It gets weirder

Before attending the CSO concert this evening, we went to the rehearsal in the morning and the pre-concert lecture. Both were very interesting; however, I learned more about the story behind the music than is good for anybody's mental health.
The concert included works by Dvorák and Janacek. Both of them continued this weeks Chicago tradition of psychopathic stories about psychopathic characters. I commented on "The Pillowman" and "Salome" earlier this week.

The Dvorák piece (The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109) tells of a young king who falls in love with a girl. She is murdered and dismembered by her stepmother who sends her own daughter off to marry the king. The girl's feet, hands, and eyes are later sent along to the king’s castle. An old man finds the rest of her remains and undertakes a makeover process that involves a golden spinning wheel. After much mucking around, the king races to the forest where he finds the original girl alive and well after the makeover! "Although the King has the murderers torn apart by wolves, Dvořák’s ending is uncomplicated and unequivocally happy." In summary this is how Phillip Huscher (the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) describes the work. Honest. I could not make this up.

"Jenůfa is Janáček's tragic tale of repression, infanticide, and redemption" says the teaser on the CSO website. No kidding. We saw act II (no redemption yet). Here, the step-mother kills her daughter's illegitimate child who was fathered by her nephew whose older brother slashed the daughter's face because he was in love with her and he did not want his brother to be married to her while she was beautiful. As a reward, the step-mother offers the daughter to the slashing brother as a bride.

What has gotten into the producers of Chicago art this week? Halloween, maybe?