Two days after the European premiere of Hadrian at the Teatro Real, Peralada yesterday hosted this opera by Rufus Wainwright in a single performance that was threatened by a hint of rain moments before it began. It is already the second opera by the Canadian singer-songwriter, although he would have wanted it to be the first, since he dedicates it to the adventures of Emperor Hadrian, the Roman of Hispanic origin, with his lover Antinous.
The famous crooner seems to have taken note that, in Western societies, a political claim reaches its zenith when it is the subject of an adaptation to the operatic genre. And in the case of a composer who openly demonstrates his homosexuality, it was a matter of time before he wanted to approach it with the same intensity that for centuries opera has recreated heterosexual love.
Thus, following the dramatic nineteenth-century canons, Hadrian tells a sentimental story placing it at the heart of a political intrigue. And making formal use of the great operatic tradition, with its arias, duets and concertantes, he invites the dozen voices of the cast to give themselves over to expressive singing, with emotional melodies that sweeten contemporary creation without depriving it of seriousness. His, in short, is a cadence that on this side of the pond does not sound very “American”.
Just as Marguerite Yourcenar narrates in Memories of Hadrian (1951) the life and death of the emperor using the formula of the epistles that Hadrian himself writes to his cousin and successor Marcus Aurelius, the opera by the Canadian musician –whom the novel by the French writer left a deep mark– the plot is brought to the present, also starting from the decline of the protagonist and then traveling to the past.
The question is to what type of love it refers: Greco-Roman society was distinguished by admitting homoerotic relationships as long as they obeyed a mastership of a wealthy-class gentleman with a lower-ranking boy or directly a slave. The adult was the one who penetrated and the young man, who was trained in the love arts, was not allowed to show sexual desire.
Nothing different from what has happened for centuries with women. The social stigma that fell on those who yearned for a certain person sexually was very unwelcome in the public sphere. So Wainwright's idea of doing social justice by subverting the classic "soprano loves tenor but baritone gets in the way" to "tenor loves baritone and soprano sucks it up and gets it"... is not politically very poetic justice. .
Daniel Macivor's libretto also supports the idea that poor Antinous is the redeemer of oppressed minorities (here Jews and Christians), a role that has already fallen to many soprano characters. Thomas Hampson (Hadrian) and Santiago Ballerini (Antinous) would be applauded, but everything pointed to Vanessa Goikoetxea taking the ovation as Sabina. She was accompanied by the Royal Theater Choir and Orchestra conducted by Scott Dunn.
The presence of the enormous images of Robert Mapplethorpe as the only scenic element added erotic-aesthetic interest to the semi-staged version, which was attended by the president and director of the photographer's New York foundation.
