In the beginning, the overture was brilliant. As any good overture will do, it piqued my interest immediately, whetting my appetite for more to follow. From the tacky wedding in Vegas to the group honeymoon in Rome, I loved nearly every minute of it. Sure, the plan was a poor one, and the plot holes large and numerous, but the crisp ensemble dialogue more than made up for the shortcomings as the two couples blended into a lovely quartet. Better still was the surprise chemistry between Alexis and Jax (and, to a lesser degree, Ned and Chloe), their impromptu duets taking on a more polished flavor as the new pairings became functioning couples. And despite being not much of a Jax, Ned, or Chloe fan, I looked forward to learning more about them, to see them tested as their relationships faltered under the pressure of the deception. But in the end the only thing tested was my patience as I waited in vain for the reprise and development of the overture's themes.
Instead, the Mozart piece this story ended up most resembling was his Musikalischer Spass, or A Musical Joke. Described in the words of the renowned music critic Herbert Kupferberg: "This was a sextet for strings and two horns which satirized the work of inept or amateurish composers.... The themes are trite, development sections lead nowhere, the accompaniment chugs along mindlessly, the first violin goes off in a mad cadenza that winds up with a pointless pizzicato note. The entire piece ends in disarray with three horrible discords. The parody is delightful to listen to for its own sake, but it also is an object lesson on how not to compose."
Of course, the obvious dissimilarity between Mozart's A Musical Joke and Guza's Mixed Marrieds is that Mozart's work is a joke, and a clever one at that. Guza's Mixed Marrieds, sadly, was not a parody, but an earnest effort. Although, like A Musical Joke, it could be used as an object lesson on how not to compose a story.
Applying Kupferberg's descriptions to the Mixed Marrieds, we have:
1. "The themes are trite": This, by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, as opera, like soap opera, is a medium that places little value on original premise. The initial mate-swapping theme is as old as the hills (and as time-worn as that expression), but in Mozart's hands (in Cosi fan tutte), that theme became something unique and lovely as he embellished upon it and wove in his own distinctive set of variations. Guza, on the other hand, introduces the same well-used themes, but then does nothing with them outside of the initial statement, which leads me to Kupferberg's second observation.
2. "[The] development sections lead nowhere": This is probably my biggest problem with the Mixed Marrieds story (and with GH in general). What began as a promising set of circumstances dissolved into a string of events told in a piecemeal fashion with no substance, depth, or shape. What happened to those initial hints of intimacy between Jax and Alexis? Or Ned and Chloe? Why was Mike's role aborted so abruptly to make room for Alan, since Alan and Monica, in the end, had no story to gain? Why the head injury and the brain tumor? Isn't this (pardon the expression) overkill? (As sick as I was of Chloe by the end of this thing, I could've easily accepted her imprint on Helena's bumper as "Chloe's final design".)
3. "The accompaniment chugs along mindlessly": With Jax and Chloe's fairy-tale romance eventually eclipsing the rest of the ensemble, we had Ned and Alexis, Edward and Gertrude (and later, Alan and Monica) relegated to repeating the same scenes over and over again. What a waste of good talent! In contrast, some of the best roles in opera are those of Mozart's supporting casts. He put great care into his minor characters, realizing that it is often the smaller roles that drive the drama, provide comic relief, and illuminate the inner workings of the major characters. In Cosi, the role of Despina the maid is considered "plum" (even though she is not onstage nearly as often as the four main characters) because it is she who manipulates the two couples into cheating on their intended spouses via a series of hilarious impersonations and stunts. Gertrude, ably portrayed by Donna Pescow, should have been utilized in this manner, rather than serving as auditory wallpaper, uttering the same benign threats to our seemingly oblivious foursome.
4. "The first violin goes off on a mad cadenza which ends in a pointless pizzicato note": Careening out of the blue came Helena's sudden renewed interest in killing Alexis, culminating in Chloe's near-demise. Thus, we had a rather poorly developed character propelled even further into the spotlight, which only served to highlight her shortcomings. Why should I care that this glaringly shallow character was hit by a car? I felt more angst when poor Ari met with the ice pick. And with Chloe's brain tumor appearing as abruptly as the aforementioned pointless pizzicato note...again, I'm left scratching my head.
5. "The entire piece ends in disarray with three horrible discords": In one of the most anti-climactic scenes I've ever witnessed, we have Chloe hand over her company to Gertrude as if it meant nothing to her. (And then, we had to sit through it all again the following day, as if we hadn't heard it the first time.) I suppose she underwent some kind of transformation in the hospital, but after nearly a year of clinging doggedly to her company--making us all believe that "Chloe Morgan Designs" was her very essence, her heart and soul, well-worth the complete disruption of four (or more) lives--the Mixed Marrieds ended on a rather odd, vague note. Sure, there's bound to be questions at the end of any story, good or bad. In Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, one can still question (after 200 years!) whether the "right" couples marry at the end. After a comparatively short period of contemplation, the question I'm pondering at the conclusion of the Mixed Marrieds is: Why did they bother?
In all fairness, some of the more glaring blunders in the Mixed Marrieds tale were surely not intended as part of the original story. Mike Corbin's bizarrely short interlude, immediately taken up by Alan (and subsequently dropped), couldn't have been from Guza's bible...could it? The sudden detour into medical intrigue at the end seemed rather spur-of-the-moment, as well. The overall herky-jerky pacing and numerous plotline about-faces suggests that Guza's been flying by the seat of his pants, his attention pulled hither and yon by a variety of backstage demands.
As for my overall negative reaction to the story, I'm certain it's been magnified by my original high hopes that it was veering in a more complex, Mozartean direction. Mozart was, after all, a genius, and to hold nearly any writer to the standards of "the Shakespeare of musical drama" is an invitation to disappointment. Still, I think there is much to be learned from soap opera's ancestor, and from a master of the genre, and that the serial television industry, as well as the audience, would benefit from an occasional backwards glance.