I masnadieri by GIUSEPPE VERDI

There’s an old children’s rhyme that goes “Nobody loves me/Everybody hates me/Guess I’ll go eat worms.” It’s both amusing, and true to life. A child feeling alienated will often do something weirdly defiant in retaliation. Not so amusing are the things that ADULTS will do when they start thinking “everybody hates me.” The newspapers are full of those ugly stories, and our fanciest literature has them as well. And they’re rampant in the opera house.

Let’s look at the lead character is this week’s opera, Verdi’s I MASNADIERI. He’s a rich kid named Carlo. Feeling alienated after a disagreement with his dad, he decides to become a crook - and a really nasty one, at that. Now, Carlo seems to be an unlikely kind of guy, impossible to know or understand - especially when he’s in the middle of a somewhat implausible, Italian opera. But pare him down to his core, and you’ll find he’s actually related to one of the most romantic figures in American literature: the alienated hero, or Anti-hero, really. The best-seller lists, box-office charts, and music polls show that we’re wildly attracted to such characters. Always lonely, and often bitter, the alienated hero wanders incessantly - down roaring interstates, or through the dirty streets of dangerous cities, hands jammed deep in his pockets, the collar of his pea-coat turned up against the wind. His rough-hewn exterior, with its tendancy to drive away all but the most giving young waifs, is supposed to belie his “real” self - his troubled, hyper-sensitive soul.

Just look at the Hemmingway heroes in the novels like “For Whom the Bell Tolls” or “A Farewell to Arms;” men on the run from their past and uncertain about their future, in the days after the first world war. Strange, restless, and virile men who pass through town leaving shattered women in their wake.

Or, if you’d rather skip the library and go to the movies, think of Marlon Brando in “The Wild One,” with his t-shirt and leather jacket; or Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider.” All three come with the same standard equipment: furrowed foreheads, mumbling voices, and restless spirits. And they all leave broken, desolate women behind when it’s time to continue their search for God-knows-what.

The point is, people who feel alienated from society often react by doing their darndest to avoid that society, and disdain it’s conventions. And that’s exactly what Carlo does in Verdi’s “I Masnadieri.” Carlo decides run off and become a vicious bandit; in fact, that’s what “I Masnadieri” means: “The Bandits.” And the woman he leaves behind isn’t just broken and desolate. He kills his own lover, to save her from - himself. Mind you, it’s not poor Carlo’s fault. It all happens because of a vicious and diobolical plot dreamed up by Carlo’s no-good, two-faced ...

Well, the whole mess gets really complicated. But you can join Lou Santacroce for NPR’s At the Opera, and he’ll tell you all about it. He’ll discuss alienated heroes in film with a film expert, Professor Eric Smoodin, and in opera with an opera expert, regular guest Will Berger. Afterward, you can hear I MASNADIERI on NPR World of Opera, with Steve Curwood. The performance is by Opera Orchestra of New York, with conductor Eve Queler.

MUSIC FEATURED ON “At the Opera” THIS WEEK: