Two days after attending the Paris Opera’s production of Paul Hindemith’s opera, Cardillac, I am left with two nagging, unsettling questions:

1) Mr. Hindemith, a major triad at the end? Was it really that happy an ending?

[note to self: In the future, resist the urge to end your pieces with a perfect chord unless it’s really musically justifiable!]

2) What was up with the midget in the dream sequence in the second act?

[I use the word midget here instead of something more sensitive because it really felt exploitative watching him. Like not, I’m watching a small person, but really I’m watching a midget, good god! Was this in the stage directions - in which case why wasn’t it ignored?! - or, even worse, is it some sort of contemporary reinterpretation? Or, if I simply attended the opera more often, would I discover that there’s a small person in the troupe, who’s gotta have work????]

Those incidents aside, it was an interesting trip. The opera itself is a bit uneven - some parts, like the final scene other than that major chord, glisten while others fall a bit flat. There’s not much to hold on to other than constant gyrations, though certain textures and harmonies clearly cycle back regularly. (I wonder whether the regularly-returning jostle-y dotted music connoting devious action was exactly the same figure each time or not) But some of the problem here might be that I have a very hard time perceiving the connection between melodies operatically sung and what’s going on in the orchestra. For me, the two seem to be happening in totally different realms of sound. It’s partially location: the sounds the singers make on stage are necessarily separate from the sounds coming out of the orchestra pit, and I think that orchestral songs benefit from the proximity of soloist and instrumentalists. But it’s also timbre. Operatic voices aren’t really there to blend with instruments. The operatic style is all about projecting to the depths of the hall, and blending is sort of the exact opposite. In general, I think this why I’m not a fan of the unamplified voice - it’s too much for itself, not enough for the rest of the folks.

On the other hand, I’m an inexperienced opera-goer. I know that I had the same mix problem with Verdi at the Met a few years ago. I don’t remember how Wozzeck went. I do know that I didn’t have the same problem when I went to see an original-instrument production of Don Giovanni a few weeks ago, but that wasn’t fully staged and the orchestra was on the same stage as the singers. That’s a vote for it being totally a spatial problem. Or it could be a collection of poor performances.

I should note that operatic voices do blend with each other magically, which has gotten me thinking about what I’d do with a couple of serious trained voices. Hmmm. And that’s in this production’s favor - I don’t think about these types of voices often. I’ll just have to keep them away from an orchestra.