“This is going to be terrible.” I remarked smirking knowingly at Daniel. My high school’s theater class had watched “Rent” the previous year and it was torturous. The music wasn’t enjoyable, the plot seemed too vulgar to be true, and I perceived it as a cheap take on Giacomo Puccini’s “La Boheme”. My impression of “Rent” the second time around was markedly different. I even stealthy texted my former theater teacher during the screening. “You were right. Rent isn’t boring, I simply did not get it.” The second that separation occurred in my mind, the moment I was able to set the musical apart from the opera, as a performance in its own right, Rent’s diamond in the rough quality shined through.
The night of the Opera I arrived at Lincoln Center an hour early in anticipation of the performance. I sat on the edge of the fountain facing the Metropolitan Opera, admiring the two Chagall paintings. This artist has always been the embodiment of childhood innocence and music visualized on a canvas. Groups of tourists would approach me every few minutes to get their picture taken. I even struck up a conversation with several individuals, collecting their business cards. It’s hard to imagine what opportunities might come your way in NYC, all for being dressed decently in a public place. Hamad was the first to arrive, and I collected my ticket along with two others for friends who I wanted to sit next to during the performance. Mostly to hear their impressions between acts. The crowd started trickling into the opera house, some women were wearing ball gowns and hats that resembled those worn by Kate Middleton. We made our way up the red carpeted staircase, crystal chandeliers glistening overhead.
All the way up in the family circle, performers resembled chess pieces, only each of these pieces had years of professional vocal training and had reached the peak of their vocal career. The idea itself of this enormous space being filled naturally by beautiful voices, entirely unamplified is baffling. The sets were incredible too. I had read about the opera struggling with filling seats, accounting for its high ticket prices. As a consequence, the sets of many productions had been simplified under the guise of modernity to cut costs. Not La Boheme. The Parisian festivities, live animals, and ultra realistic snow covered tavern left no impression of corners being cut.
In the end, I saw Rent differently, but would take attending the opera any day. What both productions prove however, is that artists and suffering make eternally beautiful companions. Some of the most beautiful works of art, both musical and visual, came from a place of pain, the early demise of a genius. We were the last of the audience members to leave the opera house, going out of our way to admire Chagall’s paintings once more, from the inside. We left to a full moon, minds abuzz with existential questions creeping to the surface, a byproduct of witnessing something so new and great. I will most certainly be coming back for student tickets. Wait up Mimi!
