In which worlds collide, a little.

In the last couple of weeks, I have:

- Set a new PR on the deadlift, at 205 pounds;
- Set a new PR on the rack pull, at 275 pounds, though my grip did not love that weight;
- Pulled a muscle in my back trying to pull 200 pounds for reps after coughing and hacking with allergies all day; and
- Bought two new opera DVDs, with mixed results.

First up on the opera front was the 2013 Aix-en-Provence production of Elektra.  I spent about 50% of the time admiring the production, which was awesome, and 50% of the time coveting Evelyn Herlitzius' upper-arm definition, which was at least as awesome if not more so.  Seriously, the woman is ripped.  And also one of the best Elektras I've ever seen.  It does not seem fair that one woman should have both those advantages.

The production itself was minimalism at its best; a lot of people have criticized the set as "boring", but honestly, it's Elektra - how much distraction from the plot do you really need?  Minimalism works best for this opera, in my opinion, assuming you have excellent singers; and this one does.  Herlitzius is as good an actress as she is a singer, which is saying a great deal about the excellence of both; Waltraud Meier is her usual glorious self;  Adrianne Pieczonka as Chrysothemis is in fine voice and brings an affecting degree of humanism to an often thankless role, and Mikhail Petrenko as Orest is so compelling that it's easy to love him as much as Elektra loves the idea of him, as soon as he walks on the stage.  Buy this one if you haven't already; it's more than worth it.

Next up was the 2013 ROH production of Eugene Onegin, with Simon Keenlyside and Krassimira Stoyanova, in which dancers portrayed the young Onegin and Tatyana while the principals sang the vocal lines.  I think I would have been more fond of this production if the dancers had taken on the roles the whole time while Keenlyside and Stoyanova sang from the sidelines; instead, for a good chunk of the opera, we have to watch while the leading roles are sung by performers who are far, far, far and away too old for the parts - to the point of actual grotesquerie in the case of Stoynova, who is in her 50s and looks a decade older here thanks to a supremely unflattering costume and wig. I don't think I've ever seen a production more brutally unkind to its principal soprano, either intentionally or otherwise. Stoynova is a lovely woman with a beautiful voice, but in this production she bears an unfortunate resemblance to one of the leads in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

I have to admit, though, that the way the duality was performed was not entirely jarring.  Being two different stories, there are two different hearts to the opera.  The first is the Letter Scene, which is brilliant in its portrayal of the discrepancy between Tatyana's fantasies of Perfect Love and, well, any form of objective reality; the difference between the dancer's hope and (very young) optimism and the older Tatyana's regret are so resonant with anyone who's ever wished they could go back and reassure their younger selves, or advise them, or give them a good swift kick in the ass, or all of the above.

Then there's the Duel Scene, which, well done, breaks my heart every time.  The way the scene is done in this opera is devastating- Lensky and the young Onegin performing the duel, while the older Onegin drifts back and forth between them like an unquiet ghost, trying to comfort Lensky, trying to step between Lensky and his younger self, trying to change the past and knowing that he can't.  

Still and all, in my opinion the central relationships in Onegin are not Tatyana and Onegin but Tatyana and Reality on one hand, and Onegin and Lensky on the other; and I really have no complaints to make on either front.  Pavol Breslik is, as always, a treat for both the eyes and the ears; one of these days I will get hold of the Bayerische Staatsoper's Brokeback Onegin production with him and Keenlyside, and then I will never leave my apartment again.

Then there's this sort of strange polonaise where Onegin dances with all these girls, who promptly die after dancing with him - sometimes on top of the corpse of Lensky, who remains on the stage throughout the production, an inescapable reminder.  This is an odd and unnerving scene, but honestly, during my first viewing I mostly thought "You know, if I'd known that dancers were allowed to rub all over Simon Keenlyside, I'd have been a lot less bitter about the ten years of ballet lessons my mother made me take."

In short, though I would follow Simon Keenlyside and Pavol Breslik to the ends of the Earth, I thought the dancers who were supposed to represent Tatyana's and Onegin's younger selves were either underused or underfilmed, to the detriment of the production at least on a first viewing, though maybe not on subsequent ones.  I'm not sure I'd be interested in the production with lesser singers than Breslik and Keenlyside.  In the meantime, I was reduced to doing bicep curls and some light yoga, because my back hates me like Elektra hates Clytemnestra.