Category — Opera

My visit to the Metropolitan Opera House, to watch Shakespeare’s “Mid Summer Night’s Dream”, was very unique, perhaps more so than others’. Primarily, I was late to the Opera House. Yes, I was late. Because I was late, I wasn’t allowed to enter the opera until intermission, which was in a hour. Disappointed, I was led to the viewing room, a small theater like room fitted with a projector to display the ongoing opera, filled with other likely late performance goers. Watching the opera from the viewing room was a nightmare. The camera that was pointed towards the stage was angled from up high, instead of a full frontal view. This way, I wasn’t able to see the performers well, only hear them. Apart from being visually terrible, the room’s audio was just as terrible. The wonderful performance wasn’t nearly as audible as watching the performance live. The viewing room felt more as a punishment than an alternate viewing experience. I couldn’t wait to jet out of there.

I really, and truly started to enjoy the opera after the intermission, when I was able to enter the theater. Honestly, I wan’t expecting to be so enthused about the performance. I once so a different adaptation of the same play in high school, and I was left confused. However, this performance was much better than the last one. The performers were very talented and comedic, and I was left in stitches at the end. The only negative aspects about the performance were the costumes, and the sets. The sets weren’t as extravagant as the ones in operas I’ve previously seen. The costumes were confusing as well. For example, the performers in the play within a play were dressed in more modern clothing than the main characters.

Overall, the trip was a wonderful experience. After watching many operas on high school projectors, actually visiting an opera house was a refreshing change.

I have always, always, always wanted to got o the Opera (well at least in the past few years). I always pictured it as the most classy cultural experience I could have. With absolutely no knowledge of the Opera, or plays, or anything along those lines, I wanted to go just to go, just to experience something I never have before.

It was so much fun from the beginning. I was giddy all day, and when I finally got home and started to get ready I only got more excited. With literally the only nice shirt I own on, a black blouse with black leather details, and some vintage earrings I got at a flea market, I walked onto the subway and found a very good looking group of class mates. Being all dressed up and seeing everyone dressed up, made me feel like this was actually happening, I was actually attending the Opera.

The show itself did not disappoint. It was by no means what I was expecting, but nonetheless I was pleased. Before that day, I had not been familiar with Shakespeare’s Midsummer play. I was caught off guard by the fact that an Opera, something I had always envisioned to be the pinnacle of class, could be a comedy in which a fairy queen falls in fake love with an ass. I was also surprised by the fact that it was in English. I had always wanted to go to one in another language. I didn’t even know there were any in English. It was weird but still enjoyable. The last act especially, with the silly play within e Opera itself.

Even end though the show we saw wasn’t what I had had in mind as my Opera experience, I really enjoyed it. I think it was a nice, light choice as a first. It really made me want to see a deeper one though. I’d like to see one that was written as an Opera and not a play originally, I want to see one in another language, witha deeper, more serious story, and I’d like to wear something nicer next time.

In Hungary, A New Opera Joins the Chorus Against Anti-Semitism

The above is a link to a NY Times article about how Ivan Fischer has been using opera to call attention to the rise of antisemitism in Hungary. So I was wrong when I argue that operas don’t have political stigma, but I’ll try to salvage some of my dignity by pointing to what Ivan Fischer said about opera and art in general: ” Culture shouldn’t be interested in day-to-day politics. We want to be valid next year and the year after. But I think culture has a strong responsibility to find the essence, the real concealed truth which lies behind the day to day.”

By Leo, Rene, Liz, Fatima

There are several things that separate opera from other types of art. Here are a few:

1. Lack of Stigma/Politics- Many other forms of art-music, poetry, writing, painting, photography- are used to bring attention to some type of social situation or to bring about political or economic change. We have discussed several examples in class, especially with photography. I feel that opera lacks this social stigma and that opera is not really used to call people to action. I think it is important to note the wording there- to call people to action. I do not deny that opera can be used to comment on political or social events but I don’t think that opera is meant to make people do something about that specific event. For example, Les Huguenots is a French grand opera by Offenbach, that goes over the events prior or leading to The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (an event when French Catholics in Paris slaughtered French Protestants). While the opera does make political commentaries about the event, it does not call the listener to go and do something about the Huguenots being slaughtered, because the opera was written many years after the actual event took place.

2. Passion- Operas are always passionate. This was the hardest for me and my group to define because none of us could put into words what the word passion meant. I won’t try to do that here but I will say that even when the opera is comic, the beauty of the voice and the music transforms the opera beyond slapstick humor or crude jokes. There is a floating around of human feelings-love and hatred and many others. There is always great feeling in opera and that makes it passionate.

3. Elaborate Costumes, Set, and Music- another defining feature of opera is its overall complexity. There are so many different factors that come together to make an opera. This is a stark difference between the other forms of art that were discussed which have overtime become generally accessible to everybody. Opera still remains a highly collaborative effort- and an expensive one!

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.