Narratological Thoughts About Opera

This morning, with the conclusion of the Centennial Season of the San Francisco Opera, I found myself reflecting on the fact that I had used this site to document thoughts about narratology (also known as “narrative theory”) long before I redirected my attention to music. It struck me that each of the three operas that were performed between June 3 and July 1 had taken its own unique approach to narrative, sometimes through the staging of the libretto, rather than through the text of the libretto itself. This tempted me to revisit each of the three productions by distilling the narrative foundations out of the usual approach based on the interplay of the words with the music.

It struck me that Amon Miyamoto’s staging of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly was the best place to begin, since I came away concerned that the direction had “muddled” the opera’s narrative. The source of that “muddle” involved adding the adult Trouble, a mimed role performed by John Charles Quimpo, to the story as it had originally been told in the libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Narratology teaches us that a narrative is not simply a chain of events involving a collection of characters. Rather, narrative requires a narrator; and Miyamoto’s approach basically took that “narrator’s job” away from Illica and Giacosa and “recast” it by turning it over to the character that spends the least time on stage (at least as defined by the libretto).

Mind you, I am still dissatisfied with how the production was staged. However, I would not say that the presence of an adult Trouble muddled the narrative. Rather, I think that Miyamoto may have overlooked the fact that any good narrative deserves a good narrator. Thus, while we could appreciate the presence of the adult Trouble, the staging never really allowed him to play a convincing role, either as narrator or as a character incorporated into the narration. By the end of the opera, it seemed as if Miyamoto could never make anything more of the adult Trouble than a perplexed observer. Had Miyamoto paid more attention to what we expect of a narrator, his staging would probably have been significantly more convincing, possibly to a point of presenting the audience with a deeper sense of all of the characters conceived by Illica and Giacosa.

Making sense of all of the characters was even more critical in the staging of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten. This opera was given only five performances, only one (the first) of which was a matinee. I make this observation because my own attention tends to be sharper in the afternoon than it is in the evening. (I should note, however, that my first encounter with this opera took place during an evening performance at the Metropolitan Opera; but I made it a point to fortify myself with coffee at both intermissions!)

This was a performance in which neither the original director, John Cox, or the director for this production, Roy Rallo, had “muddled” the narrative. Nevertheless, I came away observing that the “narrative path” of the libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal was not “particularly well-defined.” Nevertheless, that staging provided a clear account of the “parallel lives” of the principal characters, while the music tended to highlight the individuality of those characters through “signature” motifs (very much in the spirit of the motifs that identify the characters in Richard Wagner’s four operas for his Der Ring des Nibelungen (the ring of the Nibelung). In other words the music guides the attentive listener in ways that Hofmannsthal’s words may fall short of the goal. We should remember that Strauss composed many tone poems with clearly defined narratives, so he knew full well how to allow music to guide the listener’s way through a complex opera libretto!

The final opera of the season, Gabriela Lena Frank’s El último sueño de Frida y Diego (the last dream of Frida [Kahlo] and Diego [Rivera]) is “something completely different” when compared with both Madama Butterfly and Die Frau ohne Schatten. It amounts to a superposition of two decidedly different narratives, one historical and the other fiction dating back to Greek mythology. The former distills the plot down to a single date, November 2, 1957. This is the year of Diego Rivera’s death, and the date itself is the Day of the Dead.

A page from the pre-Columbian Codex Borgia serving as a map of the northern hemisphere of Mictlān (author unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The narrative begins with Rivera at Kahlo’s grave. That is the “historical perspective.” However, in Aztec mythology, it is the day on which La Catrina, Keeper of the Dead, allows a selected number of souls to revisit the living; and so it is that Kahlo and Rivera experience together their “last dream.” One might mistake this as an alternative version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; but the underworld domain of Hades is a far cry from that of Mictlān. As I previously observed, it is significantly more bureaucratic; and, while Mictlāntēcutli may rule over the dead, Catrina is the chief bureaucrat that gets things done (such as enabling the dead to make a return visit to the living).

More important is that, without Kahlo, Rivera has lost his primary source of inspiration for his paintings and murals. One of the most intense moments of the opera comes when the curtain rises on the second act and we see Rivera confronted by a blank wall, unable to decide where and how to begin. Thus, in contrast to Greek mythology, the narrative of the opera is resolved when Catrina allows Rivera to follow Kahlo as she returns to Mictlantecutli. The result is a narrative that differs significantly from not only the mythological world of Die Frau ohne Schatten but also the “historical” world of Madama Butterfly. Fortunately, the libretto by Nilo Cruz was conceived in such a way that one did not need to be immersed in Aztec culture in order to follow the plot line.

To be fair, this is not the sort of narrative that one experiences by sitting back and letting the plot events run their course. One might say that the “social logic” behind Cruz’ libretto entails a cerebral disposition far more elaborate than the content of the Orpheus myth (with Die Frau ohne Schatten situated somewhere between these two extremes). Nevertheless, anyone learned in narratology would probably have no trouble situating both Hofmannsthal and Cruz in the same league of both vivid imagination and sophistication than one encounters in the far more mundane libretto that Illica and Giacosa prepared for Madama Butterfly. The latter may be a high-ranking favorite among many (most?) opera buffs; but both Die Frau ohne Schatten and El último sueño de Frida y Diego are likely to appeal to those seeking more than a sit-back-and-listen experience.