Opera
Everyone loves a good story. We all like action thrillers and adventure. But when we think of those kinds of things we depend on a movie. Hardly anyone would think of an opera or a play. I certainly wouldn’t. But what we need to understand is that many stories today had to evolve from something. That something is opera. So many of our plots and ideas today that are so fantastic simply developed from an opera no one has even heard of. Operas can really affect someone’s style of thinking. They emphasize scenes of anger, cruelty, jealousy, love, and revenge. Opera began in Italy in the late 1500s. Italy is a very musical country. You could ask anyone on the streets — even a person pushing a hot dog cart — and he or she would know the fifth aria of Puccini’s La Boheme.
Opera is a drama in which the characters sing, rather than speak, all or most of their lines. Opera is one of the more complex of all art forms. It combines acting, singing, orchestral music, costumes, scenery, and often ballet or some other form of dance.
In telling a story, opera uses music to communicate feeling and to express emotions. Singers, accompanied by an orchestra, may bring a dramatic situation to life more vividly than actors with spoken dialogue. Vocal and orchestral music can also tell an audience much about the character and his or her state of mind.
Operas are usually performed in specially designed theaters called opera houses. Most opera houses seat many more people than theaters. An opera house also has special facilities and equipment to provide the elaborate staging required by many operas. All modern opera houses have an orchestra pit between the stage and the seats of the auditorium. From the pit, the orchestra, led by the conductor, accompanies the singers on stage. A good example of an opera house is the Ordway Music Theatre in St. Paul.
Through the years, Italian composers, singers, and conductors have played a leading role in the development of opera. Today, opera can be enjoyed in many parts of the world.
Opera appears in the most unexpected places. The other day there was some opera in a Garfield cartoon. The plot tells of a poor chef, played by Jon, who makes terrible pizzas and sings as he works. He sings an aria from Pagliacci, which is an Italian opera. In Pagliacci, the main character, Canio, is putting on make-up and lamenting the fact that he’s only a clown and that he’s losing his wife. In the Garfield cartoon, Jon is lamenting the fact that he makes terrible pizzas. In the cartoon, Garfield finds a use for the hard pizza and turns it into a Frisbee. In the opera, Canio finds a use for a knife and kills everybody. Even 100-year-old operas can be a little violent now and then.
While the opera developed in Italy in the 1500s, American composers started writing important operas in the 19th century. The most popular American opera is Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. These days Americans enjoy such musicals as Cats, Miss Saigon, and Joseph and The Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Musicals resemble opera but most of them have much more dialogue than an opera and the music is lighter. They include dramatic musical techniques, electronic sounds, video and animation, and unusual sound and visual effects. Many of these techniques have been used in the current productions of the old Italian operas so they’re still a major part of our entertainment. Watch one on TV sometime or go see one for yourself at the Ordway!
P.S. In the month of February, I listened to five operas on CDs, heard two Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and saw six operas in person including The Minnesota Opera’s exciting Turandot and three more Italian operas at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City with my dad. I like opera. It’s cool. But one warning. One ticket cost more than my dog Tony did.