The Clyde Fitch Report: The Metropolitan Opera kicked off its new season this week with Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). The singers and the return of conductor James Levine to the opening-night podium (after protracted health problems) were all well-received.
In honor of this beginning of the season, which labor strife kept in doubt for much of the summer (now seemingly resolved), I want to flip it around and have some fond, good-natured fun with some of the more bizarre-to-insane ways that operas can end. I’m talking about the operas’ plots here, the famously artificial, often illogical melodrama that opera fans learn to accept and then love, though often with rueful bemusement at the improbable narrative events.
2 comments:
I have only ever seen one opera (Carmen), but it was really cool to see the little differences between opera and musical theater. Reading this article, I also thought it was really interesting how overly dramatic -- and how funny -- operas often are, even though they generally have a reputation of being very classy entertainment. It seems to me that there are quite a few aspects of the genre that don't match the stereotype of what operas are like at all. All in all, I'd be pretty interested in going to see some more opera if I ever get the chance, especially one of the ones mentioned in the article, The Ring Cycle, which was coincidentally mentioned in HvH, too.
This made me laugh. It's so true. A lot of Opera's do have pretty ridiculous finales when you think about it. But, as the author of this article said, it's something that the audience has come to accept and truly appreciate about the opera! Being overly dramatic is a little silly in itself but we revel in it and what is Opera? An overly dramatic way of telling stories! I love Opera because everything is relatable, but then it's pushed to the extreme. (This is music and talent and design aside because The music is usually amazing! The talent it takes to be an opera singer is unbelievable, and design wise. Well, I'm pretty sure it's most designer's dream to design for opera because things tend to be more extravagant!) The costumes in all of those videos are gorgeous!!! But anyway, for anyone who knows opera knows that a lot of the events don't make sense and just happen just so they happen. They need to get rid of a character, there's no story about why the person goes away or dies, there will be one line saying he's gone even if it had nothing to do with anything in the entire opera! (I forgot the word used for this technique) But it's used an inexplainable amount of time but we never question it because it's part of the art form that we've come to love!
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