I can still hear the “plop-plop” of coins as they hit the waters surface.
I loved when my Dad threw coins into the deep end of the pool. I’d dive, stretch my hands toward the bottom, and compete with my cousins for the glittering presidential treasures. If I was lucky I could snatch one mid tumble before it landed.
We’d stay at the pool all day playing games like that until night, then we could press our silhouetted palms to the warm musty lights beneath the dark tides of evening swimmers.
Of all the magics of youth, none was more powerful than water. Where else could you defy the laws of gravity.
The magic of water continues the capacity to rejuvenate; from the nervous excitement of skinny dipping as a teenager evoking R.E.M’s Night Swimming, to traveling the equator where colorful fish and corals inspire me to hold my breathe just a little longer. To hold, and hold, and hold… until the pressure demands cerulean sky and cumulous white clouds. Just long enough for another deep breath with which to descend once again for treasure of sea anemone and moray eel.
Sometimes I can almost dive deep enough to be a kid again.
The Met stage has the magic to rejuvenate too.
A pearl diver slowly descends from the upper most reaches of the Met stage and slowly, very slowly, swims toward the bottom like he is in a giant aquarium. He is followed by another and then another. I know these movements well. They float free of gravity above the stage.
There is a bristle through the crowd as we collectively realize the people swimming are not projections, but real people attached to ropes demonstrating the magic of the stage.
Yende and camarena have real chemistry together with slow and heartfelt duets. They are in a bizarre love triangle that challenges loyalty, friendship, and duty. Opera is always a meditation on what it means to be human.
The chorus in the meantime chants ‘death, death, death.’
Zurga is an interestingly self aware character, a little more complex than the typical archetype as he wrestles with why he feels and does what he does. Despite his reflections he will somehow still manage to burn the whole thing down in operatic fashion.
A great night at the opera to dive into some childhood memories and surface to some new ones. If you reach up your arms to the moon it’s like you can hold it like a coin floating in dark water.
*The composer Bizet died young and this wonderful first opera is overshadowed in his small oevoure by his iconic Carmen.
Les Pecheurs de Perles begins with Zurga, the new ruler of his village, and his friend Nadir who just returned home. They reminisce about a beautiful priestess named Leila who almost came between their friendship except they made an oath that neither would pursue her. Coincidentally, the same preistess is returning to calm the sea for the safe return of the villages pearl divers. Nadir cannot resist her and the two secretly meet. When they are discovered however Zurga and the townspeople are furious and the two are sentenced to death. She hands a set of pearls to a villager that Zurga seizes realizing that it was a reward he himself gave an unknown woman who saved his life years before. For the finale Zurga must wrestle with his sense of honor and loyalty against the upcoming execution.
*I knew kids in elementary school who could pluck their cheek and make that sound, magicians. I could never do it.
Notes on the production
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Composer……………..….……….. Georges Bizet
Leila……………………………………. Pretty Yende
Nadir…………………………………… Javier Camarena
Zurga…………………………………… Mariusz Kwiecien
Nourabad……………………………. Nicolas Teste
Conductor…………………………… Emmanuel Villaume
Metropolitan Opera
11/24/18