Unsurprising though this may be, as it's my chosen professional field, music has taken over my life once more. With Elijah rehearsals beginning at American Chamber Opera and both NATSAA (National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Awards) and NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) competitions looming in the too-near future, what I have been up to is singing. And thinking about singing. And learning new music to sing. And listening to other people sing. And planning to go hear other people sing. That is to say, it's nice when your obsessions and compulsions complement each other: my current obsession is opera; its related compulsion is seeing operas. It all works out very easily, you see.
I do feel a little sorry for the people who follow me on Tumblr and Twitter, especially those who aren't musically-inclined, because I've been spamming YouTube links of my favorite singers lately. Then again, my roommate, who I finally wheedled into seeing a Met HD Simulcast with me (first Faust, then, upon her insistence, The Enchanted Island) seems to have taken very quickly to Joyce DiDonato and Luca Pisaroni, so at least I'm in no danger of being smothered in my sleep by a housemate sick of my constant cries of, "Jonas Kaufmann's hair! My god, his hair!"
Don't even try to act surprised that I included an illustrative example.
It is true, though, that I am experiencing a resurgence of love for opera. To be fair, I was never really indifferent to it, but the sudden ease of its access (performing with ACO, being able to attend the Chicago Lyric Opera, finally learning about the Met HD Simulcasts) has caused me to fall in love all over again. Since October, I have seen two live performances in which I was not a participant (the Lyric's Lucia di Lammermoor and Aida) and three not-live performances (Anna Bolena, Faust, and The Enchanted Island). I have been listening to the Sutherland/Pavarotti/Caballe recording of Turandot on the bus--this is mostly due to the fact that the first act is terrifying and I am afraid to listen to it at home alone when it is dark (I had the same problem with Poe's album Haunted).
This process of re-discovery leads, naturally, to a lot of Feelings, which can sometimes be difficult. I realize that in our society it is, for some reason, not cool to be enthusiastic about things, but when I go to the opera to spend four hours sitting in the dark having all these emotions forcibly drawn out of my body, slowly, and I leave exhausted and wired all at the same time--after seeing Anna Bolena I walked home from the movie theater, two miles in the cold--I can't help but let some of it spill out. It's like falling in love, except the honeymoon phase never ends. It's amazing. I am unapologetically enthusiastic about opera. Do I want to curl up inside "E lucevan le stelle" (here, if you've never had the pleasure) and never leave? Yes. I could live in that damn aria these days.
It makes me sad sometimes to think of how many misconceptions there are about opera, even among my friends and family. Here's the thing: opera isn't boring, or outdated, or "too long" (well--most of it, but for the sake of argument, let's ignore Wagner for right now). Interestingly, a lot of people who tell me that they can't sit through an opera because it's too long have no issue with watching a football game, which is the one place I can think of where thirty seconds can last for twenty minutes. Opera isn't always depressing, although I'm perfectly willing to let Mario Cavaradossi or Salome break my heart on a regular basis. It is okay to enjoy yourself at the opera; it is even okay to laugh. This is something I recently re-learned as I laughed out loud through a good portion of The Enchanted Island or giggled while showing my roommate YouTube videos of Leporello's Catalogue Aria from Don Giovanni (one of my favorite recent performances of which can be seen here). The best part of opera is that it not only depicts the complete range of human emotion, but makes you feel those emotions, too: giddiness, despair, terror, hope. I often feel that the entire second act of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is written to feel like a nightmare you can't wake up from, and that the audience is dragged alone for the ride like Lucia, almost carried to the altar for a wedding in which she doesn't want to be a participant. It's no surprise that Lucia goes crazy, since the constant spinning in the music, the gradually accelerating tempo, and wildly distorted recalled melodies make even the audience feel disoriented.
Incidentally, today I was feeling especially positive after my voice lesson and as one the baristas (a friend of mine) was taking my order, she said, "You look really happy, is there a guy?" I laughed. "No, no guy. There's almost never a guy, really. Just opera."
This process of re-discovery leads, naturally, to a lot of Feelings, which can sometimes be difficult. I realize that in our society it is, for some reason, not cool to be enthusiastic about things, but when I go to the opera to spend four hours sitting in the dark having all these emotions forcibly drawn out of my body, slowly, and I leave exhausted and wired all at the same time--after seeing Anna Bolena I walked home from the movie theater, two miles in the cold--I can't help but let some of it spill out. It's like falling in love, except the honeymoon phase never ends. It's amazing. I am unapologetically enthusiastic about opera. Do I want to curl up inside "E lucevan le stelle" (here, if you've never had the pleasure) and never leave? Yes. I could live in that damn aria these days.
It makes me sad sometimes to think of how many misconceptions there are about opera, even among my friends and family. Here's the thing: opera isn't boring, or outdated, or "too long" (well--most of it, but for the sake of argument, let's ignore Wagner for right now). Interestingly, a lot of people who tell me that they can't sit through an opera because it's too long have no issue with watching a football game, which is the one place I can think of where thirty seconds can last for twenty minutes. Opera isn't always depressing, although I'm perfectly willing to let Mario Cavaradossi or Salome break my heart on a regular basis. It is okay to enjoy yourself at the opera; it is even okay to laugh. This is something I recently re-learned as I laughed out loud through a good portion of The Enchanted Island or giggled while showing my roommate YouTube videos of Leporello's Catalogue Aria from Don Giovanni (one of my favorite recent performances of which can be seen here). The best part of opera is that it not only depicts the complete range of human emotion, but makes you feel those emotions, too: giddiness, despair, terror, hope. I often feel that the entire second act of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is written to feel like a nightmare you can't wake up from, and that the audience is dragged alone for the ride like Lucia, almost carried to the altar for a wedding in which she doesn't want to be a participant. It's no surprise that Lucia goes crazy, since the constant spinning in the music, the gradually accelerating tempo, and wildly distorted recalled melodies make even the audience feel disoriented.
Incidentally, today I was feeling especially positive after my voice lesson and as one the baristas (a friend of mine) was taking my order, she said, "You look really happy, is there a guy?" I laughed. "No, no guy. There's almost never a guy, really. Just opera."
