San Francisco Classical Voice

I was delighted to read about your site in the SF Conservatory "Spotlight" and read with interest the review of "Arabella," which I attended Sunday evening (10/4), courtesy of a buddy in the orchestra. I experienced the production as theatre, came home and wrote a letter (hardly a review), but I find that I took the story perhaps more seriously than your reviewer (Marvin Tartak, SFCV, 9/15, see "Archives") perhaps as seriously as Strauss. But I had no idea that it was supposed to be frothy:

I am just back from the SF Opera, the first time I've heard Strauss' "Arabella." The old stories are the best, and this one offered much to ponder--the compulsive gambler, his marriageable daughter as resource to "save the family from ruin" (stake the gambler to his next fix at the card table), her value determined by her beauty and her faithfulness (that is, the man who marries her can reasonably hope that children she bears will combine her healthy genes with his), the illusions and disillusions of her suitors, unattached males competing to impress each other and the woman who will eventually negotiate a peaceful surrender to one of them.

This being Strauss, in the end "Jack shall have his Jill and All will be Well". Had this been Janacek, however, not only would we have had different music, but a different story. The revolver that Matteo mentions in Act I would have discharged in Act III and someone would have been killed or hurt. And instead of oozing like honey from a late-summer hive the music would have plunged forward, driven by ostinati and staccato bursts from brass and timpani. It was difficult for me to tell if the seeming reluctance to go on came from Strauss the Epigone or Runnicles the Conductor, for whom lyricism is its own reward.

The singing was just fine, I suppose, really quite beautiful at the important moments. But I could not help regretting that the texture of the close harmony between Arabella and Zdenka in their Act I duet was like the surface of a raspberry, bumpy with vibrato, the intervals, or rather the character of the intervals disguised as by too many coats of thick paint. The orchestra played heroically (they had played another opera earlier that day), but the oboe's A seemed to quiver with fatigue. I missed portamento in the strings--it was a shame that everything in the production was so lush except the voice of the orchestra.

The surface moral: women must maintain a higher standard than men, must maintain moral superiority to be in a position to forgive. This serves them in the short run (they can extract concessions from more powerful males to the extent they can play on shame and guilt), it serves the men in the intermediate run (virtuous wives do not present them with other men's babies to raise as their own), and perhaps it even serves the species in the long run. The issue of addiction (to gambling in this plot) never seems to rise above the given, as drunkeness has often been treated on stage, an occasion for gentle humor or tolerant finger-wagging.

Love, as always, governs the action on the conscious level, but its underlying motivation, sexual selection for mating, remains as unacknowledged by those in its throes as gambling is by those most affected by its compulsions. (That Arabella's mother consults a psychic does not put her in any position for objective analysis of the family situation.) All in all it is a moving story, with those who love strongly, even at first sight, rewarded. Yet I have to wonder about Arabella's future as the Countess Mandryka... I look forward to revisiting your site; I think it is an important addition to, perhaps replacement for, the print medium. It will be interesting to see how it evolves. Anthony Martin

(Anthony Martin is a violinist and violist who plays with the Philharmonia Baroque and the Artaria Quartet.)