The Italian Straw Hat is a comic opera composed in 1945 by Nino Rota. (Rota is famous for his scores for Fellini films and the theme from Coppola's Godfather) The composition is a pastiche -- Rota, who was about 25 when he wrote the piece (with a libretto by his mother), imitates the merry perpetual motion music of Mozart, particularly the overture to The Magic Flute, the gallops that we hear in Donizetti and Rossini, and, even, throws in a little circumspect jazz for a good measure -- at one point, the tenor sings a gorgeous aria that could have been made by Puccini: the music is yearning and heartfelt and rises passionately toward a high vibrato C, but the subject matter is the hero's yearning to obtain an Italian (Florentine in the original) straw hat from the woman to whom the song is addressed. The opera is mildly amusing and frenetic with action, but, for some reason, never really succeeds in gripping your attention -- it's all a little abstract, remote, and pointless. With a couple of exceptions, I didn't think the piece was funny and, in fact, there is a surreal, nightmarish urgency to the second half that is, precisely, the opposite of humorous. The libretto is based on a French farce written for the stage around the time of the American Civil War. The plot is fantastically ingenious and represents a classic example of the so-called "well-made play" popular in European theater at that time -- there are vestiges of that kind of theater in Ibsen: everything is very carefully worked out with all the climaxes, both final and subordinate deployed "just so" -- it's built to last, every block securely grouted in place. But, for some reason, the whole exercise seems just a wee bit hollow.
If you are interested in narrative, The Italian Straw Hat has two moments that are sheer genius from the perspective of clever, unanticipated plot development. The pretext for the story is simple enough -- it is the morning of Fadonard's wedding, a petite bourgeois Parisian who is marrying a girl from the boondocks. On the way to perform some minor errand, Fadonard loses his whip -- while retrieving it, the horse wanders off and eats a straw hat left dangling on a shrub. The straw hat belongs to a married woman involved in a dalliance with a soldier. The show is replete with Freudian symbols and, of course, it's pretty clear what the hat represents -- something that should belong, more or less, the lady's husband. Fadonard is told that he must replace the hat with an identical one or face a duel with the soldier. This backstory is not represented but rather told to an elderly uncle who has come to the wedding bearing a neatly wrapped gift. The elderly uncle is totally deaf and responds to Fadonard's tale with cheerful non sequiturs. (This sets up one of the brilliant plot machinations -- it's similar to the beginning of Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards in which we think the villainous German is speaking in English as a mere convention but later discover the more horrible truth.) Fadonard goes to a factory where chirping female milliners are making hats. He is told that an identical hat was delivered to a baroness a week before. Fadonard, then, goes to the Baroness' palace where he is mistaken for a violin virtuoso imported for the pleasure of the lecherous noblewoman and her homosexual courtier. Fadonard allows the woman to try to seduce him to get her to give him the hat. In the first of a number of openly surreal scenes, the wedding guests and Fadonard's father-in-law (the wedding has occurred off-stage) appear -- they have been chasing the errant bride-groom. They mistake the Baroness' palace for a restaurant, the Suckling Pig, and began eating her food -- this leads to a big chaotic finale to the first half of the opera: two dueling choruses with the leads howling out their parts above the roar. (It sounds like Mozart or Rossini). The Baroness finally tells Fadonard that she has given the hat to her niece. Next, we see an old man who we know to be the adulterous wife's husband -- he sings a suitably growly aria, far down in basso profundo range, about his jealousy and madness and brandishes a gun. This aria threatens the opera with turning serious but, suddenly, to our surprise Fadonard appears. This is the first plot point that seems brilliant to me -- what we know, but not the characters onstage, is that the Baroness' niece, the possessor of the Italian straw hat, is none other than the philandering wife of the old man. Again, all of the wedding guests and the father-in-law (who keeps declaring the marriage as "off") appears, all of them disoriented and totally drunk and, then, of course, also the soldier and his girlfriend, the old man's wife. Everyone then decamps for Fadonard's home pursued by the murderous old man brandishing a gun. There are some Keystone Kop guardsmen marching about like little tin soldiers so that Rota can sneak some martial music into the story and the erring wife even dresses up to imitate a sentry although nothing is made of this subplot. A storm ensues and the wedding party has become increasingly cold, wet, and bedraggled. All the characters end up together for a big confrontation and, at that point, Fadonard's elderly uncle produces his wedding present which turns out to be ... wait for it! -- an Italian straw hat identical to the one eaten by the horse. (This is the second plot development that seems divinely ingenious to me.) Everyone is reconciled and Fadonard goes to bed with his new bride.
The show is staged robustly with very bright colors and surreal enlarged fruits and wedding cakes stacked on a raked ramp-like stage. The backdrop is decorated with posters from shows including Chantones Pare Pluvia (Singing in the Rain) establishing that the action is supposed to be occurring in the fifties. The old jealous old man is a stereotyped character who was ancient at the time of Plautus and Menander; he has a long beard and sore feet. The Baroness and adulterous wife are big zaftig women is garish dresses -- the homosexual courtier wears a pink suit with pink shoes and has mutton chop sideburns. (He menaces the hero with a huge banana). The millinery ladies all wear identical outfits and chirp their pretty little aria in perfect unison. The bride is virginal in her white outfit and the wedding guests are bourgeois in top hats and drab suits and dresses. Despite its slight subject matter, the opera requires a huge cast, has fifteen or so major singing roles and uses several large choruses. As befitting the opera buffo style of the proceedings, everyone enters through trapdoors: there are, at least, three under the raked ramp of the stage and, sometimes, characters even crawl out from under the ramp. One chorus is performed after the William Tell-like storm interlude with the singers in the center aisles of the auditorium It is all, in fact, convincingly grand. But there is something slightly awry and the show is never really funny -- it's oddly brilliant but cold and empty.
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