The Metropolitan Opera is giving hundreds of performances of 25 works this season. We have all become spoiled by such an amazingly full schedule year after year, but it occurred to me that if the company were to consolidate elements of various operas and present half as many or less, the benefits would include more rehearsal time for each production and great savings on expenses for singers, sets, costumes, etc.
Here are some ideas for 10 "combo operas", each representing the melding of various works on the Met's 2006-2007 schedule.
Faust und Helena
Helen of Troy is a character in Boito's Mefistofele but not in Gounod's Faust, so why not borrow the character's scenes from Strauss's rarely performed Die Agyptische Helena and get her into the action of the far more popular French opera? Of course, this will add to the already lengthy running time of Faust, but that can be remedied cutting some of Gounod's over-familiar music - e.g., the "Jewel Song," "Salut, demeure," and that tired old soldiers' chorus.
Il Barbiere di Nurnberg
An Italian Barber moves to Germany and wins a singing contest, becoming the American Idol (German Idol? Italian Idol?) of his day.
Giulio Chenier
A time machine transports the Roman emperor Julius Caesar through time and space to France in the era of the Revolution. He still gets involved in nasty political intrigue and comes to a violent end at the guillotine (rather than being stabbed in the back).
Orfeo e Turandot
On the emotional rebound after the death of his girlfriend, a nice
young man becomes obsessed with a woman who has some serious anger issues. Arias include: "Che faro senza mia testa?" ("What will I do without my head?")
Madama Gioconda
A Japanese geisha moves to Venice with her blind mother. She attracts
the amorous attentions of a scary guy named Barnaba but chooses towed a handsome, young American naval lieutenant who's stationed in Italy.
Unfortunately, that marriage doesn't work out very well...
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Il Tabarro di Suor Angelica e Gianni Schicchi
Why not combine the three short operas of Puccini's Il Trittico into a single one-act work? In Paris, a horny young woman who's cheating on her much older husband seeks a way out of her unhappy marriage by plotting to secure an inheritance from her dying uncle -- but the plan goes awry, her husband murders her lover, and she retreats from the world by entering a convent.
Tosca e Gilda
In Sicily, two friends -- one a prima donna, the other the virginal
daughter of a hunchbacked fool -- are unlucky in their respective relationships with a painter and a nobleman. Things work out so badly that the singer jumps off a roof and the virgin is stabbed and stuffed in a sack. Their deaths are investigated by a sadistic chief of police.
Canio and Nedda and Papageno and Papagena
The world's first opera about wife swapping! Set to delightful music by Mozart for the first two, largely comic acts and much darker music by Leoncavallo for acts three and four, when jealousy rears its ugly head.
Mimi: La traviata
The heroines of Puccini's La Bohème and Verdi's La traviata both
famously die of consumption, so let us consolidate these two masterpieces. In the combo opera, a poor, sick seamstress who lives in a Parisian garret abandons her lover, a handsome but penniless poet, to become the kept woman of a rich baron; but she ruins that setup when she begins an affair with another cute young guy, whose father is horrified that his son has become involved with such a floozy. Musical highlights include "Si, mi chiamano Violetta" and "Dite alla putana."
Rinuccio, Mario, e Turriddu
In this erotically charged opera, three gorgeous young Italian men find themselves in a gay love triangle. With an eye toward the box office, the opera includes several sex scenes and lots of gratuitous nudity. Music by Puccini (Acts I & II) and Mascagni (Act III), libretto by Terrence McNally. Production by Franco Zeffirelli, with special attention to casting.
(I was unable to come up with halfway amusing ideas on how to combine Don Carlo, Eugene Onegin, The First Emperor, or Simon Boccanegra with each other or with any other opera, so please feel free to do so yourself.)
Michael Portantiere
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