I remember studying Aristotle’s Poetics in college and getting stuck on the idea of spectacle being the least of the 6 elements of a tragedy… caught up in his admonition that superior poets rely on the structure of the play rather than the spectacle.   I’m afraid I produced an awful lot of ‘poetic’ work in black boxes as a result.    I forgot that it actually IS one of the 6 elements.   Without it something is missing. 

Opera does spectacle better than anything.  Great grand breathtaking effects, gods descending from the heavens, devils appearing from underground.  And baroque opera did it without electricity.    With fabrics and costumes.  With painted scenery and dance.   Every 2 years BEMF produces one of these tremendous fully staged productions with its full historical spectacle intact, and the effects they can produce are astounding.

But this chamber opera series takes me back to that struggle with Aristotle.   The warning not to get carried away with the effects.  This is a masterwork of early English opera.    All the elements are there, in the text and the music. 

Gilbert summed it up so beautifully for me on Saturday:

…the idea of a chamber opera is not like a staged opera.  It’s taking place in a space which is much more intimate, where emotions are conveyed not necessarily through the arts and craft of theater but through human and presence, and that is what we are doing with this production.

Although the story is so rich and complex that we need to refer sometimes to the theater… tricks, in a way.  But it should be having a certain conceit of simplicity, and human sharing of the pleasure of the storytelling and the musicmaking.  That is what we are trying to do with this production.

Seems to me Aristotle would approve.