I've had Gilbert and Sullivan in my head the last few days. Something bothers me...
I was at this performance fourteen years ago, and due to circumstances in my own life I cried at the end watching Jack Point, whom I related to from the moment he came on stage. Most of Gilbert and Sullivan is supposed to be frivolous, but Yeoman of the Guard is something else entirely. Like Tales of Hoffman, it is their attempt to show that they are made of more serious stuff. This is, in some ways, an extraordinarily profound opera. It was a sad state of affairs last year to see Yeoman of the Guard murdered by an amateur troupe (which did quite well by Iolanthe this year...).
I will not go nearly so far as Tam-Tam von Klassikheute in promulgating Arthur Sullivan as the greatest composer of the British Isles, but I absolutely understand the argument. In that same week, I was utterly absorbed at the Proms by Vladimir Jurowski bringing the darkness of the Manfred Symphony to pitch, but Manfred did not make me weep. Gilbert and Sullivan made me weep.
I'm not going to make my argument about comedy and tragedy. That strikes me as a symptom of the issue, not the root. However, I maintain that entertainment, at least good entertainment, is harder to do than art. Art requires humanity, entertainment requires perfection. If you successfully communicate what's in your heart, and what's in your heart is more complicated than a simple sentiment, you've achieved some level of artistic quality: it's very hard, but you have enormous freedom to create any form you like.
But good entertainment requires a skill so genuine that there's no ambiguity about what it is. There's plenty of bad entertainment out there, and those who like it can go suck a lemon, but the really good stuff can only be done by people who acquire the most colossal skill that one has to work at for a lifetime. Compare a true artist of acting like Leonardo di Caprio to an entertainer like Jim Carrey. I have no doubt di Caprio works very hard at what he does, but part of that work is the freedom of self-indulgence. I think what Carrey does is harder, requires more work, more discipline, and more exhaustion. What do you think Robin Williams worked harder at? His Oscar-winning roles or his standup?
I believe there is an alternate universe where Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, they all wrote operettas, and they did it just as well as Johann Strauss and Offenbach. What operetta composers do, if they do it magnificently, requires genius of a level to which only the greatest composers ascend. Are they as great composers as the great composers? Of course not. Profundity is profundity. Entertainment can certainly be profound, but it usually isn't.
The Yeoman of the Guard is where Gilbert and Sullivan step out of the world of entertainment and prove what entertainers have been proving since the beginning of recorded time. Going from great entertainment to great art is a lot easier than going from great art to entertainment. Gilbert and Sullivan could write a great opera. Do you really think Wagner could write a great operetta?
Note from the next morning: I take it back. Gilbert and Sullivan sucks.
No comments:
Post a Comment