I thought Nolan’s Odyssey was very interesting. If you want to bring Greek mythology to life, experience the joy of opera! | | Music

For me, a very strange thing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey that is its greatest popularity. I found this epic of a movie for years bloodless, beautiful and very long. Remember, it’s good to know that Nolan thinks war is a good, you know, when you think about it, maybe a bad idea.

The music was also disappointing. If I were Nolan, I would ask Not Levi scoring The Odyssey. Ludwig Göransson could have done a lot to create a better sounding alien world, but all he could manage was a triple drop and a fifth drop on the two reeds and pipes of the recycled product. classeswhich he uses as a leitmotif of melancholy in the highest fashion of Hollywood. (The aulos is played well by Callum Armstrong on voiceover, at least.) The best sound in the film comes through. scene with Samantha Morton’s Circein which the workers’ laziness is dangerous ASMR show: round mastication that threatens to eat the audience.

Millions of people around the world are sitting through three hours of this fascinating story, with no time to solve the problem. And this gives me hope for another form of art that thrives on being too arrogant: opera!

There is no continuity in the entire opera canon that is as long or as complex as the three hours of The Odyssey (which Wagner interrogates in one episode and the two and a half hours of Das Rheingold). I promise you, if you can Robert Pattinson‘s one-note scowl for 180 minutes, you are well prepared for the demands, longueurs and joys of opera.

Opera, like film, often turns to ancient Greek mythology for inspiration: here are a few points I’d argue are better music, more compelling, and more emotional than Nolan’s film. And where appropriate, there are opportunities, too!

Richard Strauss’s mesmerizing opera grabs you by the throat from the start and doesn’t hold back with its red-hot music and dramatic execution. Elektra embarks on a devastating journey of revenge to please her mother Klytämnestra for killing her father, Agamemnon, a journey that will destroy everyone in the story – including herself, as she dances her way into oblivion before the curtain closes.

Electra – as Mozart’s libretto mentions her name – is one of the characters who was pushed by the storm in his opera that broke all the conventions of the so-called. opera seria (“serious opera”, often based on fairy tales) in the early 1780s. Mozart’s music conjures up magical storms and unholy monsters to tell the story of Idomeneo’s sacrifice of his son, Idamante, and Electra’s jealousy of Idamante’s lover, Ilia. It is undoubtedly one of Mozart’s greatest triumphs – Greek mythology turned into a modern metaphor.

Virgil’s Aeneid is the source of one of Purcell’s plays which tells the story of the Queen of Carthage and her faithless lover. His lament at the end of the opera is one of the funeral hymns, a piece that has become so powerful that it has become its own musical legend.

Berlioz’s magnum opus, again on the Aeneid, has all the color and texture Nolan’s Odyssey lacks. There is one of the most pathetic characters in the opera in her portrayal of Dido; there are standout moments of exciting orchestral thought; and throughout, there is a feeling that this is a drama in which all men are caught in the net of their desires, which are against the wishes of the gods, and the unchanging wheel of human history, when Carthage falls and Rome rises.

One more thing The Odyssey just a little bit like a movie is the human connection at the heart of the spiritual events of ancient Greek mythology. Birtwistle makes his Minotaur the most striking creature on stage: his bull, bull, half-man and Asterios, son of Pasiphaë and Poseidon, condemned to be caught between the worlds, questioning his purpose as a deadly threat – and as a man whose suffering is exacerbated by the cruelty of the people who visit him.

And that’s just the beginning: what about Gluck’s Telemaco or Handel’s Teseo or Charpentier’s Medée or Tippett’s King Priam or Jacquet de la Guerre’s Céphale et Procris or Tom Smail coming, er, The Odyssey? And then there is Orpheusor Orpheus in the Underworld and the Mask of Orpheus … There are hundreds of Greek-inspired operas out there to start your operatic odyssey and whatever you choose, I can assure you that Nolan-level desire, with better music, better characters, and more satisfying experiences, especially in live performances. There’s no need to tie yourself to the tree – just get to the opera house, where the legends begin

This week Tom has been listening to: Stravinsky’s poker-inspired ballet card game. This was one of the first pieces of his I ever heard – my mother hadn LP by Colin Davis causing it. I loved his fun, his wit and his surreal drama. Then read how it was one of Stravinsky’s most notorious pieces. Don’t trust the judgments of historians who should know better: enjoy this piece as it sends everyone from Rossini to Beethoven and even Stravinsky himself. Listen Spotify | | Apple Classical