When Figaro goes Dutch, the streaming is free
OperaIn 1781, Emperor Joseph II abolished serfdom, ensuring servants like Figaro and Susanna of some civil freedoms, including marriage. Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte reflect on changing times and the Count and Countess learn lessons in love and life.
Opera Ballet Vlaanderen streams its new production to to Slippedisc readers, courtesy of OperaVision. Director Tom Goossens interleaves the Italian libretto with his own imaginative Dutch. The conductor Marie Jacquot is a Mozart specialist. Together they navigate Nozze’s comedy and tragedy, virtuosity, and elaborate twists. As spirited as the opera itself, this is an artistic team to shake up our conventional expectations; like Mozart and Da Ponte themselves, they are respectfully sending up a passing generation. With them, we can ultimately rejoice in Mozart’s message of love, forgiveness and hope.
The opera is sung in Italian with subtitles in English, Italian and Dutch.
I don’t get it: why Dutch if it is a Flemish company from Belgium? They speak Flemish which is slightly not the same thing as Dutch?
In Flanders we speak Dutch. Flemish is only the dialect from the old county of Flanders, spoken between Duinkerke and parts of Zeeland (now in The Netherlands). Most Flemings live in the former duchy of Brabant and their dialect combined with Hollandic (dialect from the county of Holland) produced modern “Nederlands”, the language of The Southern and Northern Netherlands. What is now known as Belgium (derived from Latin Belgica which means low or nether lands) was 400 years long The Netherlands while the North was The Republic .
The misunderstanding derives from the word Dutch. It is an early English translation of “Diets” (family of “Deutsch); the word Flemings and Brabantians used for their language. Due to intense commercial relations between Flanders, Brabant and Engeland people translated popular terms. For centuries Flemings spoke of “Kantelberg” instead of Canterbury. Later on commercial relations between England and Holland grew and Dutch became over-associated with the Northern Netherlands. Does modern Dutch sound somewhat different in Brussel than in Groningen? Yes; like English in York sounds slightly different in Southampton.
Thank you for the extremely interesting history lesson which, unfortunately, not only denies linguistic reality in Flanders, but also demonstrates that you have not seen five seconds of this production.
This is Tom Goossens’ first opera production. He’s a theatre director who, until now, only produced a couple of theatre adaptions of well-known operas. I saw the production and he did an excellent job. The comic plug-ins in Flemish (not Dutch – I doubt that Dutch people would understand any of it without surtitles) are hilarious and they are seamlessly integrated into Mozart’s text and music. After three productions in Opera Flanders in one season in which the directors basically dumped the stage action and just showed us a movie, with the singers being little more than silhouettes, it was refreshing to see some music theatre again.
Why ever would Dutch people not understand the parts in Flemish? Are they really such different languages? Out of curiosity I switched on the Dutch subtitles and found they seemed to match perfectly what was being said/sung.
“The Australian opera director has given voice today to what many have feared for years – that indiscriminate live streaming, free or paid, is killing off the opera experience.”
– SD…2 days ago
(And yes, I’m bracing for the weak argument that THIS one doesn’t fall within “indiscriminate”; it’s the OTHER ones that do.)
It seemed well-sung — when it was being sung — but it was an awful-looking production and I saw no requirement to annoy myself with it after abiut 20 minutes. I switched to the Glyndebourne 973 with Te Kanawa and Von Stade, etc.
Conducting and much of the singing was excellent. Everyone sang in Italian — except for two of the performers who seem to have dropped in from another production. The set was bizarre: Pieces of scenery laid out on the floor on a blueprint??