Recently, I was talking to a coworker about how my wife and I go to the opera. I was telling him about the most recent opera we had seen. One of his first questions was, “Have you already written your blog post about it?” And I had a very strange moment where I realized that I’ve never written a blog post about an opera I’ve seen…and at this point, I’ve seen a whole bunch of them. All I could really say was that I didn’t write a blog post about the opera. That I’ve never written a blog post about an opera I had seen.
And then I really started thinking about it. Why haven’t I ever written a blog post about opera? I’ve talked about operas. But I think the only opera I’ve actually sat down and talked about was Hilma, which I didn’t even think of as an opera, even though it was even billed as a contemporary opera. But over the years, my wife and I have seen many operas, and I haven’t written a whole post about any of them. And when I stop to think about it, I really don’t know why I haven’t.
Opera is still theatre, right? I’m still sitting in a dark room, watching people perform onstage. I think maybe I’ve been a little too rigid with my definition of theatre. Just because the form is different doesn’t mean I’m not experiencing something in a similar way. There are blurred lines and blurred definitions on this one…something I never really thought about before. So I really would like to sit down and think about my definition of theatre, my experiences with theatre, and why on earth I’ve never written a blog post about opera…which is definitely a form of theatre.
I saw my first opera three or four years ago. My wife (then my girlfriend) got us tickets to A Midsummer Night’s Dream because she knew I’m a big Shakespeare fan. At that point, I had seen recordings of operas, but I had never seen one live before. I knew about all the famous ones. One of my best friends had studied opera, so I had discussed this with him. But actually getting to see an opera was new and different, and I absolutely loved it. It was something completely different from other performances I had seen. My wife loved it too. We wanted to go back.
Now, my wife isn’t a huge theatre person, so for her to like this so much was a pretty big deal. And the fact that she wanted to go back (as did I) was even more of a big deal. I don’t remember if we returned that season or started the next season, but we decided at some point that we wanted to subscribe to Opera Philadelphia. Philly has a really great opera company. They put on really incredible shows, with incredible singers, sets, costumes, all of it. I consider myself incredibly lucky that we have that so close to us, and so accessible to us.
Opera has everything a play or musical has. Actors/singers. Costumes. Sets. It’s just a bit of a different approach. When you look up the definition of opera, you’re going to see a lot of the same stuff, but a lot of different stuff as well. There’s talk about drama, music, singing, music. I really hate to put any of that in here, because I hate trying to define anything like this. But it is extremely interesting to see it all. There’s a lot that people think of when they think of opera, and you’re going to find a lot of that online.
Another thing about opera is that it’s rather formulaic. You have drama, you have devastating romances, enemies, feuds that run deep. You’re going to see a lot more tragedy than comedy, and very rarely get any sort of happy ending. Especially in the classics. Although I can’t claim to know a full history of opera, I’m pretty sure the art form has always been like this. It’s how people know these things. People know opera as it is defined in our culture, in our society.
Looking at opera as a form of theatre is still sort of a strange thing in my mind. I’m not sure why I’ve separated opera from the theatre the way I have, but thanks to my coworker bringing that up, I’m trying to start seeing them for the art form they are as a shared entity. There is absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t be writing about the operas I see on my blog. I set too harsh parameters, and when I really look at opera, it shares more with theatre than it doesn’t. Between the singing, the set up, and the experience, sitting through A Midsummer Night’s Dream as an opera isn’t too different from sitting through A Midsummer Night’s Dream as it was reimagined at Hedgerow Theatre.
So maybe it’s still a bit odd to me, but I’m trying. And I absolutely promise that you’ll be seeing some posts about the operas that I see!
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