The other day I went to see Wagner’s Lohengrin—performed by the Nikikai Opera Company with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. The performance itself was magnificent. But the opera? The libretto struck me as Wagnerian in the worst sense: childish, contrived, and absurdly solemn. And musically this is still early Wagner—endless repetitions of the same booming triads: do-mi-sol, so-shi-re, over and over.
It got so dull that my mind drifted toward mischief. I began imagining a series of “slapstick opera rewrites.”
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Lohengrin
Lohengrin glides majestically onto the stage aboard his swan.
But then, under the crushing weight of the knight’s armor, the swan slowly begins sinking into the swamp.
Down… down… down…
Flailing helplessly, the Swan Knight cries out to Princess Elsa:
“Help! Somebody help me!”
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Das Rheingold
Near Bonn in Germany rise the “Seven Mountains” of Snow White fame, and beside the Rhine towers the cliff of Drachenfels—the Dragon’s Rock. There, according to legend, the Rhine maidens guard the treasure of the Nibelungs.
Tens of years ago, the Bolshoi Theatre staged Das Rheingold, and I went to see it.
In Act One, the Rhine maidens are suspended from ropes, swimming through the air—supposedly underwater. The pulleys creak:
Geeeek… clank… geeeek…
Unfortunately the maidens were all heavyweights. Instead of enjoying Wagner’s music, the audience sat in terror wondering whether the ropes would snap and send the Rhine maidens crashing onto the stage.
This, by the way, is a true story.
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Carmen
Next comes Carmen.
You know the scene in the mountains where Carmen tells fortunes with cards?
Well, in this version, every single draw is a winning hand. Carmen wins a fortune.
Flush with cash, she reaches the final act outside the bullring, where Don José comes to kill her. Calmly, she hands him an enormous severance payment.
“This,” she sings, “is compensation for your love.”
Then she adds:
“Now go back to the countryside and live peacefully with your Micaëla (in Japanese this sounds like severance payment).”
With a flourish of her skirts she disappears into the arena.
Don José remains standing there, stunned, clutching bundles of banknotes, while cheers roar from inside the bullring.
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Madama Butterfly
Final act.
Pinkerton returns secretly to Nagasaki after several years and sneaks over to Butterfly’s house to spy on her.
But his American wife has followed him.
When she discovers the truth, she slaps him across the face and screams:
“You shameless beast!”
Rejected by Butterfly, ignored by his son, and abandoned by respectable society, Pinkerton eventually survives in Meiji Japan as a lowly pimp.
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The Magic Flute
Prince Tamino falls in love with Pamina after seeing the photograph given to him by the Queen of the Night.
Determined to rescue her from the villain Sarastro, he storms the castle.
But when the soprano playing Pamina finally appears onstage, Tamino recoils in horror.
“That’s not the woman in the picture! This is marriage fraud!”
And he storms out.
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Rigoletto
That night, the Duke of Mantua did not rape Gilda, Rigoletto’s daughter.
No.
It was poor, powerless, hunchbacked Rigoletto himself who sacrificed his own body to save her.
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Aida
Radamès and Aida are sealed alive inside the underground tomb.
They sing gloriously of eternal love.
But after four hours, practical necessities begin to intrude.
Desperately searching through the darkness for somewhere to relieve himself, Radamès suddenly encounters Xi Jinping, who has arrived in Egypt courtesy of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Raising a finger solemnly, Xi declares:
“Without a toilet revolution, there can be no new civilization!”
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The Sukiyaki Song and Beethoven
This is not opera, but I have long suspected something deeply suspicious about Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, the “Emperor.”
The main theme of the first movement sounds unmistakably like Sukiyaki Song—better known in Japan as “Ue o Muite Arukō (Let’s Walk with Our Heads Held High).”
Listen carefully:
“Ue o muite… chan-cha-chan…
Arukō yo… chan-cha-chan…”
I am convinced Beethoven stole it outright.
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And those were the thoughts that drifted through my head while half-listening to Lohengrin.