Just saw The Star’s 100 saddest songs list via Dooce.com and was pleased to find that several pieces of classical music has made the list. Tomasino Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor and Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament” were perhaps not terribly surprising additions to the list, but I was glad that Dido made it as far as to the top 20 of the list, and I was so pleased to see Dowland’s “In Darkness let me Dwell” take the list’s bronze medal for sadness. I was also impressed that Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten” was included – I’m not even sure I would have thought of that one, but it’s really apt, I think. And it doesn’t get much sadder than “Der Leiermann”, so kudos to The Star for commemorating Schubert, too. Every liedfrom Winterreise might well have been included, but of course they would have taken up too much space, and I do think the ole’ hurdy-gurdy man is a good representative. Not so sure about Chopin’s prelude no. 4 in E-minor, though. I’ve heard it described as “sad” before, but I really think it’s more sensual and/or languid than it is sad. Fact: when I was a teenager I once had a make-out session to this very piece and it worked just fine . Also, let’s not forget that this was the very piece to which Tori Spelling did a striptease in the movie Co-ed Call Girl. (Come to think of it, do let’s forget about it. Let’s forget that scene ever happened.)
Anyway, I thought I’d make a few extra suggestions for classical contributions to the list of saddest songs:
“Ack! Istomilas ya gorem” from Tchaikovsky: Pique Dame I’ve talked about this one before, but it remains one of the saddest arias ever to me:
“Se pietà di me non senti” from Händel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto Such a rush of sadness in the strings in this one, and such an eloquent tristesse in the soprano voice:
“Ella giammai m’amo” from Verdi: Don Carlos It’s starting to border on the ridiculous how many times I’ve written about this aria, but there it is: When it comes to sadness there is just no way around King Philip alone in his chamber, dreading death and mourning his loveless marriage:
“Flow my Tears” by John Dowland Because we were not done with John Dowland just yet. And because Andreas Scholl rocks:
Funeral March from Wagner:Götterdämmerung I’ll admit that this one isn’t just sad. It’s also grandiose. It’s also intimidating and frightening. It’s also hopeful in some places, stirring as it does with the memory of the fallen hero. But the sadness immanent in the piece is definitely sufficient to earn this piece a place on the list. Besides, it heralds the ending of an entire world, so as far as sadness goes it doesn’t get much more in-your-face-ish than this:
Opera props. They don’t get the grand arias, and yet they often manage to steal the show. Below are five examples.
5. “Vecchia zimarra” – Colline’s coat in La Bohème I’m including this one because it’s probably one of the most famous instances of an inanimate object taking center stage in an opera, and it illustrates quite well how an object can be useful in the story of an opera.
The element of surprise is an important factor here. Opera makes much use of the apostrophe – the idea of addressing someone who is absent or dead (or dying). We’re used to opera characters expressing their yearning for their lover (like Rodolfo in “Ah, Mimì, tu più non torni”) or their native country (like Aida with “O patria mia”) or praying to an – absent – god, like Norma’s “Casta Diva”. But when a character is suddenly addressing an inanimate object which, thus, becomes the apostrophe, it’s hard not to be taken by surprise and struck by the gesture. It seems unreasonable to be wasting that much attention on a stupid old coat when a woman is dying on stage at the same time.
But of course that’s exactly the effect that the composer and librettist are going with Colline. We’re thrown at first by the amount of attention Colline’s squandering on his measly piece of clothing, but once we recover we understand all the more fully the miserable poverty which is at the core of the La Bohème story. No one should have to be that attached to a coat, and certainly no one should have to make the choice between a warm coat in the winter and medicine for a dying friend.
4. “La tua fanciulla io sono” – The handkerchief in Otello If there is something silly about the attention paid to the coat in La Bohème, the attention paid to the handkerchief in Otello is downright grotesque. Otello and Desdemona share such a great, solid love, and yet something as thin and flimsy as a handkerchief is able to come between them, and this point adds considerably to the feeling of tragedy in the story. Shakespeare always had a great eye for little details like these, but I think Verdi added a lot to this particular opera MacGuffin in his opera. The handkerchief appears in several scenes throughout the opera, the Emilia/Iago/Desdemona/Otello quartet with the handkerchief in its center being the most interesting of these, I think. Like in Verdi’s much more famous quartet “Bella figlia dell’amore” from Rigoletto, we get to hear the confusing, conflicting thoughts of four different individuals all at once, as the wretched, fatal little handkerchief changes hands for the first time in the opera:
(from circa 06:29)
The handkerchief-MacGuffin impressed Puccini sufficiently that he included a reference to it in his Tosca. “Iago had a handkerchief, I have a fan” says Scarpia, as he schemes to make a fan come between Tosca and her lover Mario.
3. “Ich habe deinen Mund geküsst” – The Severed head of John the Baptist in Salome
Sometimes the fascination of the apostrophic inanimate object in an opera stems from the fact that the object is in fact inanimate, that is, not living. This is the case in Richard Strauss gruelling opera Salome in which Salome addresses the severed head of John the Baptist:
The scene is horrifying because we, the audience, are all too aware that the bloody, lifeless, severed head that Salome is clutching can serve as nothing more than an apostrophe. Yet Salome insists that it is not an apostrophe, that Jochanan is there, sensitive to her touch, and her lips pressed against his.
Ah! Du wolltest mich nicht deinen Mund küssen lassen, Jochanaan! Wohl, ich werde ihn jetzt küssen! Ich will mit meinen Zähnen hineinbeißen, wie man in eine reife Frucht beißen mag. Ja, ich will ihn jetzt küssen, deinen Mund, Jochanaan. Ich hab’ es gesagt. Hab’ ich’s nicht gesagt? Ja, ich hab’ es gesagt. Ah! Ah! Ich will ihn jetzt küssen … Aber warum siehst du mich nicht an, Jochanaan? Deine Augen, die so schrecklich waren, so voller Wut und Verachtung, sind jetzt geschlossen. Warum sind sie geschlossen? Öffne doch die Augen, erhebe deine Lider, Jochanaan! Warum siehst du mich nicht an? Hast du Angst vor mir, Jochanaan, daß du mich nicht ansehen willst? (….) Ah! Ich habe deinen Mund geküßt, Jochanaan. Ah! Ich habe ihn geküßt deinen Mund, es war ein bitterer Geschmack auf deinen Lippen. Hat es nach Blut geschmeckt? Nein! Doch es schmeckte vielleicht nach Liebe … Sie sagen, daß die Liebe bitter schmecke … Allein, was tut’s? Was tut’s? Ich habe deinen Mund geküßt, Jochanaan. Ich habe ihn geküßt, deinen Mund.
2. “L’ho perduta! Me meschina!” The pin in Le Nozze di Figaro
Brrrrr! Ok, on to something a bit lighter: Le Nozze di Figaro. This opera buffa is basically one big scheme, and a pin plays a quite important part in it. Susanna, while trying to trick the lustful Count into thinking she’ll meet him in the garden for a tête-a-tête later that night, hands the Count a letter sealed with a pin that he must give back to her as a confirmation of their date. Barbarina is charged with the responsibility of bringing the pin back to Susanna, but she loses it. Despite not quite grasping the significance of the pin, she is devastated and naively tells Figaro of her blunder. Figaro doesn’t realise that Susanna is merely playing an elaborate prank on the Count and gets jealous out of his mind.
There’s a bit of the Otello handkerchief atmosphere going on here, what with all the marital problems and jealousy, but it’s quite obviously played for laughs by Mozart and librettist da Ponte. “L’ho perduta, me meschina” is a much too beautiful and solemn aria to be sung about a silly little pin, and the use of a pin as a prop on stage has great comedic potential: It’s way to small to ever actually be seen from the audience seats. There is also something ridiculously phallic about the image of a pin (consider Burt Bacarach’s song lyrics: “What do you get when you fall in love?/A guy with a pin to burst your bubble”), and indeed Danish director Kasper Holten once staged a version of Figaro in which it was obvious that Barbarina was singing about the loss of, well, her bubble to the Count’s, ahem, pin. Finally, there is the possible slap-stick gag of a character accidentally pricking his finger on the pin, which does in fact happen to the Count as he is first handed Susanna’s note. This causes him to deliver my all-time favourite random throw-away line in an opera:
“Ugh, women are always putting pins everywhere!”
1. The embroidered jersey – Peter Grimes The one opera prop that truly gets to me, however, is the knitted jersey from Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. Ellen Orford and Grimes’ friend Balstrode find a small jersey that has washed up on shore, and by its special ornamental embroidery Ellen recognises it as a jersey she knitted for Grimes’ young boy apprentice. Grimes’ previous apprentice died in accidental circumstances, and Balstrode and Ellen Orford have tried hard to defend Grimes against the claims that Grimes was responsible, but the washed up jersey forces them to face the fact that Grimes has, whether wittingly or not, brought death upon yet another child.
Embroidery in childhood was
A luxury of idleness.
A coil of silken thread giving
Dreams of a silk and satin life.
Now my broidery affords
The clue whose meaning we avoid.
My hand remembered its old skill –
These stitches tell a curious tale.
I remember I was brooding
On the fantasies of children
And dreamt that only by wishing I
Could bring some silk into their lives.
Now my broidery affords
The clue whose meaning we avoid.
A silk and satin life – the ornamental anchor that Ellen stitched on the jersey holds such a heartbreaking significance. The purpose of the jersey was to keep the apprentice warm enough for him to perform his duties at sea. But the purpose of the stitched anchor was to show the boy that he was cared for, that he was human. The aria reminds me of a passage from Alice Munro’s short story “Privilege” about the significance of a series of bird illustrations amid the ruthless, merciless conditions at the early-20th-century provinsial school of Rose, the young protagonist:
“One thing in the school was captivating, lovely. Pictures of birds. Rose didn’t know if the teacher had climbed up and nailed them above the blackboard, too high for easy desecration, if they were her first and last hopeful effort, or if they dated from some earlier, easier time in the school’s history. Where had they come from, how had they arrived there, when nothing else did, in the way of decoration, illustration?
A red-headed woodpecker; an oriole; a blue jay; a Canada goose. The colors clear and long-lasting. Backgrounds of pure snow, of blossming braches, of heady summer sky. In an ordinary classroom they would not have seemed so extraordinary. Here they were bright and eloquent, so much at variance with everything else that what they seemed to represent was not the birds themselvess, not those skies and snows, but some other world of hardy innocence, bounteous information, privileged lightheartedness. No stealing form lunchpails there; no slashing coats; no pulling down pants and probing with painful sticks,; no fucking…”
If the surroundings are reducing indivduals to dispensable things to be used and discarded, if accusations and verbal abuse has taken the place of dialogue, then the communication through the inanimate object becomes the only means of expressing love, and hope, and recognition. And there’s so much of that in Ellen’s aria here: Her love for Peter, her hopes for a happy life with him, and her recognition of John, the apprentice, as a fellow human being who might want something pretty to look at.
I meant to post this for Mother’s Day yesterday, but got delayed. Here it is now – dedicated to my wonderful mother who deserves a gold medal for having put up with me when I was a perpetually screaming baby who refused to sleep, ever. She has continued to be incredibly patient with me during the following 28 years, and I am eternally grateful to her.
5. “Sov du dyreste guten min” (Solveig’s lullaby) by Edvard Grieg
A lovely, tranquil lullaby. The Norwegian lyrics describe a mother holding her sleepy baby boy:
“Sleep, my most precious boy
I shall cradle you, I shall watch over you
The boy has been in his mother’s arms
The two have played together for all the life-long day
The boy has slumbered by his mother’s breast
All of the life-long day. God bless you, my joy!
The boy has been lying so close to my heart
All of the life-long day. Now he is so tired.
Sleep, my most precious boy.
I shall cradle you, I shall watch over you
Sleep, sleep.”
The sunny, peaceful atmosphere of the song is contrasted by the dramatic context of the song: It actually isn’t sung by a mother to her sleepy infant song, but to Peer Gynt by Peer Gynt’s beloved and faithful Solveig, to whom Peer returns after having lived through a series of fantastic adventures and a close-call encounter with Satan himself. Peer Gynt is most likely dying while Solveig sings to him, although this is left ambigious by Henrik Ibsen in his original play.
4. “Mädel, mach’s Lädel zu!” from Wozzeck by Alban Berg
Perhaps one of the most unsettling lullabies ever, if it can even be categorized as a lullaby. Wozzeck’s wife Marie sings this song to her young son while admiring a piece of jewelry that her lover has given her:
“Girl, close the shutters
A gypsy lad is on the prowl
He will lead you off by the hand
To his far-off gypsy land”
The lullaby perfectly sums up the general feeling of fear and uncertainty that embues Büchner’s Woyzeck as well as Berg’s opera. This is exactly the kind of song haunted, doomed and just generally screwed-up Marie would sing to her (SPOILER ALERT!!1) soon-to-be orphaned son.
Also, it is an example of a 12-note aria that I actually know by heart. And by “an example of a”, I really mean “the only”. So.
3. “Sol deroppe” by Niels W. Gade / Peter Heise The lyrics for this one was a poem written by Hans Christian Andersen as part of a series of songs about Agnete and the Merman. I have to say that I generally think that Andersen was kind of a clumsy poet – he was much, much better as a writer of short stories and fairy tales, which was of course the genre eventually brought him international acclaim.
But this song is really very lovely. It’s a lullaby, written for the character of Agnete, who is singing to one of the seven sons that she has had with the merman. A mer-child, if you will, but I’m not going to go into any speculations as to whether or not such a child would have gills or grow up to develop insane fish mating rituals because that would just totally spoil the romance. But the lyrics are really lovely, and I like how they subtely hint at the fact that Agnete is not completely at peace with her life under the sea – when soothing her child, she painstakingly compares every under-water phenomenon surrounding her to the phenomena of the world she used to live in on the shore:
The sun up there is sinking
Sleep, my child, and grow big and strong!
You shall ride on the wild mer-horse
The meadow grows so prettily beneath the wave
The whales with their broad fins
hover over you like great clouds
The sun and the moon shine through the water
You shall have both of them in your dreams
Hush-a-by! I bore you in pain
Be my joy forever, year by year
You have drunk Life by my heart
to my heart each of your tears will flow
Sleep, my child, I am sitting by your crib
Let me kiss your eyes shut.
When one day my eyes are closed
Who will be your mother then?
Two different melodies exist for the song – one by Peter Heise and one by Niels W. Gade. I was unable to find an online recording of the song, but you can hear the Heise version here, and the Niels W. Gade version here. The gentle Heise melody works better as a lullaby, but the more sophisticaed version by Gade probably works better if sung as a lied, so I like them both.
2. “Dormi, amor mio” from Madame Butterfly by Puccini
I actually didn’t even think I liked Madame Butterfly until only last year. All that waiting…! And why would I even care about a painfully naive teenage girl and her asshat American faux husband? But then I saw it live in a theatre for the first time ever, and in a production that I really liked, and I was moved. I still think the main characters are absolute idiots, but I think that Puccini’s music more than makes up for this, beautiful as it is. My favourite part is the coro muto, but I also really like Cio-Cio San’s lullaby, sung to her aptly-named half-american toddler Sorrow:
Sweet, thou art sleeping,
Cradled on my heart;
Safe in God’s keeping,
While I must weep apart.
Around thy head the moonbeams dart:
Sleep, my beloved!
Just like the earthly imagery mixed with that of the sea in Agnete’s lullaby, Puccini mixes the harmonies of Japanese folk songs with what appears to be religious lyrics of the western world when singing to her Japanese-American little boy, with whom she must soon (SPOILER ALERT!!!!1!) part forever. It never fails to make me sniffle.
1. “Bow thy corolla, thou bloom”by Carl Nielsen
We have already seen, in the Grieg lullaby, how sleep and death can be closely interwoven in a cradle song, and I think this is an important point. Any mother who has ever checked on her sleeping baby to see if it’s still breathing will recognise the fear of losing her child, and I wonder if the baby, too, doesn’t on some level fear that it will perish while sleeping? I struggled with insomnia from infancy all through my childhood; a stubborn, insistant insomnia that didn’t go away until I was in my teens and got overpowered by that obligatory adolescent fatigue and laziness. I later found out that severe childhood insomnia is a common trait among children who, like myself, were suffering while inside their mother’s womb due to a difficult pregnancy. These children fear sleep because they are afraid of letting go – they feel certain that they will die if they do.
This is why I’m so fond of this particular lullaby, in which the lyrics hint at the image of not just the cradling of a weary child, but the soothing of a person who is dying. This tendency becomes especially clear in the third stanza which, in an almost startling manner, features the image of a slumbering child as a comparison rather than as a description. The mention of the night drawing near coupled with the encouragement to humble prayer, too, always struck me as ominous, and the melody lingers somewhere ambigiously between the minor and the major, with a crescendo rising in the fifth to eighth bar of each stanza. Eventually, however, it’s the feeling of soothing, the prospect of peaceful sleep, that takes over, and my inner fearful, tired little infant loves this.
I know that an English translation of the song exists, but I have been unable to find it, so here it is in my own direct translation:
Bow thy corolla, thou bloom
Let it descend into the leaves
Await with closed petals
The blissful peace of night
The night, mild and quiet,
is drawing near – oh, bow and pray
Sleep beneath golden stars
Sleep yourself blessed and sound
Sleep like a child that is rocked
Gently in its mother’s arms
Awaking only partly to sigh
with a smile its mother’s name.
Annina Teatime let me borrow her boxed set of The Forsyte Saga a few days ago, about the same time as I started my Christmas vacation (a bit early – I’m working off over-time).
I thought I could handle this, but I couldn’t. My Forsyte Saga watching has been out of control. I’ve watched the entire series already, and I may have to write a whole separate entry on it. I have also fallen in love with Soames Forsyte, whom I’m convinced is just misunderstood. I can save him, you know. Poor old cuckold Soames. He just loves too much, that’s all.
And this got me thinking about men in operas who love too much and who are not loved. There are quite a few of them, and I’m always very fond of them and always found them to be as central to the story as the lovestruck tenor and soprano. I guess you could say that in a way they represent all the rest of us who can’t quite reach the heights of the leading tenor and the soprano and thus can only act as fascinated or maybe even jealous spectators to their all-consuming love and passion for one another.
5. Achille – Giulio Cesare – “Dal fulgor di questa spada” I’ll be honest, I’m not completely sure what I’m on about here. Achille is really not that lovable. And of course Cornelia shouldn’t marry him, she just lost her beloved husband, and Achille doesn’t really show himself to be anything but a brute. But I still like him, and I especially like the masculine energy of this aria, so he gets a spot on the list.
4. Renato – Un ballo in maschiero - “O dolcezze perdute! O memorie” Renato is not a brute – he actually seems rather refined, his raging jealousy notwithstanding. And as much becomes clear through his lovely aria “O dolcezze perdute! O memorie”, which I think is an underrated aria. It’s so lovely, and Renato displays a tenderness here that easily compares to that of the Riccardo – the melody of Renato’s aria even seems to quote the first eight bars Riccardo’s first love aria (“la rivedra nell’estasi”) slightly.
Dimitri Hvorostovsky does subtle sorrow so well. And look how young he is here! Hardly a white hair in sight.
3. Yeletsky – Pique Dame - “Ya vas lyublyu”
Poor Yeletsky – stuck with a sweet, but slightly dull and musically predictable aria, his problem seems to be that he is just not capable of the kind of passion that Liza needs from a man – and thus he loses her to a man who is too passionate; the ludomaniac Herman:
2. King Philip – Don Carlo - “Ella giammi m’amo” I actually find this to be the best, and most heart-wrenching unloved opera man moment in opera history, and the only reason I only let it come in second is that I think it would be wrong to reduce this aria to being only about a man mourning his unrequited love. As I’ve discussed in my top 5 of favourite opera moments, this aria pretty much sums up the entire misery of the human condition, and Philip’s cuckold state is just a small part of this. But it is incredibly beautiful, so of course I had to include it:
Ferrucio Furlanetto rocks my world. A wonderful voice and incredible acting.
1. Count Luna – Il trovatore – “Il balen del suo sorriso” I think “Il balen del suo sorriso” is the ultimate Unloved Man aria in all its perfect simplicity. The melody is almost childishly simple, because King Philip’s, Count Luna’s problem is no complicated matter. He loves a woman who loves someone else, nothing more, nothing less. But Verdi still finds a way to express both Luna’s sincerity in his feelings for his Leonora – and his frustration. The latter most prominently in the parts “Ah! l’amor, l’amore ond’ardo”, and in the concluding cadenza of the aria. Just lovely:
And look! It’s Dimitri Hvorostovsky, once again. Slightly older here, but still breathtaking and with a great take on Luna’s frustration.
I meant to post this in order to celebrate the fact that Tchaikovsky would have been 170 last Friday if he hadn’t died under semi-suspicious circumstances , but then, I dunno, Life just happened, I guess, and I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to post these past few days.
I did have the presence of mind, though, to save the little doodle that Google and the San Francisco Ballet did for Tchaikovsky’s Birthday:
A nice doodle, and I guess this is what most people associate Tchaikovsky with: Ballets. And certainly, ballets like Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty are absolute classics. The Nut Cracker was actually the first performance of anything I attended at The Royal Theatre when I was three years old, wearing my nicest dress, and mesmerised by Tchaikovsky’s music, the dancers on stage and all the red plush alike. I lost my heart to ballet and theatre that day, so I have a lot to thank ballet!Tchaikovsky for.
However, my favourite Tchaikovsky works are definitely his operas. I think Tchaikovsky was a fantastic opera composer. He had a flair for pathos, which is crucial in opera composition, and somehow the raw, powerful operatic voices just suit his music perfectly, adding as they do a little edge to his orchestration which, in my opinion, sometimes gets rather too sweet and rounded otherwise. So I thought I’d do one of my Top 5s in his honour, listing my favourite Tchaikovsky opera moments.
Now, this list will be somewhat limited by the fact that I only know Pique Dame and Eugen Onegin. But I hope you’ll bear with me, and if you know of other great Tchaikovsky opera moments, don’t hesitate to post a comment!
5. Pique Dame – Yeletsky’s Aria Yeletsky doesn’t have an enormous part in Pique Dame, but I always liked him. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, he really digs his lovely fiancée Liza, and yet Liza chooses Herman, the reckless cleptomaniac. It’s really not fair or even rational, but that’s Love for ya: It’s an irrational thing, and for all his faults, Herman is simply the more interesting and more attractive man. And I love how Yeletsky’s aria sort of reflects this, at least to me. It’s a a pretty aria, but its melody is also somewhat boring and predictable. Yeletsky struggles somewhat in the bridge of the aria to break free, to give voice to the frustration he feels upon seeing Liza slowly slip away from him, but ultimately the aria betrays a lack of that passion that makes Herman so special to Liza:
Brought to you by the ever mullet-astic Dimitri Hvorostovsky. You know, Dimitri Hvorostovsky ought to have been included in the Mulletology that Wolf Gnards did recently, because his mullet really is a fascinating phenomenon. I’m about as anti-mullet as you can get, but somehow Hvorostovsky manages to make himself look artistic and serious with his mullet. How does he do it? I’m guessing it’s his awesome voice and his dramatic presence. I am a fan.
4. Eugen Onegin -Lensky’s aria See, this is an example of how great Tchaikovsky was with pathos. Pushkin’s poem Eugen Onegin was inspired by tongue-in-cheek meta-novels such as Tristram Shandy. Thus the characters in the poem are treated with an ironic distance, and the overly romantic Lensky is no exception. But there’s not much room for ironic distance in the superlative atmosphere of opera, and Tchaikovsky was obviously aware of this when he created his opera!Lensky who may be overly romantic, but who manages to tug at our heartstrings more than at our scornful snicker.
*sniff!*
I think it’s impossible not to feel for Lensky here. Losing both his love, his best friend, and his young life, all within a 24-hour span. This happens to a lot of opera characters, but Lensky is especially moving, because he has been so incredibly sweet and naïve up until this point. Nobody deserves to have all their illusions shattered this quickly.
3. Pique Dame: The Countess’ Aria Old People’s Arias are such a rare thing. Possibly because opera character don’t tend to reach old age. But the Countess of Pique Dame does, and she expresses herself in this wonderful piece of music which I feel is central to the opera, because it’s so it’s so ominous. It fleshes out the Countess as an actual person with feelings and a backstory rather than just a nagging old auntie, all the while foreshadowing her violent death and thematizing the dangerous allience and love and gambling.
“Je sens mon coeur qui bat, qui bat,/je ne sais pas pourquoi.”
2. Pique Dame: Liza’s aria (“Akh! Istomilas ya gorem”) (Yay! Finally a Tchaikovsky aria that I actually know the title of.)
In this aria, Liza waits in vain for her Hermann in the bitter Russia cold, having given up everything in order to be with him. Never has an aria sounded so cold, so bitterly cold and sad. I’ve already dedicated a blog entry to this aria, so I won’t go on about it again. But here it is, sung by the always sublime Freni:
1. Eugen Onegin: Eugen and Tatiana’s final duet
To be honest, it’s a tie for me between Liza’s aria and this one, but I had to make a choice, and this one won, only because it made it possible for me to put on display once more Hvorostovsky’s dramatic skills and awesome baritone, combined with Renée Fleming’s sweet, dignified mein and delicious soprano:
I first saw the opera last Spring in a Copenhagen cinema, where the staging of the above clip was shown on the big screen. I was there with an opera-loving friend, and neither of us were prepared for the impact the opera had on us. After the first act, we were both very much affected by the rejection that Tatiana lived through, and ended up spending the entire break relating to her pain and discussing painful rejections that we had lived through ourselves. And, familiar the storyline of Eugene Onegin, we were both looking forward to the final scene, where Eugene Onegin re-enters an older, married Tatiana’s life, only to be rejected by her, even though she still loves him. “That ought to show that haughty jerk!”, we agreed, anticipating sweet, by-proxy revenge over the men who had hurt us ”Then he’ll regret his own arrogance!”
But then, when we did reach the final act, what we found was that there was no victory in her rejection – at all. Tatiana was miserable and not triumphant in the least, when she rejected Eugene Onegin. And contemplating their desperate last duet with each other, we fully forgave him, too. Because revenge isn’t sweet at all, and no triumphant haughtiness could ever make up for the pain of lost love. Which is a beautiful message, but a heart-wrenching one, too. My friend and I were both moved to tears and were visibly trembling when the lights in the theatre went up again after Eugene’s “O, lamentable fate!” and the opera’s dramatic final cords. She and I had to take a long walk afterwards to steady ourselves, we were that shaken. I’ll never forget that day.
I think the above staging, with Renée Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky is absolutely brilliant, and I can’t imagine it being done better than this. The scenography and the costumes are simple, but bear impact, Renée Fleming is wonderfully sweet in the part of bold daydreamer Tatiana, Hvorostovsky is every bit as haughty as he should be, and the two of them have magnificient chemistry. Bravi! Also, *sob*.
I’d like to do a Top 5 of Favourite Opera Kisses, but opera kisses are ephemeral things. Most opera kisses take place on stage with no camera to record them, and a lot of them are not even real, straight-on-the-lips kisses, since opera singers tend to protect their vocal cords by going to great lengths in order to avoid each others’ bacteria-infested mouths, so I don’t have a list of opera kisses to choose from. But there is one opera kiss that stands out to me as the all-time best of its kind. This is, of course, the Scarpia/Tosca kiss of the 1992 on-location Tosca movie.
Best opera kiss ever, according to At the Lighthouse:
(Kissage starts up at 3:35.)
Why is this the best opera kiss ever? Oh, there are several reasons why. Here they are, bullet-pointed:
The music. The strings-dominated music that accompanies this kiss is fab. It’s breathtakingly dramatic and beautiful, and yet what do most stagings have Scarpia do here? They have him f-ing write a letter. Sure, it’s the letter that will provide Tosca with a pass to flee Rome along with her death-sentenced Mario, so it’s important to the story, but still. Unless you’re Tatiana in Eugen Onegin, it’s nearly impossible to make letter-writing look dramatic. So I always felt that by having Scarpia kiss Tosca passionately here, director Brian Large fulfilled a potential that the music always had, and I love that. And as Large’s Tosca shows there’s still plenty of time for Scarpia to write his document after the kiss.
The sexual tension. To me it’s crucial that Tosca be a love triangle, rather than simply the story of two lovers fighting an evil, lustful tyrant. Taking place in Rome in June 1800, Tosca is all about times of political change; Mario represents the rebels, Scarpia the established power, and the way I see it, Tosca, representing the things that both parties want (love, art, beauty, popularity), should waver somewhere in between these two instances. Her heart belongs to the rebels, but one would be simplifying the story if one overlooked the fact that Tosca is very much in the pocket of the establishment. They deliver her paycheck. She sings at their victory parties. They appreciate her, and she knows and likes this.
And I think as much should be illustrated via the love triangle by a vague attraction on Tosca’s part towards Scarpia. It’s a balancing act, certainly, because you don’t want it to veer off into rape-victim-totally-asked-for-it territory, but it should be there. And in the kiss in the 1992 Tosca it is so totally there. Scarpia may be the aggressive one, but Tosca is obviously at least somewhat into it, all gaspy and swooning.
Again, it’s a balancing act, and I would never want to see Tosca openly lusting for Scarpia, but this ambiguously reciprocal kiss is just subtle enough for the latent attraction between the Diva and the Establishment to work.
Ruggero Raimondi. Hot. Hot. Raimondi’s ability to look at a woman like he wants to devour her goes unparalleled in opera as well as any other performing arts and is surpassed only by his ability to raise a single eyebrow suggestively. In fact, to have Raimondi play Scarpia and not have him kiss Tosca passionately is a missed opportunity (are you listening, Benoît Jacquot?. Angela Gheorghiu could, as Han Solo once put it, “use a good kiss”.)
So, in conclusion, are you saying that this is in fact the perfect opera kiss?
No, no, not at all. It’s not romantic in the least, so if you’re after that sort of thing, this kiss is no good. And Catherine Malfitano annoys me to no end. Her acting is way over the top (she is a perfect example of over-doing of the Tosca-Scarpia attraction, for instance. Why the hell would Tosca start groping Scarpia’s man-boobs* like she does at 3:16? The guy just tried to rape her, like, two seconds ago!), and I don’t even think she has a very attractive voice. But the kiss has enough redeeming qualities, as listed above, to make up for these minor flaws, I’ve been drooling over it since I was a teenager, and chances are I’m never going to get tired of it.
* I do not really mean to say that Ruggero Raimondi has man-boobs. I have nothing but love for Ruggero Raimondi. Marry me, Ruggerone!
I guess you can’t really get into opera without being into really intense feelings, because aside from being about people singing instead of talking, operas are usually about people who feel things really intensely. Opera personas are rarely indifferent. They are rarely put in situations that call for indifference either. Opera stories are usually both dramatic and fairly bloody, and opera personas have to put up with a lot of crap. And thus, if opera personas get angry, they tend to get pissed. There is no “annoyed” or “slightly miffed” in the world of opera, only full-blown anger.
And I like that about opera, because it’s a wonderfully cathartic thing to behold. If you ever feel angry about something or other and you can’t get it out of your system for whatever reason, listening to some opera is not the worst solution. You can be certain that however angry you are feeling at the moment, the opera persona will always be angrier than you are. Or, to put it in graphic terms:
See? Your every-day anger curve is not likely to ever be able to match that of an angry opera persona. You rarely have to put up with the things opera personas put up with, and you’re too easily distracted by things such as the tuna sandwich. And so, however angry you are feeling, you can listen to opera music and take comfort in the fact that the opera persona will without doubt be angrier than you are at the given moment. It’s a comforting, and a cathartic experience all at once, and you should definitely try it out.
If you are not familiar with opera, here’s a quick guide to what I would define as the Five Best Angry Arias and how these may serve as a means of catharsis:
5. Rigoletto: “Cortigiani, vil’ razza dannata!” You know what would suck? Being forced by physical deformity and poverty into working as a court jester for a decadent, promiscuous duke. This is the kind of crap hunch-backed Rigoletto has to put up with, and granted, Rigoletto is pretty damned angry right from the start of Verdi’s opera. His anger culminates, however, as he has to go retrieve his beloved daughter at the Duke’s castle after she’s been abducted by noblemen, only to be met by said noblemen who tell him that no, they haven’t seen the young girl, and that the Duke is out hunting. Which, as Rigoletto quickly surmises, translates to: “Your daughter is being defiled in the Duke’s bed chamber as we speak.” And this is where Rigoletto loses it:
(Anger starts at 3:27 in the video). Great anger scene, right there. We’re at approximately 80-90 % anger here, I would say. Everything from the cursing lyrics (“razza danata!”) via Rigoletto’s forte vocals, to the rush of the orchestra, signals anger and will provide you with a great outlet for your own frustration.
For the best angry catharsis experience, you will have to turn off the aria again at 4:55 when Rigoletto decides to try the humble approach and becomes rather pathetic, pleading for mercy on his knees. But other than that, this is the perfect angry aria to turn to for catharsis if your anger stems from a feeling of being out of control with your own life and destiny (“Angry Because Work Sucks” would fit into this category, I think). Or if you’re desperately trying to defend your daughter’s virginity, but that happens so rarely these days.
4. Le Nozze di Figaro: “Aprite un po’ quegli occhi“ Figaro is a bit of an atypical angry opera persona in as much as things actually turn out pretty great for him. He doesn’t die, in fact nobody dies, and he even gets the girl in the end. Also, he is not even right to be angry by the time of his angry aria. In the aria he is complaining that women are an unfaithful lot, believing himself to be a cuckold, when in fact he isn’t at all: His girlfriend Susanna is pure as snow and has never cheated on him. However, it should be acknowledged that Figaro has to take a fair amount of crap from his surroundings. In the opera’s very first scene he finds out that his old friend, the Count, is trying very persistently to get to bone Figaro’s girlfriend, Susanna. That’s got to be a pretty big crisis in its own right and it’s bound to give a guy a few trust issues.
In any case, it inspires a pretty good angry aria, and what I particularly like about it, is how rant-y it is. It’s an aria that’s perfect if you’re in the mood for ranting, because, in the wrong or not, Figaro gives an excellent rant here, as evidenced from 00:38 to 01:06 in the below video:
“…maestre-d’inganni-amiche-d’affanni-che fingono-mentono-amore-non-senton, non senton pietà, no, no, no, no!” It took a bit of practising, but I managed to memorise the lyrics several years ago, and the aria never fails to bring me some satisfaction when I’m in a rant-y mood of my own.
3. Don Giovanni: “Ah! Chi mi dice mai” Donna Elvira is like the matron saint of smited loving opera women. She cannot catch a break. Even before we’ve met her in Don Giovanni she’s been seduced, then left by Don Giovanni, and thus she’s angry the moment she enters the stage (around 70%, I’d say), singing her aria “Ah! Chi me dice mai” about how she would like to carve out the heart of her seducer (at least, you know, if he doesn’t want to return to her):
(Cecilia Bartoli gives good Angry).
This is an aria that’s particularly effective if you’re going through a case of heart-ache and need to vent in an aggressive sort of way.
2. The Magic Flute: “Der Hölle Rache” I excluded this one from my Magic Flute Top 5, but I guess there’s no real way around it this time. The aria has the word “rage” in its title after all. In many ways it really is the ultimate angry aria, with its impressive, furious coloratura and the raging ultimatum expressed in its lyrics: “Kill Sarastro or I will disown you, my daughter.”
I’ve picked the Diana Damrau version, because she is the angriest Queen of the Night I’ve ever seen:
I would label this as the angry aria that’s best for when you’re in a hysterically angry kind of mood.
1. Elektra: Elektra’s final dance It probably isn’t exactly healthy to sympathize completely with the rage of the title character of this opera, because Elektra’s rage is precisely what ruins her life and eventually kills her. Elektra’s all-consuming thirst for revenge on her mother for the death of her father whithers Elektra and turns her into a maniac. Revenge is not sweet and behind it lies no satisfaction, only a void that becomes death for Elektra. But that is exactly why I feel that Elektra’s final dance should take the prize in a Top 5 of Angry Arias. Because not only do I feel that Strauss’ music is the most estatically cathartic musical representation of rage I can ever think of (the powerful orchestral repetition of Elektra’s manical, oft-repeated “Agamemnon” after Elektra’s death is particularly brilliant to me), it also illustrates, through the character of Elektra the dangers immanent in giving completely into your own anger.
I love the above version, by the way. Gwyneth Jones’s insane movements and deranged facial expressions are straight out of a 1960s era ghost movie and they give me goosebumps.
If the final dance of Elektra isn’t enough to cure you of whatever anger you’re feeling, then surely nothing will, I say. And thus concludes my guide to the best angry arias out there.
People have been very worked up about the fact that it’s now ten whole years since the Millenium, and I’ve generally been all “eh!” and blasé about it. While I agree that time does fly, I also feel like it’s been ages since 2000. I was sixteen by the time of the Millenium. I lived with my parents. I worried about messing up in gym class. I had had, like, one “relationship” that had lasted for all of two weeks. I’m only too happy to think of my Year 2000 Self as something belonging to a past decade. I like to think that I’ve come a really long way as a person since then.
But then I realized something that disturbed me deeply: January 2000 was the month when I first discovered Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The libretto was part of my German class curriculum, and I fell in love with it and spent the next two months or so listening to it over and over again and completely obsessing about it. And when I realized this it just completely blew my mind because that is totally something that I might still do today. Why, this whole blog is devoted to that kind of geeky obsessive behaviour. What does that mean?? What does that say about me? Am I really basically the same as I was ten years ago, living situation and relationship experience aside? Have I done nothing with the last ten years of my life? Will I ever grow up and stop nerding about things?
In the end, however, I decided that it didn’t really matter. The Magic Flute is a great opera (or Singspiel or however you want to label it). And if I’m now entering a new decade in which I’m likely to spend at least 40% of the time nerding about things as great as The Magic Flute, then I really think that those are not the worst of prospects. And so, in celebration of my ten-year-anniversary with The Magic Flute and of my never-ending nerdiness, I hereby present you with my top 5 favourite moments from The Magic Flute.
Warning: I’m going to skip “Der Hölle Rache” because it’s so famous, it doesn’t need me to pitch it. But if you feel like listening to it, here‘s a version that I like, with Diana Damrau. Also, I suppose there’s no getting around Opera Kid and his interpretation, which for the longest time was the first thing that popped up if you searched for “opera” on youtube. (Poor kid. I still can’t help thinking that he must have got his ass kicked in the school yard for performing a “Queen of the Night” aria).
5. “Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön” When we were going through the Magic Flute libretto in German class ten years ago, I remember my German teacher asking us how we would define a “Jüngling” – the word used several times to describe Tamino, and that I replied that a “Jüngling” was a very young, slightly boyish guy who was “not a real man”. This made my teacher chuckle and she said, in German, “Aha! Did you hear that, boys? A ‘Jüngling’ is ‘not a real man’, says Marie.”
Well, I stand by my defintion, and I have never found Tamino to be a very attractive guy. Far too youthfully agitated and idealistic, and hello? He swoons the first time we see him on stage! His opening stunt is swooning! So much for heroes, huh? But even so, it’s hard not to be somewhat endeared by him when he is presented with a portrait of Pamina and instantly falls in love with her and breaks into a love song. Here is the aria, in a version with Placido Domingo (whom, ironically, I would totally describe as a real man):
4. “O zittre nicht” This recitative is arguably almost as famous as “Der Hölle Rache”, but not quite as famous, so I’m including it in my list. I love this part because not only is the music coloratur-ific, it also gives the Queen of the Night so much to do as an actress. The Queen of the Night has to be every bit as convincing here as a loving mother as she later has to be as a Vengeful Bitch, in order to persuade Tamino into taking on the task. I also like it when a director makes the Queen of the Night just a wee bit seductive in her approach towards the young man. The line “Ein Jüngling so wie Du, vermagst am besten/dies tiefbetrübte Mutterherz zu trösten” certainly would appeal to Tamino’s vanity, and the music is enticing as hell, so the possibility is there.
This is achieved beautifully in Bergman’s wonderful Magic Flute, I think, where the Queen of the Night (Birgit Nordin) gives off a distinct MILF vibe, what with the cleavage and the caressing of Tamino’s cheek:
Coo coo ca-choo, Mrs Robinson!
3. “Alles fühlt der Liebe Freuden” Fact: If Monostatos had been alive today, he would have been a Rohypnol rapist. If Family Guy did a spoof on The Magic Flute (which would be awesome, by the way), Monostatos would be played by Quagmire. Monostatos is clearly a devious guy, trying to force himself on Pamina several times. But he is also an interesting character because he is the only one to address the problem of racism, which is pretty aggravating throughout The Magic Flute. “Should I be without love, just because I’m black and therefore considered hidious?” Monostatos asks in this aria, and thus he poses the question: Is Monostatos behaving this badly, because society discriminates against him? The question remains unanswered, Mozart’s music mostly reflecting Monostatos as a lustful buffoon, but it’s there, and it’s always interesting to see how modern stagings of The Magic Flute deals with this deeply politically incorrect part of the opera.
Here’s a very funny take on the issue by the Bel Canto Opera Company: Monostatos is not black in this version, he is a woad-painted Celt and thus he is blue! The English translation by Tom Boyd has been adapted accordingly, and it is hilarious!
My favourite parts of the translation? “Though she finds my face disgusting/just because it’s blue, you know,/Woad is me, I’m indigo!” and “She rejects my manly passions/’Cause she’s colour-prejudiced!”
2. “Bald prangt, den Morgen zu verkünden” When boy sopranos are good, they can add a lot to an opera, I think, with their beautiful, pipe-like, angelic little voices. And this is one of my favourite examples, the three boys greeting the sun, describing it as a symbol of the more enlightened times to come. The short prelude played by the brass, the harmonies of the boys – everything is just so achingly beautiful, you can almost see the sun rising in the horizon.
The version below is from the Metropolitan recording with Kathleen Battle and Kurt Moll. I chose this version mostly for nostalgic reasons: This was the version I borrowed on VHS (Yes! I am that old!) from the public library and watched and watched until the tape almost broke. The video includes the subsequent scene where the three boys talk a distraught Pamina out of killing herself:
1. “Ach, ich fühl’s” I’ve thought several times of making a Top 5 of Arias to Listen to After a Break-Up, and if I do make one, this aria will definitely be on it. Mozart really knew how to generate that whole mournful feeling of loss and rejection (“Dove sono”, anyone?). I think my favourite part is the repetition of the line ”Fühlst du nicht der Liebe sehnen” (at 2:34 in the clip below). Pamina’s outcry sounds so desperate, possibly also angry, and the music here really allows for her to become more than just a meek, mild, and naïve princess – it allows her to become a woman, a passionate woman who isn’t willing to compromise her feelings. And it’s moments like these that make The Magic Flute into more than just a silly fairy-tale to me, and makes it worth nerding over.
Edited because I posted the same video twice… I suck.
I was very happy to learn in the past week that Herta Müller has been appointed this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and I was planning to post an entry today celebrating an essay of hers that I’m particularly fond of. But I’m simply too busy and stressed out about my thesis today to gather up the brain cells that writing an entry like that would require. So you’re going to have to make do with a brief entry about Star Wars instead.
Despite my obvious love for Harrison Ford, I have actually never seen Star Wars, and when I confessed this to a colleague of mine a while ago he announced that that was simply not acceptable, and that he was going to have to show me the first three movies personally to make up for this lack in my education. So I’m invited over to his place tonight to watch Episode IV, and I’m really looking forward to it.
As a means of preparing myself for the event, I’ve been watching a few Star Wars videos on youtube, and they are so funny that I’ve actually been able to enjoy them despite never having seen the movies. Here are my five favourites:
5. “You’re like… family to me.” – The Star Wars Holiday Special The first one is actually just a clip from the Star Wars Holiday Special. Apparently, this was an infamous television special set in the Star Wars universe, and it was so incredibly bad that true Star Wars fans refuse to consider it part of the SW canon, George Lucas hated it, and the involved actors were deeply embarrassed by it. Well, judging from this short clip, I sort of understand why:
I do like the moment at 1:00 when that big furry thing (a wookie? Is that what you call them?) totally looks at Harrison Ford like it wants to do him. But I certainly hope that the standard of the rest of the original movies is significantly higher than in this holiday special. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long night.
4. “Forget the dental plan. Forget sick leave. I just want a railing!” - Deleted Scenes from Family Guy Episode “Blue Harvest” Apparently, Seth McFarlane and the Family Guy crew have received a carde blance of sorts from George Lucas to do Star Wars jokes on the show, on the one condition that they make everything look just right. As a result, Family Guy is packed with Star Wars-themed jokes, culminating in the sixth season with the episode “Blue Harvest” - a one-hour-long Family Guy Star Wars spoof. It was a great episode, even to a Star Wars ignoramus like me, and I’d like to link to the entire episode. But of course I can’t, copyright issues and all that, so instead here is a video of deleted scenes from the episode:
3. “They blowed it up together” – Star Wars According to a Three-Year-Old This one is just adorable. The youtube poster had their three-year-old daughter explain to the camera what happens in Star Wars. And now my ovaries are hurting.
2. “Com-Scan has detected an energ-” – Darth Vader Being a Smartass This video is an example of how far you can come with a little editing. Brilliant! My favourite part is Darth Vader’s innocent “facial expression” (if you can call it that) at 00:35
1. “I’m going to, like, the Dark Side or whatever” - Star Wars Retold by Someone Who Hasn’t Seen it I realize that most of the fun in this video must be going way over my head, since I haven’t actually seen the movie either and thus am unable to tell how much Amanda messes up the plot. But it’s still hilarious – both Amanda’s unceremonious account and the editor’s wonderful animation.
Last week I finally saw the first Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark). I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss that one all these years, but I’d actually never seen it before. I’ve watched my older brother play the Indiana Jones computer game on his Amiga 500 in the early 90s, I’ve seen Temple of Doom numerous times during my childhood (somehow it was always on TV when I was a kid), I’ve seen The Last Crusade once (and it scared me half to death), and I even saw the fourth one in the theatres last year (and holy Christ, what was the deal with that one? Aliens? What the hell??), but I’ve never seen the one that started it all.
And what a shame that is, because it’s such an awesome movie! There is hardly one dull moment, and the movie had such a great energy that I couldn’t help being sucked completely into it, despite not generally being into the whole action-adventure genre. Harrison Ford does a great job at establishing himself in the part of Indy, particularly because he’s got a knack for the self-irony that’s needed if the character wasn’t going to turn into a total Mary Sue. The opening sequence, with Indy retrieving the golden idol from the cave, is a classic moment of cinema, as is Indy’s nonchelant shooting of the scimitar guy in the bazaar, and the opening of the Ark. People are always saying that the special effects of the latter scene are laughable by today’s standards, but I don’t agree at all. Or, well, yes, I suppose I do, to a certain extent, but like I mentioned in my Scaries Movie Scenes entry I don’t think it matters. Special effects aren’t everything and the scene is so perfectly directed and composed that it hardly matters that you can tell that the melting Nazis are merely wax figures. It’s still completely bone-chilling.
But I think my favourite part of the movie is Marion. She’s just so completely awesome. Karen Allen plays the part with as much self-irony as Ford, so she never turns into a Mary Sue either. She also has a great sexual chemistry with Ford that’s established right from their first scene together, and you easily believe that the two have a history together even if it is never made clear exactly what happened between them – we only know that Marion was the daughter of Indy’s mentor Abner Ravenwood, that she loved Indy, and that he let her down somehow. And she’s gorgeous to boot: Not too skinny, slightly buxom actually, but still fit, and a bit of a hammerhead, which is always cute. Just look at her!:
And then she’s got that perfect combo of being tough, resourceful, and brave and squeamish and scared. See, this is what went awry in The Temple of Doom.
Okay, to be fair, a lot of things went awry in Temple of Doom: it is my personal conviction that Spielberg failed as a director with this sequel because he was determined to suck up to his audience of pre-teen boys (by creating the character of Short Round as an object of identification for them, and by stuffing the movie with gory scenes like the Monkey Brain/Eye Soup one that they could talk about in the schoolyard).
But the female lead in Temple of Doom was a major problem, too. The character of Willie is just way to squeamish. She does nothing but scream and fret throughout the movie, and it does nothing for the dynamics of the movie, and, I might add, nothing for the female Indiana Jones audience. Indy is still cool in Temple of Doom, but it seems rather too easy to be cool when you’re constantly contrasted by a screaming woman. Indy is much more interesting with a competent woman by his side who’s woman enough to challenge him, and to make him look stupid every once in a while, without him liking her any the less for it.
Sure, Marion does get kidnapped, she does scream a little every now and then, and needs to be saved by Indy in shining armour a couple of times, and I don’t really understand why we need to see Marion squeeze into not one, but two different uncomfortable and inconveniently tight dresses during the movie (first the one she’s forced into by Belloq, then the silky one she’s miraculously given as a present aboard the ship). But she also stands erect by Indy’s side, hits a villain over the head with a frying pan when needed, or uses her feminine charm (and impressive ability to hold her liquor!) to pull evil Belloq’s leg. “I’m your goddamn partner!” as she tells Indy early on, and she truly is. It makes Indy seem all the more manly, which, in turn makes him sexier to a female audience and more appealing to the male audience, while Marion makes a likeable character for the female audience to relate to. Everyone’s a winner!
In fact, Marion is so awesome that to me her mere presence was an extenuating circumstance in the trainwreck that was The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, too. I simply have to admire Spielberg for having had the sense to make up for the mistake of leaving Marion out of both Indiana Jones # 2 and 3 in his last Indiana Jones movie. I love it that in Crystal Skull Ford wasn’t paired up with, say, Megan Fox, or some other eye-candy starlet decades younger than him, I love it that Karen Allen looked middle-aged and fabulous, I love it that they provided us with a story that explained why Indy and Marion split up between the first and the third movie (Temple of Doom was a prequel to the first movie, so that does to some extend excuse Marion’s absence in that one), and I love it that they got to get married in the end, and that they’d managed to produce Shia LaBeouf together before Indy left Marion in the 1930s.
I found a great video on youtube by The Movie Critic which lists the ten most f’n awesome Indiana Jones Moments:
I agree with the list for the most part and think it’s a great tribute to Indiana Jones altogether, but I still feel that Marion deserves a list of her own. So here it is – below. If you notice any errors in my summeries of the scenes in question, please let me know. I don’t own the DVDs, so I had to do the list from memory. And with a little help from Wikiquote here and there.
The 10 Most Awesome Marion Ravenwood Moments
10. Drinking Match I agree with The Movie Critic that Indiana Jones’s character is wonderfully established in the opening sequence of Raiders. But so is Marion Ravenwood’s character in her first scene where we see her kicking a big man’s ass in a drinking contest, to the point where the guy is literally unconscious, while Marion just gets up and leaves triumphantly with not as much as a reeling in her walk. We know at that moment that Indy will meet his match in this woman.
9. “Indiana Jones. Always knew someday you’d come walkin’ back through my door.” And if there had been any doubt left about whether or not Marion would turn out to be Indy’s match, it’s all cleared up during their first scene together in Raiders: Marion seems pretty cool and calm while first greeting Indy as he enters the bar where she’s a bartender, so Indy’s caught completely off-guard when Marion punches him in the face. “I was a child! I was in love!” she goes on to chastise him, destroying any hope Indy might have had that their failed relationship was long forgiven and forgotten, and that Marion would make things easy for him.
8. Still feisty, twenty years later In Crystal Skull Indy finds Marion in Peru where she’s been captured by Russians, and it’s been 20 years since he’s seen her. When he first sees her, Indy walks up to her incredulous, and he does this wonderfully goofy grin, obviously expecting to have a warm, tearful reunion with Marion. He really ought to have known better. Because the last time Marion saw Indy, he practically left her standing at the altar, and she’s not about to let him forget about that. The goofy grin is quickly wiped off of Indy’s face as Marion brushes past him unimpressed. Shortly after the following conversation ensues:
“Indy (confused, to Mutt): Marion Ravenwood is your mother?!
Marion: Oh, for God’s sake, Indy, it’s not that hard!
Indy: Well, I know, I just thought-
Marion: That I would never have a life after you left!
Indy: Well, that’s fine…
Marion: A damn good, really good life!
Indy: Well, so have I!
Marion: Really? Still leaving a trail of human wreckage behind you, or have you retired?
Indy: Why, you looking for a date?
Marion: With anyone but you!”
Awesome.
7. Drinking Belloq under the table Belloq, the chief villain in Raiders, is such a smug bastard. Constantly outmatching Indy using foul play and teaming up with Nazis while wearing a flimsy straw hat that doesn’t hold a candle to Indy’s rugged, brown fedora, he also manages to kidnap Marion and sneaks a very un-gentleman-like peek at her as she slips into a fancy dress that he’s forcing her to wear. Sleazeball. But as has been established early on in Raiders, Marion has a knack for drinking people under the table, and she puts this ability (plus her ability to sex men up) to good use in the scene…
A fellow Marion fan has put up the scene on youtube:
6. Marion and the frying pan While being chased at the Cairo bazaar in Raiders, Marion manages to outsmart a villain by running into a house, hiding behind the doorframe, and then hitting the guy over the head as he tries to follow her into the house. We don’t actually see her hitting him, we just see her going in, the guy following her, the sound of a frying pan hitting a human head, and then, promptly, the guy falling out of the doorframe, unconscious. It’s a wonderfully slap-stick moment that has even earned the action figure!Marion Ravenwood a frying pan as her attribute:
5. Whac-a-Mole Marion A little earlier in the bazaar scene, we see Marion and Indy fighting the villains together. While Indy’s doing some heavy fist-fighting, you can see Marion in the background, hitting some of the bad guys over the head with some boxes found in the bazaar. The scene goes on for quite some time, and Marion just keeps at it as if she were a kid at a Whac-A-Mole, going in for the big prize.
4. “Mutt… I mean, his name is Henry… He’s your son.” See, this is what’s so nice about Marion. She’s feisty, but she still has a big heart, and obviously loves Indy more than she’d care to admit. In Crystal Skull when she believes that she and Indy are seconds away from perishing in drysand, she’s not about to let Indy die without letting him know the truth about her son Mutt, who’s served as Indy’s young partner during the first half of the film: Indy is his father – he fathered the kid unwittingly before he left Marion in 1937. A warm and fuzzy, and also funny moment, nicely played by both Allen and Ford.
3. “We can never seem to get a break, can we, Indy?” It’s only natural that in the real love scene between Indy and Marion in Raiders, it’s Marion who initiates things, feisty girl that she is. Indy is in bed, and Marion’s next to him, and you can tell that things are heating up between them. Except Indy’s all bruised and battered from having performed a series of impressive stunts in the previous scene, and he whimpers every time Marion tries to touch him. She loses patience with him, and in a scene slightly reminiscent of the scene between Zerlina and Masetto in Don Giovanni ( “Ahi, ahi! La testa mia!” ) Marion asks him to just point out to her the places where he’s not hurting. He starts off innocently, by pointing to his forehead and such, which she kisses, but he keeps getting bolder, and eventually Marion leans down to kiss Indy deeply on the lips. It’s Marion, too, who wants things to go further after this kiss – only to find that the exhausted Indy has fallen a sleep while kissing her and is unable to deliver. Too bad! But then she got her chance later on, as Mutt is living proof to.
2. The Well of Souls See, this is the difference between Marion and Willie: Marion only screams when she has just cause for it. And she certainly does in the Well of Souls scene. Snakes everywhere, and dried-up dead bodies falling down on her all over the place! So she does a fair amount of screaming in this scene, but she still has the energy to clutch her stiletto-heel shoe, yell at Indy, and curse at Belloq (“You bastard! I’ll get you for this!”). Classy! And awesome.
You can see the whole scene here:
1. “They weren’t you, honey” There’s a nice bit of conversation in Crystal Skull where Indy and Marion discuss the time that’s gone by since they last saw each other:
Marion: “I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to go on with my life. There must have been plenty of women for you over the years.”
Indy: “There were a few. But they all had the same problem.”
Marion: “Yeah, what’s that?”
Indy:“They weren’t you, honey.”
I swear, half the audience when “Awww!” at this line when I saw the movie in the theatre. Arguably it’s mostly Indy being awesome in this little bit of dialogue, but I like to see the line as a nod to Indy fans – an apology for having replaced Marion’s character with tedious “Indy” girls in Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade.
