Last week I found myself in NYC for a few days and w/ two evenings to
kill, I took in a play the first night and a Met performance, the second.
I'd bought the opera ticket about a week in advance on the Web, a dress
circle seat for Bolcomb's setting of *A View from the Bridge*.

The theater ticket was in the last row for the final preview of Nora
Ephron's *Imaginary Friends* bought at the last minute for full price
when the half price ticket booth near Times Square wouldn't accept my
check or credit card. For those who might not know, the play's about the
Lillian Hellman/Mary McCarthy feud. (It culminated, I understand during
a Dick Cavett interview for which McCarthy had prepared herself and
during which she said that "every word" that Lillian Hellman wrote "was
a lie, including 'and' and 'the'". "Liar" and "bitch" was what the two
ladies called each other.) It was a lot of fun, splendidly acted by
Swoozie Kurtz (Hellman) and Cherry Jones (McCarthy) w/ clever musical
numbers, smart repartee, and that nice feeling I got catching (I hope)
most of the "insiders' references".

What can I say about the opera?

Most operas performed today, including *A View from the Bridge* are
available on CD, on which, from prices ranging from about $15 to under
$75, I can hear a competent, if not splendid, cast perform while following
the opera's text in the accompanying libretto.  (I wouldn't be able to
follow a score anyway.)  When I pay substantially more to attend a live
opera performance, I'm paying the extra amount for the sets and costumes
and the frisson of anticipating and realizing a live performance and
sharing in an audience response.  Many have been the operas at which I
found those extra dollars well spent.  Last year's attendance at the
Met's performance of *Die Meistersinger* was one such.

I was glad I had gone to *A View from the Bridge* but a recap of
my experience of last year it wasn't.  The action being more or less
contemporary, there wasn't much in costume design but the sets were
very well done, w/ the Brooklyn/Red Hook streetscape, juxtaposed w/
the Carbones' apartment between which the scenes flowed seamlessly, w/
lighting identifying where the action occurred leaving the other locale
still visible as a reminder of how the two affected each other.  Both
sets were against a backdrop on which there were black and white projections
of the bridge and the docks on which the men in the opera worked.

The story is truly the stuff of opera.  Eddie Carbone, who has raised
his orphaned niece from infancy has, w/out wanting to realize it, evolved
from doting daddy to frustrated would-be lover as she has blossomed from
babyhood to sweet seventeen and first in her class in secretarial school.
The situation doesn't get easier when she falls in love w/ one of the
two illegal immigrant cousins whom he has sheltered in his flat
("submarines").  Frustrated at seeing her susceptible to amorous attentions
that he can never show himself, doubtful as to the young suitor's
masculinity, and suspicious that he's wooing her just to secure legal
status in this country, he informs the INS about both cousins, which is
the one unforgivable sin in that community.

Why am I taking so long writing about the music?

Possibly because, if I heard it again, I probably wouldn't recognize a
note.  I enjoyed listening to the orchestra the way I would appreciate a
good movie score.  The sung dialogue was poignant, but IMO didn't need
musical enhancement.  There were some touching arias. "When Am I Gonna Be a
Wife Again?" sung by Beatrice (Mrs. Carbone) makes clear that Eddie's
estrangement from Beatrice predated the arrival of Marco and Rodolpho (the
"submarines") and had its causes elsewhere, namely Eddie's attraction to
his niece, Catherine.  Rodolpho's aria "New York Lights" is a wistful
tribute to the lights of Manhattan, which, never having gotten out of
Brooklyn, he's never seen up close, and for which he would cheerfully
renounce the picturesque old-world grandeur of the squalid countryside of
southern Italy that he's left behind.  This was, I think, my favorite in
the entire opera.  Eddie is outraged when Rodolpho and Catherine dance to a
record of "Paper Doll", and sullenly refuses Beatrice's suggestion that
they join the younger couple, whereupon Beatrice bravely dances on by
herself.  The scene degenerates into some minor violence under the pretense
of Eddie trying to teach some boxing to Rodolpho.  A lovely musical
interlude, unfortunately too short, opens the second act in which the dock
workers celebrate the fortuitous annual accidental breaking open of a few
cartons of Scotch two days before Christmas.  Still trying to convince
himself that his concern for Catherine's welfare is only paternal, Eddie
sings a pathetically stirring aria "I Made a Promise".  There follows an
aria by Marco, after his arrest by the INS ranting at the injustice of
Eddie's being free after having killed his opportunity to support his wife
and three children back in Italy.

Yes, it was an exciting evening, but I wouldn't be able to hum or whistle
for you a single passage from the opera.  But that may be too simple a
condemnation of the music (which I don't even want to condemn).  I don't
recall a single musical passage from Barber's *Vanessa* either but I do
recall after each of two hearings, one live, a greater feeling that I
had heard something musical than I had last Wednesday.  Maybe an insipid
plot like that of *Vanessa* needs music more than Arthur Miller's play.
I had the same feeling when I saw a DVD of Previn's *Streetcar Named
Desire* followed afterwards by once more watching the Brando/Leigh black
and white film.  Why do these stories really need a musical setting?
But then, why don't I find anything superfluous or extraneous in the
music of Puccini's *Tosca*, which also has a plot that could stand on
its own, or *Otello*, which stood on its own quite well for centuries
before Verdi made an opera from it.  Maybe the simple explanation for
me is that Bolcomb, is neither a Verdi nor a Puccini.

Walter Meyer