We hear, “Opera!” and we go, “Three hours of arias?” or “It’s not over til the fat lady sings!” Opera’s got a reputation for being high-brow, hard to understand, and loved only by snobs. Opera can actually be kind of cool, though, once you know a little bit about it.
(And “the fat lady” refers to the character of the valkyrie Brünnhilde, whose twenty-minute-long aria brings about the finale of Wagner’s epic, The Ring Cycle.)
Opera houses are beautiful
Opera houses can be truly amazing feats of architecture and engineering. Many of the famous opera houses are in old, elaborately decorated buildings. The Royal Opera House in London still maintains its facade, foyer, and auditorium from 1858. Operas are often produced on a high budget and include major scenic changes and lighting. These require hydraulics, complex lighting systems, rigging, construction, and onstage electronics. The opera itself aside, simply watching the logics of an opera get executed is fascinating. The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City is a brilliant acoustic space, has an 80-foot-deep stage, seven hydraulic elevators onstage, and 60-foot-diameter turntable. This space can host up to four different operas a week!
Opera can be really dirty
Opera may seem stuffy, but lots of operas are actually raunchy–particularly the older ones! If you get to know the classical operas, you’ll find that they’re full of trysts, wealthy ladies falling in love with young men, men falling in love with servant girls, people trying to seduce one another, and on and on. Some of Mozart’s songs, for instance have pretty racy lyrics. One of his songs features someone calling someone else “quite an ox,” and other songs of his talk about body parts and bodily functions in a scatalogical way.
Opera singers are freaks of nature
Recently, opera singer Audrey Luna made history when she hit the A above high C in a production at the Metropolitan Opera. This is believed to be the highest note ever sung on that stage, and if you listen to a recording of it, it barely sounds human! Luna is a type of soprano known as a coloratura–the very highest voice type. Another unique voice type is a counter-tenor, a man who can sing full-voice (rather than in falsetto) well into the treble clef. Opera singers’ breath capacity and vocal stamina is also wildly incredible. You try singing for three hours straight, wearing a massive costume, and trying to actually act!
There are subtitles
Since the 20th century, there have been several operas written in English, but the most famous and most-performed operas are still the Classical operas in Italian, German, and occasionally French or Russian. Fortunately, almost all productions, even productions outside of major urban hubs, such as those at any of the arts facilities in Central Jersey, offer subtitles. These are projected on a screen above, below, or to the side of the stage. If you’re watching a film version of an opera, such as Ingmar Bergman’s famous film of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, there will definitely be subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
Leave a Reply