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Rambling about opera
I love opera. I have since I was about three, when my sister and I somehow happened upon Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, or at least the famous "Vesti la giuba" aria. Maybe we caught a little bit of a televised version, or it was part of some kind of opera demonstration segment on Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers? I can't remember, but I do remember that the melody made a very strong impression on me and I never forgot the music. Incidentally, it's a good thing that I was oblivious to the plot as a child, because it's utterly unsuitable for small children - the story centers around adultery and murder among the members of a commedia dell'arte troupe. Not that that would necessarily have stopped anyone from airing it alongside children's programming. A couple of years ago, I watched a "Live from the Met" broadcast of Mozart's Don Giovanni on public television. As the introduction was going on, the TV rating appeared in the corner of the screen, and the opera was rated G! I guess no one noticed that the first scene in the opera includes an attempted rape and a successful murder.
Listening to opera recordings is great, but I think it's hard to really know an opera unless you've actually seen a full production. Live performance is of course the best way to experience just about any kind of music, but with opera you also get to see the way the music combines and interacts with all the other aspects of the production: action, sets, costumes, lighting, etc. Putting all those elements together makes opera the most immersive form of art/entertainment I've ever experienced.
I prefer opera to musical theater. I think opera is better, as both entertainment and art form. Better music, better singing, better everything. Mostly, better music. With the exception of Sondheim, I really don't find the actual music from most musicals all that great. Maybe it's more that I really hate Lloyd Webber, and as the most successful musical guy around for the last thirty years, his stuff is most often heard and most often imitated. For me, the concept of opera most assuredly includes contemporary operas (Adams, Ades, Glass, etc.), so my preference has absolutely nothing to do with prioritizing old music by dead guys over current stuff by living folks.
I don't know if I'll ever write an opera myself, though. I'd like to, but achieving the right set of conditions could prove tricky. First of all, I'd need a good libretto, and that means finding not only a story that will work well but also a good writer that I can work well with. I have come across a couple of novels or stories that I think would lend themselves well to opera, but they're not in the public domain (and not going to become so in my lifetime), so that adds another layer of complexity. And then there are the practical considerations. Namely that I'm not sure that it would be worth working on such a large complex project without some real possibility of getting it produced. Operas can take years to write, and that's just too much labor and too much "life's blood" (for lack of a better term) to pour out without some real chance of a performance. At this point, I'm not going to worry about it one way or the other. I'm just going to listen to and see more opera. Because I love it.
Listening to opera recordings is great, but I think it's hard to really know an opera unless you've actually seen a full production. Live performance is of course the best way to experience just about any kind of music, but with opera you also get to see the way the music combines and interacts with all the other aspects of the production: action, sets, costumes, lighting, etc. Putting all those elements together makes opera the most immersive form of art/entertainment I've ever experienced.
I prefer opera to musical theater. I think opera is better, as both entertainment and art form. Better music, better singing, better everything. Mostly, better music. With the exception of Sondheim, I really don't find the actual music from most musicals all that great. Maybe it's more that I really hate Lloyd Webber, and as the most successful musical guy around for the last thirty years, his stuff is most often heard and most often imitated. For me, the concept of opera most assuredly includes contemporary operas (Adams, Ades, Glass, etc.), so my preference has absolutely nothing to do with prioritizing old music by dead guys over current stuff by living folks.
I don't know if I'll ever write an opera myself, though. I'd like to, but achieving the right set of conditions could prove tricky. First of all, I'd need a good libretto, and that means finding not only a story that will work well but also a good writer that I can work well with. I have come across a couple of novels or stories that I think would lend themselves well to opera, but they're not in the public domain (and not going to become so in my lifetime), so that adds another layer of complexity. And then there are the practical considerations. Namely that I'm not sure that it would be worth working on such a large complex project without some real possibility of getting it produced. Operas can take years to write, and that's just too much labor and too much "life's blood" (for lack of a better term) to pour out without some real chance of a performance. At this point, I'm not going to worry about it one way or the other. I'm just going to listen to and see more opera. Because I love it.