Maestro’s Musings: If Love Be The Food Of Music

We all know that “music be the food of love. Well, so often love be….umm…love is the food of music. Love stories, no matter how implausible, have tickled the creative imaginations of composers through the centuries. Take, for example, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, inspired by that greatest of all love stories. Implausible? Romeo meets Juliet at a party on Sunday, they fall in love, they’re married by Friar Laurence on Monday, and they’re both dead — together for eternity —by Thursday. I’ve eaten pizza older than four days. Much older. Speaking of age, Romeo is most likely around 20 years old, Juliet is 13….the good Friar would be doing time today.
Then there’s Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, an everyday tale of boy meets girl, boy kills girl’s betrothed, boy’s uncle wants to marry girl, boy transports girl to said uncle, during which transportation boy and girl determine that they like each other, decide therefore to commit suicide and drink poison prepared by girl’s handmaiden, who actually substitutes love potion, which drives them passionately into each other’s arms and leads to their ultimate demise. One has to wonder just how sincere a love it is if they need pharmaceuticals.
Gioachino Rossini’s opera La Cenerentola commissioned by the Teatro Valle of Rome tells the classic tale of Cinderella. Unfortunately the Teatro must have had a shortage of decent sopranos, and the city a similar shortage of oversized vegetation, because in place of a wicked stepmother we have Don Magnifico, basso buffo, in place of the fairy godmother we have the philosopher Alidoro, basso, and in place of the pumpkin they live happily ever after. They must have had plenty of pasta, though, because in place of a dainty glass slipper that wouldn’t have survived excess avoirdupois it’s a bracelet, for God’s sake!
That brings us to the even less likely story of Acis and Galatea, inspiration for George Frideric Handel’s most popular opera. Acis was the spirit of the Sicilian river Acis; he became enamored of the sea-nymph Galatea, an unwise move since her other suitor Polyphemus was a quite violent fellow who promptly whacked him. Acis had been warned, but of course love is illogical. Galatea, on the counsel of birds, had returned his love (OK, it’s not usually this illogical). After his death she used her magical powers to turn him into a fountain. Or perhaps a large lake, as the Duluth Festival Opera mounts an outdoor production free to all at Leif Erikson Park on August 22.
For those among you wishing to remain starry-eyed, love-struck dreamers in the mold of Mr. Handel, stop reading now and just come on over to the DFO’s production of Acis and Galatea. For you cynical realists, what Duke Orsino really said was:
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
How disappointing.

Markand Thakar is the Charles A. & Carolyn M. Russell Music Director, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, music director, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, principal conductor, Duluth Festival Opera, co-director of graduate conducting, Peabody Conservatory.