Il Postino: when a production is unintentionally timely

My chief daily paper is the Washington Post. Lately the Post has published several stories about political unrest in the nation of Chile. As I write this, my attention was grabbed by a story with the headline: Chile cancels international conference, in which President Sebastián Piñera announced that the conference, scheduled for Nov. 15, has been scuttled due to a wave of protests. Previous stories have detailed peaceful protests in the capital city of Santiago in which as many as 1,000,000 citizens gathered to demonstrate against "issues of inequality". It is said that other demonstrations had turned violent, forcing the government to declare a state of emergency.

Pablo Neruda (d. 1973)

So why am I providing this recap of current events in a land some 5,000 miles away? In an opera blog?

Because the timing of this news couldn't be more conspicuously timely and relevant to Virginia Opera's soon-to-open production of Daniel Catán's Il Postino.

The opera, of course, is a fictional account of a period of exile during which the Chilean poet and statesman Pablo Neruda found himself persona non grata in his homeland. Chile has, for generations, been a hotbed of political strife; democratically elected governments (such as that led by the Socialist Salvatore Allende) have alternated with ruthless authoritarian regimes like that of Augusto Pinochet.

In the opera, Neruda, living on the (fictional) island of Calla di Soto off the coast of Italy, receives word from Chile of a terrible event: a peaceful demonstration by miners was disrupted by government forces with violent gunfire, leaving many dead.

As he processes this catastrophe, Neruda sings an aria with text by Catán, who is his own librettist. Here's an excerpt:
Chile, the blood of your children once again has been spilled.
Dead, so many dead...
tied, wounded, bitten, buried.
Tell me, Earth, tell me, Sea,
How much blood will be spilled?
How many tears will be wept?

It is, perhaps, uncanny that an opera on this theme, an opera chosen by Virginia Opera's management long before the events of recent days, would be staged at such a time when Art and Life coincide and imitate each other.

Or is it?

Aren't injustice, inequality and the repression of human rights always appearing and reappearing at every moment of our times? Of every time period? During the whole of human history?

Darn right they are. These same concerns were the driving issue of the events dramatized in our most recent production, Puccini's Tosca. Cavaradossi and Angelotti, remember, were fighting with the same passion toward the same end about the same societal wrongs.

It is, after all, the function of Art to be a mirror of human nature and human society.

Of course, in an ironic finale to Il Postino, the once-hapless, formerly inarticulate dreamer Mario Ruoppolo, the postman of the title, becomes awakened to corruption and injustice in his corner of the world, represented by the sleazy and corrupt politican Di Cosimo. In a flashback sequence, we see how Mario suffered the same fate as those Chilean miners eulogized in Neruda's lament.


A word about that aria. It appears to me to have been modeled after a passage from Verdi's Otello, specifically Otello's monologue "Dio, mi potevi scagliar". In that solo, Otello, having been tricked by Iago into believing that his wife is unfaithful, is in a black hole of despair, asking God why he has been given such an unbearable burden. Here is a searing performance by Placido Domingo (who also created the role of Neruda). Note two features in particular:a short repeated 4-note figure in the strings:

1. a short repeated 4-note phrase in the strings: 
   
2. the halting nature of the vocal line in the opening phrases, as if Otello was in such distress that he gasps, unable to catch his breath.

In Neruda's grief-stricken solo, Catán employs similar devices. (Unfortunately, an audio example is not yet available to provide here) A solo cello plays a short repeated figure, now three notes instead of four; Neruda sings in halting, gasping phrases at the outset.

Both solos rise to shattering climaxes.