hear again through different ears, eyes and senses, and with vague memories, I leave this instant's venryu. (In my ineptitude, I misspelled senryu... smiles!) _m
operas venue
in varied verse poetics
minds memory vaults
Thank you, Magyar! It is always good to hear from you.
ReplyDelete