Marien Lara Orbezo Lira
L’heure espagnole
By Maurice Ravel
An opera is a dramatic composition of where the characters sing their lines rather than just speak them. It also includes music that is usually performed by a live orchestra. Operas are typically presented in opera houses. The opera I chose for this paper is “L’heure Espagnole”, by Maurice Ravel.
After watching the opera “L’heure Espagnole”, I found out that although the issue of cheating on one’s mate might be pretty common nowadays, the action is not new. The opera by Maurice Ravel, narrates the story of a lady who takes advantage of her husband’s absence so that she can cheat on him with other men. The opera was created in 1909, which means that cheating on one’s spouse was probably common since those days or even earlier on. Cheating is an issue that has caught my attention for a long time, and I did not know that it has existed for such a long time. Also, after watching the opera I discovered that pretty much any topic or story could be performed in a theater.
Although European people have always been known for being more “opened-minded” than people from other countries, it seems like Europeans did not like this opera when it was premiered. I concluded this thought as I found that the performance was first displayed only nine times; it was not until twelve years later (1921) that the opera appeared on theater again, and this time was more successful. I’m not sure of how bad people perceived cheating during that time, but knowing that the operas did not succeed, I can infer that it was because of the main topic. Probably, within the years passed, people did not feel offended by the issue of cheating and maybe it was even seen as funny love affair, which made the performance to seem more enjoyable as well as successful.
The story displays the appearance of one of the best technological inventions ever: the clock. Although clocks were invented during the 15th Century, the opera gives the item a quite important appearance in the piece. Not only the main character is a clock-maker, but also many clocks appear throughout the piece. This means that the item that once was unusual to have, it became more common among people.
Technology was not only portrayed in the story, but also in the performance. When it was premiered, the music was lived, meaning that the instruments with which musicians performed, were technological inventions. In addition to this, the piece was premiere at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. The structure of the place had unique technological applications that allowed all of the almost 900 spectators to have both, good view and sound from any seat.
I felt like this opera could be easily turned into a fun and entertaining video game. The storyline of the game would be similar to the main topic of the opera. I would create the main characters of the piece. Torquemada the clock-maker will be the one with which the player will go through the game. Torquemada will take a walk that leads the character to different locations, such as his shop, home, and other places. Meanwhile, the rest of the male characters will hide in different parts of whatever location the game is taking place at. The player will then have to find where the characters are hiding. However, Concepción and some traps will obstruct the player from getting to find the hidden characters.
The game will be timed and the player will have a restricted number of lives, which means that the player will have to be quickly and clever to be able to find all of the characters without being killed. Once the player finds all of the hidden characters, the next level appears. As the levels increase, the difficulty of finding the characters as well as the number of traps will increase. The locations will become bigger and more complicated each higher level. The graphics of the game will be according to the time in which the opera was created.
Mise of scene refers to the set of elements that have to be put together in order to represent the location where a play takes place. The dominant is what first catches the viewer’s attention; unless there is no specific dominant throughout the whole opera, the characters can be as the dominants while each of them performs.
The performance changes the lighting according to where the characters are. More light is presented when characters are inside the shop; on the other side, when the characters pretend to be outside of the shop, such as in a balcony, the light fades off a little bit so that a feeling of moonlight is created. Most of the shots are close up shots; this type of shot focuses on framing only the faces of the characters while singing. However, some full and medium shots appear when the characters are moving.
For the color value of the objects, everything in the performance has colors of the time. The clothes of the characters are either soft or dark colored, and only two pieces of clothing are bright colors.
After the dominant, big clocks on the background function as subsidiary contrasts. Having those clocks on the background work as a reminder of where the play takes place: clockmaker’s shop. In addition to this, the clocks also make the density of the scene to be elevated. Having all those clocks on the background, as well as all of the furniture of the shop, make the scene look pretty packed.
There is no a specific character placement in this opera. Characters move around the place quite a lot, as well as get in different positions such as sit on the couch, stay up, lay on a desk, and some others. Although the characters look directly to the camera a few times, the majority of the shots are “three-quarter turn” style. This style of shot is useful especially when two characters are interacting because it allows having a clear view of each of the characters, and it also helps the viewer to know towards which direction is the other character. Nonetheless, the performance has some other kind of shots such as back-to-camera or full front shots.
During the opera, most of the scenes display only one character, even if there is another one in the same scene. This gives the impression that the characters are not very physically close to each other. This type of character proxemics is known as social distance. Still there are a few full shots in which we can see three of the characters very close to each other, making us feel that they have a pretty close relationship. In fact, this type of proxemics is used when the wife of the clockmaker is next to her male friends (who happened to be her lovers).
Personally, I do not really like operas and classical music. However, after watching L’heure espagnole, I can say that I enjoyed it quite a lot. I liked the drama in the performance, and I really liked that the main topic is unusual for a play. I had never imagined that kind of drama being performed with that kind of music and singing.
Bibliography
"Opéra Comique." Timeline of the. Opera Comique, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
Minderovic, Zoran. "L' Heure Espagnole, Opera in 1 Act - Maurice Ravel | Details, Parts / Movements and Recordings | AllMusic." AllMusic. All Media Network. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
"List of Opera in One Act Operas." Ranker. Ranker, 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
