What do oil company executives and hip young violin players have in common? They both make the opera possible.
On November 10, 2010, our Macaulay Honors seminar class was given a backstage tour of the Metropolitan Opera, where we had nearly slept over the previous night, watching Mozart’s opera Cosi Fan Tutte, which ended just before midnight, by which time most of my classmates were more than ready to depart and try to salvage what few hours of sleep they could before having to wake up for the next day’s classes. Fortunately, on Wednesdays my first and only class is my Macaulay seminar, which starts at 2:10, so I was well rested and in a good position to pay maximum attention to the tour.
Not that I thought there would be much to pay attention to. How much could go on behind the scenes of an opera anyway? How much could go on backstage anyway, aside from directors pacing nervously and actors quickly slipping in to different costumes? Well, to put it bluntly, a lot. Certainly much more than I thought. It would have never occurred to me, while watching the opera, that due to union rules seeking to exploit every single opportunity for work available, all pieces of set design were produced just several yards away from the stage. That’s a lot of wood to be cut, and plenty of paint to be applied. It gives newfound significance to the somewhat generic looks trees and Italian style houses that were a part of the set.
It brings to my mind a humorous image of a swarthy, hairy man in overalls taking a piece of wood and putting it to a buzz saw, throwing saw dust into the air and nearly amputating his thumb in the process, all to fashion it into an adorable looking daisy that will serve as the context for a young lover tearfully singing about how heartbroken she is. It is usually the latter person, and not the former, that we conjure up in our minds when we think of the word “opera,” but the absence of the former would render the stage looking terribly desolate, if not outright making the performance of the opera impossible.
It seems that those involved with the opera are quite desperate to get the members of my generation to attend and to take an interest. The days of young boys anxiously waiting for the opera broadcast on the radio are quite dead, and it’s not because the radio has been replaced by the television. Opera was always an upper class affair, but middle class teenagers in New York City could certainly afford to attend a show or two every month if they were interested. I do feel sympathy for those trying to popularize opera among the middle class youth. At least in my case, if one didn’t grow up listening to actors sing the same line over and over in a foreign language, it’s not exactly the sort of thing one begins to clamor for after first experiencing.
One of the front rooms of the Metropolitan Opera proudly bears Chevron’s name, and our knowledgeable and articulate tour guide quickly pointed to the raised lettering and explained how oil and tobacco money kept the opera going. Why do the people who focus on fueling our cars and spreading emphysema donate vast sums of money to the Metropolitan Opera? Perhaps they see themselves as the vanguards of Western civilization, and the West would surely crumble if fat white men stopped bellowing out in beautiful Italian how lovesick they are. I wonder how much the sponsors of the Metropolitan opera have in common with its actors politically?
Although it may not vastly enhance my insight about Mozart’s opera, the fact that most hair used for wigs, at least in the opera, is Asian in origin, is an interesting quirk. So is the history of a certain mirror placed at the corner of a hallway in the Metropolitan Opera. The mirror was placed there after a large group of soldiers clad in Roman armor and a large group of Vestal Virgins clashed in the corner of this hallway, getting knocked down to the floor in a hilarious scene. Although unpleasant, it must have been vastly more pleasurable than lying down in a ditch in France fighting Nazis or in a foxhole in the Pacific fighting Japanese, which is what many other Americans were doing at the time this incident occurred.
The tour had its more serious parts, which did provide insight into how operas are performed on a daily basis, such as when we were able to overhear an expert vocalist training young apprentices, or feel the incredibly heavy fabric of a costume that any actress unfortunate enough to be cast in a certain role had to wear on stage, in addition to having warm lights trained on her. As if having to worry about singing one wrong note in front of an audience numbering in the thousands wasn’t enough, the actress also has to worry about not sweating too visibly on her face. I suppose the job isn’t entirely glamorous.
This review is certainly not an exhaustive chronicle of every fact that our very talented and genuinely enthusiastic mentioned, but it is a reflection on some that happened to stick with me. I don’t know when I’ll next drink out of those paper cones the Metropolitan Opera provides because a regular water fountain would obviously be too low class, but when I do, I’ll certainly remember some of the things I learned on this tour. Well, I’ll probably be more apt to remember them when I’m watching the actual opera, and not drinking out of a paper cone.
I challenge you to write a libretto for a new age Opera, that your friends would want to see. Nice Review