The Opera: A Midsummer’s Night Dream

I think that the first thing to say is that overall, I genuinely enjoyed the opera. I thought that the singing was excellent and I really enjoyed the set design. I can’t really judge the story since it is not original to the opera, but on a side note, “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”, I think, is an excellent story.

This was my first “modern” opera in that it has been written and created in the past fifty years, as opposed to all the operas that I have seen that are usually more than a hundred years old. It was also the first opera that I saw that was in English, a traditionally uncommon feature of opera, where most arias are written in Italian or French. I was at first a little uncomfortable ( that’s a horrible word to use in this situation but I can’t think of a better one) at listening to opera in English. Opera is more suited to for Romance languages, not only because they are beautiful (English is also very beautiful, I just think we cant notice it because we are raised speaking it), but because they have a certain beat to them, a musical flow, that is noticeable when a speaker of the language is talking plainly, but becomes especially beautiful when it is sung. This uncomfortable feeling eventually wore away when I remembered that there are many successful and beautiful operas sung in Russian and German, which can be more brutal languages than English. I was not disappointed by the English after I heard the opera, but I noticed that many words and phrases had to be stretched in order to fill into the tempo set by the music and that is most pleasing, something that arise from English’s lack of a musical beat.

I pointed this out in class and I think it is kind of silly, but it seems that it is sad to waste such beautiful voices on a comedy. The opera singers have the voices of gods and heroes and they use them to make ass jokes. I don’t want to be pretentious and say that opera must be serious and proud. Many great operas are comedies ( The Barber of Seville being my favorite example) and many great opera comedies are ruined by making them too serious or tragic (Russian opera houses being notable offenders). These are just personal feelings and I don’t agree with them myself but they are just thought and even more, a cloaked homage to the great opera singers that we saw that night.

One thing that was definitely lacking was the music. It lacked all of the grandness of opera music and instead strove to be a movie theme and even failed at that, becoming more so just background music. Opera is about showcasing voices, I agree, but movies are about showcasing acting, and yet we are inclined to judge harshly a movie where actors are walking around a cardboard set and surrounded by fifth-grader recorder music. Similarly opera is comprised of many different factors: the singing, the set, the costumes, the acting, and the music. And while I’m willing to yield on acting and set and costume (though none of those were particularly lacking and I thought the acting was just right) I feel music is second only to the singing and many great operas are remembered solely by their music ( we can all hum “Habanera” or “The Ride of the Valkyries” but very few of us actually know the words to these arias). One can argue that since this is a comedy, grand opera music would make it too serious and spoil it, but there is a difference between good opera music and grand opera music, just as there is a difference between good opera and grand opera. The Barber of Seville is a comedy and so is The Magic Flute but both contain good opera music that is decidedly light, yet strong in its delivery, and containing the Italian notes that prevent it from becoming to serious. Les Huguenots is grand opera with grand opera music that transports the listener through all the tragic events of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. If this opera had good opera music then I would have lay off, but the fact that this opera contained hardly any true music, I felt that it took significantly away from this opera.

But, like I said, overall I enjoyed this opera.