I don’t think I’ve ever been to an opera before seeing Tosca, and if I did I don’t remember the experience. With that, I could say Tosca was the first opera I attended physically and mentally. When I heard the class was going to see it, for some reason, the phrase “it ain’t over until the fat lady sings” came to mind and in my mind’s eye I pictured myself spending three hours amidst the audience at the Met listening to a buxom woman’s voice bellow throughout the opera house.

Only that’s not what happened. Upon getting off the bus, I was visited with the grandeur of the Metropolitan Opera’s exterior, a taste of the aestheticism it held within; though, entering the opera house, I was a bit surprised at the amount of seemingly rich and old upperclassmen appeared, a demographic that evoked the idea that opera was meant only for the hands of the elite (but there I was lol). When the opera started, I was a bit impressed with the set design, especially the first set, because it looked the same way as I pictured it when I read the first act of Sardou’s “La Tosca.” However, the fact that I already knew the outcome of the story took out a degree of anticipation for what came next, an anticipation that probably would’ve been present had I not read the play. The opera was a good show, but its three-hour length made my attention wane from start to finish, with some scenes being more memorable than others.

But there was something about the performance that made me have a newfound respect for opera. Like animation, it’s a fusion of multiple arts into one. The fact that the composer was able to synchronize the music of the orchestra in the pit with the voices of the actors on stage was an impressive feat in itself. Ironically, what struck me most about the opera performance wasn’t the voices of the actors or the musical magic that came from the pit of the orchestra, but the visuals. The ways that the characters exaggerated the lines they sang or the way they posed on stage reminded me of cartoons or something straight out of a dynamic figure drawing book. While the exaggeration of the actors may have displeased a few viewers (I wasn’t particularly amused with it either), this element can be found in still, individual frames of animated film. Only when the film plays, the viewer doesn’t notice the exaggeration as much as they would with an actor on stage. The other aspect I admired from Tosca was the attention to staging and composition when making the set pieces. Following each curtain-fall (except the last), I was amazed at the scale on which the backgrounds were constructed, especially the towering monolith that was the final background, a large side view of a castle, which Tosca would later throw herself off of at the end of the opera.

Overall the experience was nice, even a bit eye-opening. To think that I’d touch base with an esoteric art form such as opera would seem ridiculous to me before I saw Tosca. But when I saw the performance, I could only think of the recurring elements that connected opera to other forms of art, a connection that I may need to look out for when I’m exposed to other forms of art I’ve never experienced.