Macaulay Seminar One at Brooklyn College

I have quite mixed feelings about the visit. I actually love photography, but I feel that some of the photos didn’t deserve to be there. Particularly with the first floor and how although I get how they are sending messages on drugs and poverty and such, the actual quality of the photos weren’t that good. Funny enough, the older photos downstairs had much better quality and I enjoyed them so much more.

The photo I loved the most showed a girl in distress, surrounded by a background that you shouldn’t see a little girl in (first photo seen when you walk in). The emotion was really captured and the vastness was beautiful, yet heartbreaking.

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!