# I need opera right now



## Admiral (Dec 27, 2014)

I need opera right now

Entering week 5 of working on the Covid19 pandemic - I'm not in any danger but am involved heavily in the response. I'm worn out.

So I turn back here in the cyclical way that I do. I'm drawn back to this page and you good people who keep this fire burning. Thank you for reminding me about Callas, and Wagner, and Verdi baritones.

But why opera? Why now, as I'm working on this issue. Trying to get my handle on it, and trying to come up with why opera matters so much to me right now.

For one, it's my fear that it will be gone after this, gone as I know it. No more marathon weekend trips to NYC to see 3 operas at the Met, no dreams that this is the year I go to Bayreuth. No hope to finally sneak into the chorus at the local opera. The large forms will all be challenged in the new reality post Covid19. So perhaps there's a glimmer of responsibility that I'm feeling for opera.

But maybe what it really comes down to is _*the glorious anachronistic inefficiency of it all*_ - the need for years of study of otherwise-forgotten Italian songs to learn technique, the mountains of costumes and sets and the 100 trained orchestral musicians at the ready. The stilted plots and the off nights. Opera is a quest that can't be accomplished - there will never be a perfect Ring cast, never been a quiet audience, or a Mimi who looks like she's dying of consumption. Maybe there won't be time or money in the new reality for such lavish anachronisms.

Or maybe it's because opera is a sign that we're still civilized, with ties to Mozart and Verdi. Maybe it speaks to our best self. It does for me.

I can close my eyes and go back to that first time I heard a soprano soar over an orchestra (Ashley Putnam as Lucia, Met on tour, circa 1982) - that's my heroin. I grew up poor, with no exposure to opera, and I was probably on track to be addicted to the real heroin, but then I heard this glorious sound, so foreign, so, so,_ magical_ - and I've been hooked ever since. I wasn't supposed to study opera, I was supposed to make transmissions for Ford, or stamp panels for GM. So for me, opera was a personal escape. I've got a lot wrapped up in this.

I wish I had an answer. I wish I could tie it up in a bow and say it's all going to be fine, but I'm very afraid of what will happen to something that has meant so much to me.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

The 'new normal' as some have named it is frustrating, not least because there is so much uncertainty around when it will end. Humanity has experienced pandemics before and there are acknowledged ways of dealing with them. Why weren't they used this time? It's not as if there haven't been people in the scientific community warning about such a virus. So Corona isn't unprecedented, it's the response to it that is.

This isn't normal and I refuse to pretend it is. I was accused of a thoughtcrime today. (I criticised a politician on an online forum and was accused of hiding a defence of them behind a mask of criticism - yes, we have reached the stage where it's not what you do anymore it's what others claim you think that is important.) I refuse to normalise the abnormal.

Goodness knows what will happen to opera, but opera isn't opera if it isn't performed live. If live performances go, then the artform is dead.

N.


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

All the current talk about _essentials_ - only shopping for essentials, only going out if it is essential, avoiding contact if possible - rather casts into relief how much nicer it is when we can afford as a society to do something as extravagant, cultured and _inessential_ as stage operas.

If anything could have made me a bigger fan and more desperate than ever to hear the real thing I'm pretty sure that the equivalent of three months in solitary confinement aka lockdown should do the trick.

I know that whenever they happen, whenever that first concert, live opera, and reopened record store kick back in it will feel rather excitingly like an act of rebellion.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

The Conte said:


> Goodness knows what will happen to opera, but opera isn't opera if it isn't performed live. *If live performances go, then the artform is dead.*
> N.


Live you say......did I miss something back in legendary 1950s La Scala when a daring american born diva electrified the audience night after night with a voice that conquered all and made the opera gods smile


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

> I wish I had an answer. I wish I could tie it up in a bow and say it's all going to be fine, but I'm very afraid of what will happen to something that has meant so much to me.


Don't we all .......good luck so much wonderful to hear.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

DarkAngel said:


> Live you say......did I miss something back in legendary 1950s La Scala when a daring american born diva electrified the audience night after night with a voice that conquered all and made the opera gods smile


Recordings are, of course, incredibly important and have their place as an extension of the art form. Admiral in the OP mentions the first time they "heard a soprano soar over an orchestra" and that's an acoustic phenomenon that is almost never achieved from recordings. The sound doesn't vibrate in the same way. Watching any performance at home vs in a public venue means losing out in some way (film on the small screen instead of the big screen, plays or ballet). You don't have the same sense of shared human venture.

The same applies to opera, but there is another factor. Modern technology could make opera much cheaper to produce, we have microphones, speakers and could greatly reduce the number of orchestral players. This hasn't happened, why? Because it would totally change the acoustic properties of the performances and it is those properties that are a core part of the art form.

If we get to a point where opera only exists on recordings then it will no longer be a living art form. The recordings will be of historical interest in the same way that a dead religion or language are studied for information's sake rather than for their usefulness.

N.


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## Admiral (Dec 27, 2014)

Callas is, of course, a great example of the difficulty and the unachievable in opera - it was DarkAngel (thank you!) whose posts inspired me to buy the big red Callas box 

There is magic in that box, but how many of them combine the recording quality she deserved, and how few video snippets we have of her; she was here, and gone, and yet remains a touchstone for the form. We love that elusiveness, and it doesn't come cheap.

Just very concerned for all of this, even though I have a giant collection of opera and a great stereo to listen to it. I want to GO to the opera, and I want it to be good.


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## brunumb (Dec 8, 2017)

If World War I followed closely by the Spanish flu pandemic couldn't kill off live opera, then we should be optimistic for its future after COVID-19


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