Shockers

I have taken my boyfriend to see three operas at Madison Opera and two of them really shocked him. These were Carmen (natch) and Rusalka.

Carmen is shocking by the very nature of the story. Carmen forces herself onto Jose never mind what consequences might follow. She is obsessed with power and revels in using other people to get it. In our day she's seen as some kind of champion for freedom, although I find that to be rather dubious. What kind of person goes out of her way to use people in order to maintain her "freedom"? 
          Although I had warned my boyfriend of this one, it still left him reeling; it took him two days to finally talk about it. I guess he could not believe that such a nasty person could exist. And Carmen is an enigma, both in and out of the story. The premiere caused a scandal, which only served to make it more famous. The music is iconic, and is Bizet's absolute best.

Rusalka is a tragic fairy tale where the water nymph tries and fails to win the love of a mortal prince and becomes a deadly siren. While not as famous as Carmen, it does have Song to the Moon, one of Dvořák's greatest musical masterpieces. 
          The ending made my boyfriend want to rewrite the ending of The Little Mermaid (which the opera is based off of). I for one did not find it a shocker, but the third act made me cry. It is painful watching a someone try so hard to achieve the goal only for it the evade them. And nothing is more painful than becoming a spirit of death.