IT WAS A sanguine tragedy of the utmost horror: infanticide, fratricide, kidnapping, abduction, beheading and burning at the stake.
Plus, it had great music.
So why was I suppressing an impulse to laugh during the Baltimore Opera Company's creditable performance of "Il Trovatore" last week?
Because scenes from the Marx Brothers comedy "A Night at the Opera" kept flashing into my mind. An old film that spoofs grand opera, including Verdi's "Trovatore," in the unique style of those madcap comics.
They had, at least in part, appropriated the work by their distinctive treatment of the 19th century operatic classic.
Not that grand opera does not make its own powerful impression. The musical art form stands alone without any apologies.
Yet, opera's memorable music and outrageously melodramatic plots have been borrowed time and again by others, becoming an embedded part of Western culture for multitudes who have never seen or heard an opera performance. The Anvil Chorus in "Trovatore" is another tune that's been pounded into our heads by commercials and parodies.
Last fall, I experienced a similar transposition of mental scenery during the opera company's "La Gioconda." Visions of dancing hippos and alligators popped into my head during the familiar dance interlude, bringing an involuntary smile.
They would not go away, so indelible were the cartoon animal characters that danced to that very music in Walt Disney's film "Fantasia." The borrowed version defined the music for me in a way that the original opera could not.
(Some opera listeners may have been similarly reminded of a popular song about summer camp upon hearing that same tune.)
Disney's "Fantasia" paid scrupulous attention to the original sources for its own imaginative creativity in the 1940 film, presented as an illustrated concert of musical selections.
But that crediting of material, or inspiration, has been sadly lacking in other Disney productions. Works acquired for film rights give scant credit, if any, to the original. Everything is "Walt Disney's" whatever, not only in films but in the TV spinoffs and books and videos that flow from the cartoon films.
Victor Who?
The descendants of Victor Hugo recently complained about Disney's lack of credit to the great French novelist as the author of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," the latest Disney-ized animated feature.
