Margaret Garner (A Review)

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So it's time to play catch-up. First we have a review for the opera Margaret Garner from Fred Allen, a colleague of mine who runs things at www.americanheritage.com. He is a trusted source when it comes to things musical, particularly classical music. Unfortunately, the news isn't good, and the reasons behind the critique sound, so I felt I should share it with you:

I saw Margaret Garner when it opened, and I have to say I was disappointed. The problem was partly the dull music but partly the story’s being very problematic for opera, for two reasons. First, you’ve got a heroine who is very morally ambiguous in a way that an opera, or at least this one, can’t get into. Killing your child is very disturbing no matter how good the reason, and killing her while letting yourself live, for whatever reason, doesn’t help. Beloved is so great because it’s about the ghost of the child coming back to haunt the mother, right? This is about the mother being a purely noble victim for killing her kid. Not so easy. Second, when you have a bad guy in an opera the bad guy tends to become the focus of energy and emotion, because bad guys are more interesting than good guys. So he’s got to be a really compelling bad guy, like Iago in Otello, who has some of the best, most passionate music in that opera. But this guy is a bad guy for institutional reasons, not for personal ones, because he’s inherited a plantation. They sort of try to address that by having him sing when he first comes on about what a sad childhood he had and how everyone picked on him so now he has to get even. But that just makes him into a pathetic bad guy. So you have a heroine you can’t completely love and a bad guy who’s more a loser and a symbol of his times than an emotional presence. Too bad. I had great hopes.
On a different note, I procrastinated getting tickets to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings this Saturday, so if anyone goes, please send in a review.

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