Last week Cici spotted it on TPT Life. She stuck a post-it note to my computer monitor so I wouldn't forget, and she kept reminding me in the van, at the park, at the co-op . . .
It's a father-daughter play written in 1843 by the Spanish Romantic dramatist Antonio Garcia Gutierrez. The late Italian composer Joe Green (Giuseppe Verdi) made it into an opera. It's set in mid-18th Century Genoa, Italy, and it's called Simon Boccanegra; a tear-jerker for any father who loves his daughter(s).
Boccanegra has a surreptitious relationship with his forever love, Maria. They conceive a daughter. Maria dies, and the illicit affair is swept under the rug. Boccanegra's beloved daughter (Amelia) is given over as an orphan to be raised by an old woman in a far-away land.
Boccanegra resolves to meet his daughter one day. He sets sail in his ship, but when he arrives the old woman is dead. His daughter has wondered off, and no one knows what has happened to her. (Max says, "Welcome to the world.")
Twenty five years later, Boccanegra, now a powerful government official, is speaking to a young woman. She speaks of being orphaned at a young age and that she has a picture of her dead mother. She shows it to Boccanegra, and he is overcome with joy. He is at last reunited with his love-child.
Then, like in all other operas, everybody's poisoning everyone else. There are plots to overthrow Boccanegra, and innocent people are accused. The chorus is cheering him one minute, and then calling for his head the next.
In the end, as he is lying on the Metropolitan Opera stage floor dying, Boccanegra's last wish is to bless his daughter one last time. "The human heart is an endless font of sorrow!"
Pretty good stuff for fathers and daughters!
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Below, Max gets excited as Paolo Albiani (Amelia's spurned lover) pours poison into Boccanegra's drink. As a matter of fact, as Boccanegra raised the contaminated liquid to his lips Max's big toe on his right foot twitched.
Here, Cici clutches a pillow in rapt anxiety as Gabriele Adorno stalks Amelia's sleeping father with a dagger. If there was a rating system for operas, Simon Boccanegra would be rated S for scary, hands down. Man, oh man!
The role of Boccanegra was played by opera's version of Cal Ripken Jr. -- Placido Domingo. Domingo's been singing at the met since 1968 and has sung more opera roles than any other tenor. To make it more interesting, Boccanegra is a baritone role. So we got to see Domingo go really low! How low can you go Domingo? James Levine conducted with that funky haircut of his.
copiwrite B. A. F.
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