When Real Life is Opera: Based on True Stories

One of the most common complaints I hear about opera has to do with its logically leaky or preposterously implausible plot that even Hollywood (or Bollywood, for that matter) wouldn't even dream of after a hallucinogenic night out on Sunset Boulevard. To set the record straight, though opera started off heavily entrenched in mythology and creative fantasy, some of the most far fetch stories of the opera are actually based on real life events... with some melodramatic embellishments.

The granddaddy of all the non-fiction opera is Claudio Monteverdi's 1643 work L'Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), starring history's original bad boy Nero and his mistress and 2nd queen Poppea. Granted the authenticity of the story is somewhat compromised by the insertion of the perpetually interfering Roman gods (Fortuna, Virtu, Amore, and Mercury) who influence everyone's actions, but much of the events (the disposal of Empress Ottavia, the forced suicide of Seneca, the coronation of Poppea, etc) in the story did in fact take place. The opera caused quite a stir in its own time as the audiences back then weren't used to sitting through a 3 hrs long opera only to see the bad guys win in the end.

There have been many operas since that are based on famous historical figures (usually kings and queens) such as Donizetti's operatic take on the three Tudor queens; Maria Stuarda (Mary Stuart), Anna Bolena (Anne Boleyn), Roberto Devereux (Elizabeth I) and many modern operas like John Adams' Nixon in China or Dr. Atomic (about J. Robert Oppenheimer) or Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach or Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking. I know, I know, most of these are quite unfamiliar to non-die-hard fans of the opera. Here are a few reality based operas that are also frequently performed nowadays however:

1. John Gay's time tested 1728 satire work, The Beggar's Opera, lampoons the Whig statesman Robert Walpole while retelling the story of the seductive Jack Sheppard (Macheath), the young British criminal whose escape from the famed London police chief Jonathan Wild (Peachum) rocked the country as much for Sheppard's daring as for the revelation of Wild's leadership role in the London criminal underworld.

2. Gaetano Donizetti's 1835 Lucia di Lammermoor was based on Sir Walter Scott's novel, The Bride of Lammermoor, which was in turn based on the true story of Janet Dalrymple, a Scottish noblewoman (the daughter of James Dalrymple, Lord of Stair) who, in August of 1669, was so distraught over being married off to David Dunbar, a man she didn't love, that she went mad and stabbed him nearly to death on their wedding night before she herself expired from an unspecified cause a month later. The opera runs pretty close to the real story though the real life Dunbar, unlike his operatic character Arturo, did not die from his wounds but from a horseback riding injury 13 years later. The opera's climatic scene, of course, comes about on the ill-fated wedding night with Lucia appearing before the guests drench in Arturo's blood and as mentally out of it as a smoked wet hen or Stephen King's Carrie at the prom.

3. Giuseppe Verdi's 1859 Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball) based on Eugene Scribe's play about Gustavus III, the young king of Sweden who was shot by Captain Anckarström, a disgruntle nobleman at the Stockholm Royal Opera House during a masked ball in 1792 (he died of the wound 12 days later). Apparently the king was known to drop in on Mme Arvedson, a local seer, to gather intelligence from her court gossip (rather than for her fortune telling). Verdi had to change the characters' name and the setting to 17th century Boston, MA in order to be allowed to stage his politically uncomfortable (at least to the ruling regime then) story. Gustavus III is now Riccardo, his would be assassin Anckarström is his trusted secretary Renato, and his visit to the seer Arvedson (Ulrica) produces a more dramatically foretelling than the usual mundane court gossip to add to the change of assassination motive from politics discontent to the love triangle between Riccardo and Renato's wife, Amelia.

4. Richard Wagner's 1868 Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) is based on the historic German Meistersinger who composed and performed songs in a strict historical style during the 14th-16th century. They often held singing contests of original music from the sacred texts (usually Luther's bible) using the high German dialect. In short, they were the original opera snobs who liked to sing among themselves in terms nobody else could understand...

5. Ruggero Leoncavallo's classic hour long 1892 opera Pagliacci (Clowns) is usually performed in a double bill with Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana now. The story of Canio, the commedia del arte actor who takes theatrical realism to a whole new level with his authentic onstage murder of his unfaithful wife, Nedda, and her lover, Silivo, is supposedly based on a true criminal case that the composer' himself witnessed as a child and his father (a judge) led an investigation on. Aside from the opera's darkly catchy final line 'La commedia è finita! (The play is finish!)', this short on time but long in drama show is known for Canio's torment aria, Vesti la giubba.

6. Francis Poulenc's 1957 Les dialogues des Carmelites (The Dialogues of the Carmelites) is a harrowing retelling of the 16 Carmelite nuns at the convent in Compiegne who were sent to the guillotine at the height of the Reign of Terror in July 1794 for their refusal to denounce their religion. Though the story has unavoidable religious subtexts it is ultimately a life-based morality tale that matters to all who value tolerance and diversity in society... complete with perhaps the most musically devastating finale in all of operatic literature.

7. Perhaps the most popular opera that is based on a true story is, of course, Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 La Traviata (The Fallen Woman), based on Alexandre Dumas (fils)'s thinly veiled semi-autobiographical novel, La Dame aux camélias, starring the author's idealized version of the notorious mid 19th century French courtesan Marie Duplessis, whom he had an affair with and who died of tuberculosis (then known as 'consumption') at the young age of 23. It is a timeless story of how true love is at times found in unlikely places. Violetta (Duplessis) loves Afredo (Dumas' blend of himself and Agenor of Guiche, another famous lover of Duplessis), but sends him packing when his father begs her to think of his son's honor before herself. Alfredo eventually finds out the real reason for his beloved's coldness and returns just in time for a final kiss before our tuneful heroine expires upon having dispatched of her quota of high notes for the night.

There are many more based-on-a-true-story operas out there, of course. If that doesn't make some of these stories seem any less preposterous then it should at least drive home to us how exasperating reality can be sometimes.

Source:
http://archive.operainfo.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beggar%27s_Opera
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/traviata.html