After a COVID hiatus of 752 days, the Minnesota Opera commenced its 2022 season with a performance of Joseph Bologne's The Anonymous Lover. Bologne, also known as the Chevalier de Saint Georges, was a Black courtier born a slave in 1745 on the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, then, a French colony. Bologne traveled with his mother, a Senegalese slave to France, where his father, a nobleman and politician Georges Bologne de Saint-Georges had him educated. The young man became a notable fencer, fought with valor in the country's wars, was renowned as a wit, and directed a chamber orchestra. He was apparently a violin prodigy and composed many musical works including the 1780 operetta, The Anonymous Lover. One unexpected result of the death of George Floyd has been a scramble to resurrect previously forgotten works by Black composers and artists. This production of The Anonymous Lover is one aspect of that campaign for racial justice.
The Anonymous Lover is very slight. The Minnesota Opera Company has padded out the story by incorporating a couple of art songs apparently separately composed by Bologne and, in fact, has rewritten some features of the libretto. (The work adapts a play Stephanie Felicite de Genlis although the actual libretto was written by another Frenchman with a long and complicated name.) The show is pleasingly short -- it clocks in at a brisk 90 minutes. The text is unassuming and the music sounds like a something composed by Mozart's younger brother -- the tunes are not memorable, but pleasant enough and the music seems wholly competent. The operetta is really a Singspiel on the order of The Magic Flute -- there is some spoken dialogue interspersed with songs. Bologne scores this little musical divertimento with a half-dozen nice arias, a couple of choruses, including (as with Mozart) a final number that proclaims that all's well that ends well. There are a couple of duets and, even, I think a quartet.
There's isn't anything to the story -- it is slight to the point of vanishing. A nobleman named Valcour has been courting a handsome widow with anonymous letters and entreaties. (In fact, he's "stalking" her to use the modern nomenclature -- an aspect of the plot that causes some anxiety to the present-day director and dramaturge.) The widow, Leontine, is ambivalent about her anonymous lover. (Valcour is always hanging around with his buddy, Ophemon.) At the end of the first act, Valcour announces that he is the anonymous lover, but his declaration is met with hilarity by the other characters -- much to his chagrin, they think he's joking. The operetta really seems poised to end at this point. But the plot revives with the precise same situation in Act Two in which the widow and Valcour attend a wedding. Ultimately, the widow and Valcour embrace and the show ends with a merry chorus and a double wedding.
Perceiving the premise of the play is a little creepy -- Valcour pursuing a woman from the shadows without announcing his identity -- the modern dramaturge revises the plot. In the first ten minutes, the heroine eavesdrops on Valcour as he expresses his love for the widow to Ophemon. Therefore, the show posits that she knows all along the identity of the anonymous lover and is simply flirting with him by not immediately declaring her romantic interest. But this revision of the plot makes hash of the romantic and emotional aspects of the Second Act. Leontine has a showy aria in which she expresses the fact that she has fallen in love with the "anonymous lover" without knowing who he is -- and, indeed, she expresses considerable anxiety and consternation about these feelings. But none of this makes any sense if she actually knows the identity of her suitor and could summon him to her in a heartbeat. In other words, parts of the plot musically scored by Bologne to have considerable gravitas make no sense at all if the premise of the lover's anonymity is discarded. The director also establishes a kind of pantomime parallel action to the plot. Joseph Bologne appears, albeit without any words or dialogue -- resplendent in a red waistcoat, he surveys the action from a balcony above the garden and bedroom where the operetta is staged. He is given a lover, Madame de Genlis, the writer of the play on which the opera is based. He and Madame de Genlis also pursue one another and, then, end up locked in an embrace at the same time Leontine and Valcour are kissing. However, Madame de Genlis has a husband and the operetta ends in a somewhat disturbing fashion -- the husband confronts Bologne on the terrace above the happy chorus, apparently enraged that Bologne, who was a slave under the legal codethen-applicable, has been dallying with his wife. This is an interesting twist on the action although one might complain that casting the Black composer as an adulterer -- when there is no evidence for this interpretation -- is a fall- back to the notion of hypersexualizing Black males. And, perhaps, an insult to the memory of Madame de Genlis as well -- who is collateral damage, as it were, to this fanciful pantomime. In general, the staging of the show evidences some considerable anxiety about whether there is really enough here to turn this little divertissement into a full-fledged operetta. The score has long overtures to both the first and second halves -- in other words, musical interludes in which nothing useful happens on-stage. Furthermore, there are long musical numbers that seem to have been composed for the corps de ballet, dance pieces in which Caribbean peasants of both genders, and Black and White, engage in the tedious sort of rambunctious tom-foolery that is ubiquitous to opera -- lots of peasant dancing, bawdy embraces, drinking, and, even, pratfalls (a banana peel gets cast aside with predictable consequences). Two pleasant art-songs are inserted into the opera -- these give Celestine's friend, Dorothee, a couple of numbers. (She sings the tunes, which seem scored to harpsichord, as a "wedding present" at the ceremony in which, ultimately, Celestine and Valcour are united -- the double wedding at the end of the show.)
The Anonymous Lover was presented by the Minnesota Opera just before Valentine's Day and the show does triple duty -- it's an attempt at an operatic racial reckoning, a celebration of Black history during Black History Month, and a bon-bon for Valentine's Day as well. The set design is gorgeous, a colonial manor with round arches, a life-size statue rather incongruously holding a pine-apple, some palm trees, and spacious terraces. The colors of the manor walls are pinks and blues, the palette of Matisse. The conceit is that the action takes place in the Caribbean. The costumes are exceptionally beautiful, huge hooped skirts, colorfully embroidered vests and bodices. The heroine wears a towering hot pink turban and matches the hot-pink fringes to her vest. Leontine is well-sung by a diva of Wagnerian Mezzo-Soprano proportions. By contrast, the little Valcour looks like a hobbit -- he seems in danger of being suffocated by his lover who is, at least, twice his size. The Anonymous Lover is sweet, inoffensive, and has pretty music. One feels churlish suggesting that it's a bit trite. (The audience loved the show as did my companion.)
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