David Fidelman
In a recent issue of MAAM there was an avalanche of two letters asking for more emphasis on cultural subjects. We’re lucky in this area to have all kinds of cultural events available to us: major league basketball, football, hockey and a baseball team coming next year. Every year we have a major golf tournament, a professional tennis tournament and a rodeo. We even have a symphony orchestra, an opera company, a ballet company, chamber music galore, two major museums and a new central library. The classical musical events are well attended, but would have even more popular support if people knew more about music. This month’s column will tell you what opera is all about.
Opera, a feast for the eyes and ears, combines everything in a spectacular way — orchestra, singing, drama and theater. There are two types of opera: comic opera and grand opera. Comic operas have complicated plots involving misunderstandings, sexual infidelity and a lot of fooling around, and always a happy ending with everyone winding up with the right partner. One of Mozart’s early operas is about a Hungarian captain whose sister makes love to his girl friend’s brother so that the girl friend’s maid can marry the captain’s valet without the captain’s girl friend’s other brother finding out. One of the most popular of all the comic operas is Rossini’s "Barber of Seville". It is performed all over the world – in Russia in Russian, in France in French, in England in English, in Germany in German, in Japan in Japanese, and in the United States in Italian.
The greatest operas — the "grand operas" — are the tragic ones. They’re about everyday problems like infidelity, betrayal, murder, treason, incest, communicable diseases, kidnapping and almost every form of criminal activity and deviant behavior you can think of. And, of course, people have to die or get killed at the end.
In grand opera women cause a lot of mischief and do a lot of suffering. They are either killed, kill themselves, or die of incurable diseases. Carmen (a gypsy girl who works in a cigarette factory to save enough money to open an exclusive dress shop in Beverly Hills) drives men mad with desire, until one of them kills her. In Madame Butterfly, a young geisha is betrayed by an American naval lieutenant who leaves her with a child, and when he returns three years later with an American wife, she kills herself. (Madame Butterfly can cause you to use up a whole year’s supply of Kleenex..) In La Boheme a poor little seamstress with tuberculosis falls in love with a poor poet, leaves him to become a viscount’s mistress, then comes back to the poet to die near her true love. Tosca jumps off the roof of a castle, after her lover is killed by a firing squad at the orders of the chief of police (posthumously, as it turns out, because Tosca has already murdered the police chief). In La Traviata, a Parisian courtesan falls in love with a young man named Alfredo, is persuaded by his father to give him up, goes back to the Baron, gets tuberculosis, goes back to Alfredo and dies in his arms.
Things aren’t much better for the men. Billy Budd (a sailor representing Good) is falsely accused of treason and attempted mutiny by master-at-arms Claggart (representing Evil), inadvertently kills him and is hanged. Faust sells his soul to the Devil. In Cavalleria Rusticana (literally, "Rustic Chivalry"), a young soldier is killed on Easter morning in a duel over a village girl. Rigoletto, a court jester in the sixteenth-century court of the Duke of Mantua, causes his own daughter to be killed. And countless soldiers are seduced by women into betrayal of their duty.
Then there are the four great operas of Wagner’s mythological Ring of the Nibelungen, which altogether takes over twelve hours to perform. There are Rhinemaidens, gods, goddesses, giants and dwarfs. Northern Europe in legendary times consisted of three realms: beneath the earth where the Nibelung dwarfs lived; the earth’s surface inhabited by giants and ordinary mortals; and the heavens where the gods live in Valhalla. The Rhinemaidens guard a treasure of gold,and whoever possesses the gold and makes a ring from it will rule the world. There’s also a magic gold helmet which can make the wearer invisible, and a lot more stuff like that, including women warriors called Valkyries. The parents of the hero Siegfried are Siegmund and Sieglinde, who are twin brother and sister. You can probably see where all this is going. At the end, Siegfried and half the cast are dead and Valhalla is in flames.
It’s no wonder opera has such a huge audience. The stories alone are enough to hold your interest for an entire evening. But in addition, all these things happen on a stage with wonderful settings and costumes, set to beautiful music, and are sung by people with great voices.
If, by some chance, you find that opera is not really your cup of tea, support it by going anyway. There’s no way you can get that kind of sleep at home.