Götterdämmerung - What is so good about opera?

I love the opera.  All of that music -- the lovely lyrical quality of the voices, the richness of the Wagnerian orchestration, the acting, the costuming, the chance to go backstage via HD Live and see the producers, the directors, the stage hands, the dancers, and even a chance to hear someone ask the maestro a few questions.  Like the question last night, “Who has the most work to do in the orchestration in this opera.”  The conductor, Fabio Luisi, said perhaps the brass section.  I hadn’t thought about all of the hard work they were doing, but listened for it in the next act.

In fact, the idea that I could see some of Wagner’s Ring Cycle had never crossed my mind, either. So when it was first announced a few years ago, I added that to my list of possible things to do.  Now, there I was, at the final episode, and afterwards I thought, “This place was more dangerous for me than a plane ride.  At least there, I get up and move around – but I didn’t even break my concentration long enough to twist my ankles around, let alone to stand up and stretch.”  I will confess.  I was spell bound.

Reading some of the reviews in the New York Times, I clicked on links until I found myself at some articles about Deborah Voight’s (Brűnnhilde) fight with weight loss (she has lost 100 pounds) and her fear that an operation would affect the quality of her voice. 

Today I was reading about Jay Hunter Morris’s (Siegfried) entrance into the world of opera.  An article from NPR music sums it and says:  Morris was born and raised in Paris, Texas, where he sang in the choir of his Baptist church — his father was a minister there, his mother an organist. He also sang in garage bands in high school.  "But I didn't really have a fire or much of a passion for any of those things. Then my friend took me to see La Traviata in Dallas, and I was so mesmerized by the process," Morris says. "I kept asking my friend the whole night, 'Wait, are you sure they don't have microphones?' Morris hung around after the show that night, hoping to meet the cast members as they emerged from backstage. He managed to chat with one of them, the legendary tenor Alfredo Kraus. "I asked him how I could find out if I actually have the voice for something like this," Morris says. "He pointed me to his friend, a vocal instructor. I had a lesson with him, and he said, 'Son, you might have a voice in there. It's going to take a little work, but if you want to come in and work with me, we'll see what we can do.'"

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What knocked the socks off of me is that I didn’t know any of the above, sat there and listened to him sing in German and then when he was interviewed at the Intermission he spoke with a thick Texas drawl.   “Is he putting us on,” I asked the woman sitting next to me.  “That south-west U.S. accent?” 

Apparently not.  He is the real deal, and can surely make chills in your body as he sings, even if he made me smile when he raised his arm high enough for the audience to see his gold-ringed finger, long after he is supposed to be dead.

To return to the question of what is so good about opera, I tried to think of the first opera I ever saw.  I can’t remember the name of it, or even a place.  And it is only through a glass darkly that I can remember  Sunday afternoons going to listen to the Edmonton Opera in dress rehearsal.  As a university music student, I was probably obligated to go. 

The Calgary Opera puts on 3 operas a year, and over the past twenty years, I have found my way to many of those – even seeing newly commissioned Alberta operas, like Filumena by Estacio and Murrell.  But HD Live from the Met has ramped up opera  – now there are ten or twelve a year I can see in the comfort of a large theatre, the stunning close-ups of the singer’s faces, a bag of treats at my feet, my grandchildren at my side.  

I guess that is what is so good about opera.

Arta