The Arts in New York City

Alright, I’ll admit, that’s a bit extreme. However, for a short amount of time during the second act, I did happen to find myself in a bit of a comatose state. Perhaps it was a result of my slight insomnia in the nights prior to the performance, but it seemed as if the singers were lulling me to sleep. Their beautifully drawn out sentences, their phenomenal voices. If you close your eyes, you could easily mistake it for a lullaby.

Although I’ve discovered that the opera may not be for me, I must give credit where credit is due. When we entered the Opera we were greeted with a display case containing one of the female costumes from a previous performance. The dress was extravagant and seemed to have come out of a fairy tale. I could easily picture it being worn in Cinderella to the ball, it was just that beautiful. As for the costumes from our performance, I’m afraid I cannot comment on them in great detail because of the distance from our seats to the stage. However, if they were as elaborate as the one on display on the second floor, I credit the actresses for running around (and being able to breath!) in those dresses, especially while singing.

Singing. Wow, the voices of the performers were A-MAZING. I actually did not pay much attention to their voices as much in the first act because I was busy trying to keep up with the storyline, but once I heard Sylvia and Ashley raving about the vocals, I felt inclined to pay closer attention, and WOW! I’ll admit, opera isn’t exactly my preference of music, but these performers sang in a way that gave me reverence for something completely out of my element. The way the notes were held for such extended amounts of time was just phenomenal. However, later on in the play I did begin to get annoyed at the seemingly OVER drawn out and repetitive nature of the songs. I mean, honestly, the performance could have been cut down at least a half an hour if the characters didn’t feel the need to repeat their thoughts countless times, and repeat the SAME lines 379846837572094 times. But after all, all music does that doesn’t it?

As for the subtitles, it always takes me a while to get adjusted from looking between the actors and the stage, but I thoroughly enjoy performances in other languages. It seems to portray and extra level of authenticity to the performance. While I loved the subtitles availability, the part of the performance that stole the show for me was the set. I was amazed at how easily it converted to fit the scene and the minute details that it seemed to have (ex:windows, doors, BALCONIES). I still can’t imagine how it was moved between scenes, because it looked awfully heavy. But I thought it was absolutely beautiful. My only strife is that it was a very dull color, so it may have benefitted from a brighter paint job.

I can see where some may think that Don Giovanni appeals to a younger audience (a guy running around causing scandal by sleeping with numerous women), but I still do not believe that the opera effectively targets a younger audience. Not many teenagers today have the attention span to sit through a 3 hour performance PLUS save the money for a ticket. I’m not exactly sure how much our tickets would have been at full price, but I can imagine it being a tad out of my comfort zone for spending – even if it was for nosebleed seats. Besides the prices, I think the storyline was a little too far fetched to appeal to a younger audience. The younger generations are drifting further from the original religious context of the play, and are most likely going to be skeptical of an ending where the protagonist gets sucked into the fiery pits of hell. Why couldn’t Donna Elvira (I think that’s her name) get vengeance on Don Giovanni on her own? What happened to women’s liberation? Why does she keep going back to such a misogynistic pig?

I highly believe the opera portrays the fantasy of New York. If for no other reason, because of the prestige of the opera house. EVERYTHING was velvet, the stairs ,the walls, the railings. And it was the fancy kind of velvet that doesn’t get matted over time due to wearing. I was very awestruck and intimidated at the same time. The extravagance of the costumes is another factor that plays into the fantasy of the opera. The average New Yorker isn’t going to own anything remotely close to Don Elvira’s gown, which I assume was magnificent. AND THE CHANDELIERS! I was scared to even look at them for fear of them breaking. It was a very elite experience definitely NOT aimed for a young audience, and NOT for the lower class, even if at one time the lower class were the majority of opera-goers.

Hey guys and gals! Binocular guy is here to tell you about the opera experience from a magnified point of view. First off let me start by saying that I used the binoculars sparingly at the beginning of most scenes to see the acting and the costumes. We were so high up and far away from the stage that using the binoculars strained my eyes and gave me a headache. The binoculars did however help me to see the performance, the costumes, and the actors’ facial expressions and added to the total experience of the opera. I passed them down the row during the second act because sharing is caring. I felt awkward using the binoculars while everyone was just sitting and looking in their screens and at the ant-like figures below.

As a young opera viewer who has never been to an opera before I would have to say the overall experience was unique. If I would have to describe the opera to a friend I would say it’s a large play in a huge theater the size of one quarter of a baseball stadium. The actors wear extremely fancy costumes and do not look like normal people at all. The whole performance is through song and an orchestra in front of the stage performs the music. After telling my friend this generic description of the opera I would give him or her the real scoop on the opera we went to.

The opera Don Giovanni felt like the opera that is stereotypically portrayed in television and movies. Throughout the performance I began to understand why I have never seen an opera before. First we have the never-ending singing. The actors perform the story through singing that is so incomprehensible because the opera was in Italian and the words are dragged on for so long that it sounds like a bunch of OOOLAlAlalas after a while. Even if the performance were in English we wouldn’t be able to understand it. This forces the audience to ignore the speech and words the characters are saying and instead try to understand the story through the body language of the actor. Since no comprehensible words are registered in the audience’s brains it becomes very difficult to follow the story if you do not read the subtitles in front of you. This leads to a weak plot that is highly predictable.

And for the most part I found Don Giovanni’s plot to be very weak. From the very beginning when he is trying to have his way with Donna Anna it is so obvious that he is going to be the antihero of a tragedy. Don Giovanni runs around and pisses everyone off only to be stopped by the supernatural. The simplicity of the plot may have been on purpose for the opera because maybe we wouldn’t be able to understand it at all otherwise. I’m thinking of complex movie plots like The Matrix or Inception and imagining them in Italian opera form. It would be impossible to understand anything because a few subtitles here and there wouldn’t be able to immerse the audience in a massively different alternate world. I thought the plot of Don Giovanni was very simple and even though it was an opera does the plot have to be any weaker than that of entertainment in other media?

Even though I thought the plot was weak I thought the actors’ performances in singing and acting were superb. While watching Don Giovanni I felt that these actors might be the most professional actors we have seen in terms of talent and difficulty of their performance. With the naked eye I could only make out the action and movement of the performers. This was very important for me in order to feel engaged as an audience member. I was thinking that the actors wouldn’t be as pressured to act with full facial expressions as though we were viewing them up close in a televised way, but that is exactly what they did. Looking through the binoculars I saw this other view where I could actually see the acting and I did not have to imagine what they must look like down there. I enjoyed the acting of the actors who portrayed Donna Elvira and Leoporello the most because up close I could really see the amount of hard work and talent as they performed these roles. It was as if they performed their parts in a mirror and had exacted the way in which they should perform even though most audience members could barely see their faces.

The costumes, stage direction, and music of the production were on a much grander scale than what I have been exposed to before. The costumes were believable for over exaggerated fancy opera costumes like the many costumes of Don Giovanni. The costumes of the women were very fancy except for Zerlina’s which looked simple and it helped to differentiate economic status of the characters. Leoporello’s costume was shaggy and loose fitting and I thought it fit his character. With the stage direction of the performance I liked how the stage would alternate between outside and inside with the large brick façade that would be pushed together for outside and pulled apart for more open scene. The best part of the entire opera experience though had to be the orchestrated music. For the entire length of the opera they were performing and its easy to take their performance for granted. The music itself set the mood for the entire opera and without it there wouldn’t be an opera.

For the opera adding to the concept of New York fantasy/nightmare situation I think it really has to do with economic class. The seats of the opera are so expensive that the cheap seats that normal people like us would pay for are twenty-five dollars. The only people dreaming about coming to New York to see an opera are people who can afford a vacation to New York and then have enough money to be willing to pay for better seats in the theater. In Woody Allen’s movie “Manhattan” the characters in the movie are able to afford the luxuries of appreciating art in many different forms which could include opera performance. In contrast we saw the movie “In America” where the father dreamed of being the performer and making it big as an actor in New York. For me these two movies illustrate a large difference between people who observe art and the actual artists. The first group are like art consumers and they spend their extra money and time on these performances because they enjoy them. The artists on the other hand appreciate art but must also produce art in order to make a living for themselves. If one does not fall into one of these two groups then New York as a city of dreams with respect to the opera would not be very relevant.

Opera, “Don Giovanni”, Mozart, I was so familiar with these words without even knowing exactly what or who they really are because they are just so famous and classic. That was the reason I was longing for the night of November 7 since I got the syllabus, and my experience with “Don Giovanni” started long before and after that night.

Just as a habit, I read the synopsis of “Don Giovanni” before I got the reading packet. (Thanks to my mother to help me develop this habit since the first time I went to see a ballet performance. Also as a habit, I read all the synopsis in Chinese.) Because of curiosity, I watched the first scene of the first Act of the opera online. This video was the 1954 Salzburg Festival version with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (sounds familiar, but not exactly the same cast). After attending the opera, I felt obligated to finish the entire video. As a result, I kept comparing the two performances, although I am not justified in doing so, because there are large differences between a video and a live performance.

There was always something good and something bad about a performance. The good aspect of this new production was its stage effect, which was truly fascinated. While I would like the set of Commendatore’s garden to be different from the set of the street, the overall design has realistically reflected the architectural style of the time period the story took place. I especially liked the villagers’ party scene, with the large empty space in the middle, a few rural houses on two sides and the bright golden light that suggested sunset. The set and lighting created a very charming atmosphere for this scene. The cemetery scene was a little funny. When I looked at the marble statues, I thought they were Japanese samurais, because the stage was dark and the statues were short. My favorite scene was when Don Giovanni was dragged to hell. The way Don Giovanni disappeared from stage has accurately reflected the concept of going down to hell. The fire effect was excellent in symbolizing the destruction of an evil life. The costumes were relatively unimpressive. They were too modern and casual. I couldn’t distinguish between Don Giovanni and Leporello’s costumes, since they wore similar white shirts and capes. Donna Elvira wore a blue dress (if I remembered correctly) which made her look like a country girl. I don’t remember what Zerlina wore. Donna Anna’s black dress and Don Ottavio’s black suit were set by the story, so nothing really special. Despite of these flaws, the non-performance elements were very well-done.

I was a little disappointed at the performing part of the opera. The main elements of the opera were music and songs. From where I sat, I felt the music was so flat. It couldn’t bring me into the mood of the opera. Moreover, the singers had too many unnecessary movements. Why did Don Giovanni lie next to the Commendatore after he killed him? Did Zerlina and Masetto have to roll around the ground to show their love? Why did Donna Elvira need to kneel on the ground to sing her fine aria? While these body movements were very expressive for dancers, singers shouldn’t have too many deliberate movements. First, singers couldn’t concentrate on singing while they moved intentionally. Second, singers need to use lots of their strength in singing. Moving around too often would take away their strength which would lower the quality of their singing. People just can’t dance while they sing especially in opera. Lastly, singers should express their mood and emotions through their voices. Sadly, in this opera, I couldn’t hear much of the singers’ emotions. For example, when Donna Elvira sang her aria, she used her body to express herself rather than her singing. Compared to the video I saw, Donna Elvira was so concentrated on singing that all her gestures and movements became so natural. After all, opera is opera. If the singers can concentrate more on “singing” the emotions than “dancing”, I think the performance would be more appealing.

To be honest, I was really satisfied with this new production of “Don Giovanni”. I was glad that it didn’t become too fancy. A classic should always remain classic. No matter how producers innovated on their productions, the centuries old opera should have the taste of the centuries old classic.

No need to say, the experience in the Metropolitan Opera House was certainly a fantasy. I fell deeply in love with it. The opera house provides high quality artistic enjoyments to people from different classes. The seats in the family circle are affordable to most people, though I would like to have better seat the next time I attend an opera. The opera house itself has its own glamour to attract people. The red velvet wall, golden light, revolving stairs with red carpet, how can all of these be an urban nightmare? Moreover, the Metropolitan Opera House and many other art institutions in New York City are doing very well in helping people to be more aware about arts. Only people would group themselves in different class, books would not, and so as arts. (After attending the opera, I truly think I should find a way to escape the nightmare of my life.)

So my next plan to the Metropolitan Opera House: the American Ballet Theatre spring season, “Onegin”, a Russian and ballet version of “Don Giovanni”.