Katya Kabanova at the Lyric

The legitimacy of parental control mechanisms rest on a giant assumption: older people know better than young people what constitutes healthful entertainment and what harmful, dirty smut. But who's controlling the parents?

Three years ago my father discovered TiVo & immediately taped Topsy Turvy, the not exactly box office hit about Gilbert and Sullivan's rocky (to put it mildly) professional partnership. When I visit my parents in Omaha, among the usual questions (do I want some of my aunt's special sweet raspberry sauce made from fresh raspberries from her garden which she was kind enough to make specially for me and which she'll be devastated if I manage to avoid) is the unavoidable: do I want to watch Topsy Turvy with my Dad? Usually, I do. (I've seen it probably 9 times, which really begs the question of how much Dad's been dipping. Yikes!) On one hand, it's the equivalent of a child wanting to read Pooh or watch Bambie for the 9 millionth time and it's kinda cute. But if discerning the difference between an obsessive but cute habit and an obsessive and dangerous one is the job of a parent, shouldn't it be the job of the child to mitigate a parent's desire for the same when it becomes overwhelming?

Last night at the Lyric, when the curtain fell on Katya's dead body, the entire audience shot out of their seats in an ecstasy of applause. I've never seen enthusiasm like this at the Lyric. And in this instance, it struck me as particularly strange. There was nothing special about the performance. Some of this may be Janacek's fault. There's too much moaning about how things are gonna turn out (badly) and not enough doing, so that the whole opera becomes about Katya predicting her own downfall, and there's nothing less interesting than a character who ruins the ending in scene 1. The twentieth time Katya howls about how she's going to betray her husband, we ought to be thinking "OH GOD NO! It pains me when you say that, Katya!" I was thinking, "For Pity's sake DO IT!" But the set was blander than bland (intentionally and, I think, for obvious reasons, but nevertheless, something closer to what you'd expect from Les Noces) and there was very little in the way of acting. I have a brain condition that makes auditory processing impossible when there's nothing to look at (thus the inverse of the blind leading the blind ... the as-good-as-blind leading to auditory failure? Nevermind...) but my sense was that there was also very little in the way of singing. Karita Mattila, who plays the principal role, could barely carry over the orchestra. I have a theory (which won't hold up) that Kartia Mattila is a countertenor. Her consort of conspirators (including Liora Grodnikaite, Garrett Sorenson, & Jason Collins) were -- thank God -- stronger & brighter.

But I wanna get back to this ovation (because really, what's the point of reviewing an opera if not to emphasize what happens in the moments just after [what?!]). There could not have been more excitement if the orchestra had come up onstage bearing Janacek's body in carbonite and laid it on a giant dessert tray. Last night I saw the kind of crowd behavior I expect at a rock concert; it was a collective biological urge, a swarm. The woman to my right hadn't been able to get out of her seat all night, forcing me to climb backwards out of our row to go to the WC at the break. But she shot up like some crazy zombie at the end. I think some drool might have fallen on my leg.

I'm gonna float a suggestion. The Lyric needs a mandatory parental control/threat advisory screening for subscribers as they enter the house (perhaps administered by the people in bat capes who take tickets). A short and easy questionnaire would suffice: Does this patron know and use the various gendered/plural variants of bravo (brava, bravi)? If so, add 1 point to their threat rating. Does he/she have an assigned seat that pales in comparison to his/her regular seat? (What is this, 1828?) And so on. A patron who emerges with a rating of 3 might be encouraged to stay away from the drinks table and receive a free bottle of water at the entrance to the theater plus free tickets to the next Michael Moore documentary. Patrons with a 4 would be restricted to viewing one act at a time in a separate, padded room and encouraged to review sobering financial portfolios between acts. For 5 ... barbed wire ... tranquilizers ... but what could stop these people?