The Arts in New York City
When I first learned that we would be heading to the opera, I was not entirely ecstatic. For starters, there is a very negative stigma attached to operas in general. We are brought up with the presumption that watching the opera is a past time reserved for rich old men, kind of like golf. I expected the air to be stuffy with a mix of condescending looks from men in monocles. Furthermore, watching Spellbeamed a week before did not set the standards very high.
Upon entering Lincoln Center, the setting transformed almost magically from a dark and bleak night to a bright and luxurious party. The chatter rung high in the air as my first misconception, that the opera house would lack any life, was shattered. By the end of the day all my misconceptions would be shattered (except the one about golf).
As we made our way up I could help but to notice that almost everything was carpeted with velvet. I soon separated from the group to do a little exploring by myself. I took the elevator the bottom floor and found myself in a room of paintings and sculptures. They were really well painted portraits of individuals who had conducted at this center at one point or another.
When the lights grew dim I steeled myself for an hour of a woman “singing” painfully and unintelligibly for an hour. But wow was I in for a surprise!
L’Elisir d’Amore proved to be a much more pleasing on the ear. The orchestra did an amazing job of keeping in sync with the actors on stage and it was truly a pleasure to listen to. Although I did not understand the words themselves, as I connected them to script before me, the actors, specifically Nemorino did an amazing job with the inflections of the sounds. I felt as if the emotions portrayed matched almost perfectly with the emotions the script intended.
However, there are couple of points I feel could have been worked on. First, Adina’s voice seemed slightly to too heavy for the “princess” that everyone was supposed to be falling for. The second is that Belcore was slightly too excessive in his pushing Nemorino around.
All in all, I felt that this was one of the best performances that I attended. And who knows, I may attend another one of these “operas” in disguise…
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I shared a similar experience with my stigma of operas being broken. Going in, I was expecting to not enjoy the opera. However, despite my expectations, over the course of the show I really began to appreciate the opera. I don’t look at operas the same way today.