The Facts

Now that I have thoroughly and exuberantly exposed myself to you all, it's time to get. down. to. business.

I began this blog because too many people are afraid of opera. They don't really know what it is, how to listen to it, if they can get through one (because, didn't you know, they are ALL five hours long?), and, if they do get past these initial phobias, they don't know what to see or where to go. Also, how in the WORLD does one afford to go to the opera? I mean the diamond necklaces and gold cufflinks that one has to wear (it says so in The Manual) cost a fortune along. They'd rather go to the movies where at least they know that Katherine Hegel will play the same character she's played for the past however-many-years-she's-been-in-existence and Jake Gylenhaal will eventually take his shirt off or do something quirky.

I am here to dispel all of those myths (although, if anyone would like to donate a diamond necklace to my cause, I will not deny them the privilege) and to provide the information that future opera freaks need to begin their opera journey whether it be ridiculous, glamorous, fabulous, profound, or just entertaining!

For those of you in the New York metropolitan area, I will be dissecting scheduled opera and opera related performances by the Metropolitan Opera as well as New York City Opera, Carnegie Hall, and the New York Philharmonic. These are, of course, the giants of opera and classical music on the East Coast.

But! There's more than just the giant opera corporations.

I am going to review opera performances by lesser-known regional opera companies that showcase up and coming singers. Why? Because there are hundreds if not thousands of opera performances every year that aren't at the Met or City Opera which feature fantastic talent and/or choose interesting repertoire that lies outside of the standard "marketable" repertoire. (I will tear about that terrible word "marketable" at another date. Remind me. I am old.)

To prepare you for these performances, I am going to make multiple suggestions for first time operas (not everyone is going to like La Boheme or L'elisir!), give you background on the operas, their composers, their librettists (the dudes that wrote the words!), famous recordings, and, of course, background on the singers, conductors, and productions that you will be seeing! All with the intention of making sure that your opera experience is as rich and seductive as possible without destroying the spontaneity that is essential to any theatrical performance. Yes, opera is theater.

Lastly, I will occasionally ramble about opera, classical music, my internship at a major opera company and my glamorous summer in New Yawk City, and my experiences as a musicologist-in-training.

- SJT

An Introduction

I know what you are all thinking: Who is this janked out queen writing about opera?

All that will be revealed in time. Lesson #1: Don't let them know everything at once. Allure is 50% mystery, 25% personality, 15% good hair (I should know), and 10% of that now famous and woefully over-used brand of je ne sais quoi they call the "x factor."

My life in opera began when I was 15 and my voice teacher at the time invited me to sing in the chorus of his semi-professional opera company. Up until this point in my life, I had never been particularly serious about anything. I had been taking piano lesson for eight years, but had only very recently begun practicing with any degree of commitment; I wrote fabulously for my age but handed assignments in late or not at all; and I had signed up for and subsequently quit more dance and acting classes than I will ever be able to remember. But something clicked when my teacher extended this offer to me, and I became consumed with this desire to know everything I could about opera and opera singers before the first rehearsal which was blessedly months away.

I was absolutely clueless about where to begin. The first recording I bought was an English version of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor with Elizabeth Futral as the title character. I had never listened to opera before (The Phantom of the Opera did NOT prepare me for this!), and I didn't know what I was listening for (for what I was listening?)! I had no frame of reference! I was panicking! Wasn't is supposed to make perfect sense if it I listened to it in my native tongue? Despite this absolute chaos, I must have recognized the magic in this music since I made no attempt to permanently expunge this experiment gone wrong from my memory.

I was left unsatisfied with an unexplainable craving for more.

I was not going to give up this time! My perseverance led me to some lady named Maria Callas. The next recording I bought after my first failed attempt was not a complete opera at all, but a biography of Maria Callas that included TWO CDs full of her greatest performances and - ZOMG - pages and pages of explanations, interpretations, and TRANSLATIONS! This was my gestation - ingesting every word both written and sung, ruminating over every note and portamenti, and tattooing the glamorous and passionate images of Callas onto my cornea. Those poor CDs didn't know what they were in for! I must have listened to Callas's recordings of "Casta Diva," "Vissi d'arte, "In quelle trine morbide," and Lucia's mad scene multiple times a day. They were fertilizer for a growing soul, and I, of course needed to know MORE!

More Callas biographies followed and I have to say that Callas really taught me how to listen to music. I will write more about Callas one day, but if you can really listen and understand the artistry of Callas beyond the superficial and subjective flaws, then you know that you have trained your ear well. Armed with all this information and an inflated sense of my own operatic superiority, I went to the first rehearsal.

By the time of that first rehearsal, several months later, the directors had decided not to produce Lucia di Lammermoor and had instead assumed the wildly ambitious task of mounting Puccini's final, unfinished opera Turandot. I relished this opportunity to discover a new opera. With score in hand and what I now recognize as the best recording of the opera (another stroke of fate!) with Birgit Nilsson, Franco Corelli, and my beloved Renata Scotto, I delved into Turandot, learning not only the chorus parts, but memorizing each individual role and analyzing each character's place in the drama and the agency of the music in the development of their characterization. Being on stage and living in the world of your first opera is absolutely invigorating. It was the gestation and the birth of my life in opera.

The greatest lesson that I have learned, and that I continue to learn, from my evergreen life in opera is the value of organic, bare expression, the kind that transcends the objectivity of spoken word and connects our souls through another, sacredly intangible channel.

I hope to share that with you. :)

- SJT