Colin Barrett: Blog

Two chapters today. The story is now fully in motion, the operatic side of it, anyway. There's still a lot more to develop with Asmedogh, though.
The first-act Tosca-Scarpia duet usually isn't played the way I describe it, mostly it's done fairly straightforwardly. What can I say, most lead opera singers aren't marvellous actors, as well. But the way I describe it fits perfectly with the characters as delineated in the opera, and it really ought to be played like that. In my novel Camilla is supposed to be a highly knowledgeable and intelligent singer, and she'd naturally approach it from that perspective. And Nick, remember, has spent years as a comprimario, where stage characterization is more important than vocal prowess, so he ought to be up to responding.
If you want to hear this duet sung more or less as I describe, with full characterization from both singers, I recommend the old recording with Maria Callas, baritone Tito Gobbi and tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, conducted by Victor de Sabata-which many (including me) regard as the finest opera recording ever made, rivaling the imaginary production that I'm concocting in my novel. A video is also available of Callas and Gobbi doing Act II (all by itself) with another tenor (Renato Cioni), one of the few videos available of Callas in performance, but unfortunately dating from a time when her voice was in steep decline.

Just one chapter again today, but it leads up to what's to come.
More than one reader has questioned the accuracy of the opera side of the novel. It's as accurate as I could make it. The details of the operas that I give are spot on; so is as much of the backstage byplay as I can manage within the confines of my story. In particular, the two anecdotes about the Falstaff aria are pretty well known as a matter of history, and it's a sensible choice for Nick to have made.
There'll be a lot more about opera as the story progresses, but much more, too, about Asmedogh. I won't neglect him; he's the main theme here.

Just the one chapter today, it's enough to keep going with.
Readers who know Tosca will recognize that the take I give on Scarpia is 100% accurate. If anything I'm being kind about it. Baritones often wind up playing the villain. I mean, the tenor's generally the hero, the soprano is most often the heroine, so it's left to the lower voices to take on the bad-guy roles. And as operatic villains go, Scarpia's right up there with the blackest of 'em. It really is a spectacular role, and Nick's invention of his "back-story" fits in well with the character.
There's lots more to come, both about Asmedogh and Tosca-not to mention one other opera, this one without a real villain, that takes on a lot of importance later on.

These two chapters are the most science-fictionish of the entire novel, and are, of course, the heart of it.

Is my premise really so far-fetched? Most science fiction involving contact with aliens hinges around conflicts in the relationship. That's kind of a natural outgrowth of the reality that conflict also lies at the base of relationships between members of our own species; the fight-or-flight reflex left over from our prehistoric evolution governs all those relationships and far too frequently leads to the former outcome. Leaving aside special seasonal or situational circumstances, no other living species on our planet displays such chronic and persistent hostility to members of its own kind as do humans. But so ingrained in us is this response that we seem largely unable to avoid projecting it onto the putative aliens with whom we come into imagined contact. Even such a powerful intellect as renowned physicist/mathematician Stephen Hawking, for example, has lately gone public with a paranoid recommendation that we cease efforts to seek out and/or contact possible interstellar aliens, out of fear that they may prove more technologically advanced than we and seek to exploit that advantage to conquer or destroy us. Like fearful children, we cringe at hypothesized boogeymen under our beds.

So long as humans persist in this kind of self-destructive thinking (not really "thinking," more like knee-jerk reflexes), it's hard to imagine how we can hope to find any reconciliation even among ourselves.

Two more chapters to get us over the hump of comparative inactivity. Once again, I have little to add.
I might, however, make one point to any purists out there who object to my continuing references to the composers of operas as if they were the works' sole creators. The fact is that the librettos-the scripts, as it were-of most operas were written by poets of the period whose names are otherwise mostly lost to history; only a very few composers-Richard Wagner comes especially to mind, Arrigo Boito and Gian-Carlo Menotti (both of whom wrote libretti not only for their own compostions but those of others as well), very few others-wrote both the words and the music. Tosca's libretto, for example, was a joint venture between men named Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Even so, it's common to ignore these diligent authors' contributions for the most part and refer to the operas as their composers' creations. Objectively speaking, that's mostly justified; most operas' plots are ltttle short of ridiculous, their characters only loosely delineated by the words put in their mouths, and the language itself falls well short of mellifluous. You go to opera to hear the music, not the words.