valentine's day, opera & mark morris


Ken and I followed tradition and celebrated our 2nd Valentine's Day together at the Met Opera. I'm not sure why, but for some reason, the past two years, the operas at the Met on Valentine's Day have been depressing ones. Last year was Samson & Delilah, and this year was the Czech opera, Jenufa. While I do not recommend the opera itself, it still was a nice night because opera is always a treat, especially at the Met.

As I was milling over the opera Jenufa....I had a looong discussion with a friend yesterday about the opera. He loved the piece, but I argued that to me, the characters were not sympathetic at all. The man hanging onto Jenufa's foot (above photo), supposedly loves her. As a result, he slashes her face so she cannot marry another man. My friend claims that was a "crime of passion". I argued that it was a "crime of stupidity". Passionate love...does not cause you to slash the object of your affection so that no one else can have them. I argued that that was such a selfish act, not an act of love. He disagreed, saying it was sorta romantic. All I can say is...if a guy slashed my face, it's "buh-bye". In the opera though, Jenufa ends up marrying that guy who slashes her face. And with a baby born out of wedlock, killing of that baby, half brothers vying for Jenufa's love...it was all a bit surreal.

I guess it's interesting to see how operas affect different people; it really affects you differently, depending on how you view emotions such as love, desire and anger.

As an extra bonus to the night, the choreographer Mark Morris was sitting right behind us, so during intermission, we had a nice chat about the upcoming Met collaboration with him and opera in Orfeus and Eurydice. Mark Morris had some harsh critical words for NYCB...and i was a bit surprised at how frank he was. He urged me to watch Balanchine being performed by the Miami Ballet or Kirov. He also said the funniest things during the opera (all within earshot...I swear, I was not eavesdropping)...he said that the opera costumes (esp. during the 2nd act) looked like costumes from Mary Poppins...I couldn't agree more.