Oh Dear. Here We Go Again.

Oh dear. Here we go again. It seems each time we proffer our opinion that, with several notable exceptions (most notably, Verdi's Don Carlo(s), Otello, and Falstaff), most Italian opera and all bel canto opera are, at bottom, little more than pretext and platform for showcasing songbirds, a deeply offended TOF (True Opera Fan — like a teenage movie fan only worse; much worse) or ten feels compelled to express his outrage in terms somewhat less than temperate. While we freely confess we consider outraging TOFs to be one of life's small pleasures, it can get to be rather a tiresome enterprise after a time.

Case in point: no sooner had we put up on our right-hand sidebar the link to our latest Featured Past Post, "TOFs And Wagner", in which is expressed that opinion concerning most Italian opera, than we received the following aggrieved eMail; one that eerily echoed several objections to that opinion which opinion we expressed in a recent blog comments thread in which, just to increase the outrage factor, we further proclaimed "the mawkish operas of Puccini [to be] the very worst non-bel-canto offenders," for expressing all of which we were declared by one charming commenter to be "[the] biggest idiot on the Internet or [perhaps] merely in the opera blogosphere."

The eMail in question read:

Are you deaf and ignorant, merely an idiot, or all three? Anyone familiar with the correspondence between Verdi and Puccini with their librettists discussing the *dramatic* matters in their operas could never offer the moronic opinion that "the typical Italian opera is about the singers, the 'songs,' and the singing almost exclusively, everything else being at bottom mere pretext and platform."

Wake up and smell the coffee!!! And unstuff your ears while your [sic] at it!

Yes.

Oh well.

That it makes not so much as a whit of difference what's included in that correspondence between those Italian opera composers and their librettists concerning the dramatic aspects of their operas seems never to have occurred to these outraged objectors. What counts — the ONLY thing that counts — is what the finished operas ended up actually being, not what their creators started out wanting or imagining them to be.

In answer to those who insist on relying on that correspondence rather than the evidence of the operas themselves to prove their point that those operas are not at bottom merely pretext and platform for showcasing songbirds, I offer the following exchange from Mel Brooks's script for the film, The Producers. In place of MAX BIALYSTOCK, put a serious-minded librettist, and in place of ROGER DE BRIS, put any one of numerous Italian opera composers, Puccini included, and adjust the rest mutatis mutandis.

MAX BIALYSTOCK
I think this would be a marvelous
opportunity for you, Roger. Up to
now, you've always been associated
with Broadway musicals, and...

ROGER DE BRIS
Yes. Dopey show-girls in gooey
gowns. Two-three-kick-turn! Turn-
turn-kick-turn! It's enough to
make you throw up! At last a
chance to do real drama! To
deal with conflict, with inner
truth. Roger De Bris presents
history. Of course, I think we
should add a little music. That
whole third act has got to go.
They're losing the war. It's too
depressing. We'll have to put
something in there.
(gripped by his vision)
Aaahghhh! I see it! A line of
beautiful girls, dressed as Storm
Troopers, black patent leather
boots, all marching together...
Two-three-kick-turn! Turn-turn-
kick-turn!

And so it went — most of the time.