I sometimes misjudge friends’ musical interests and take them along to an opera I’ve snagged tickets to attend. Whatever masterpiece of the repertoire we’ve camped out in the plush seats to hear, when we compare notes at intermission, I get the distinct impression that the experience of listening to people sing like that to advance basic plot points sounds pretty much like this to them:
Still, considering that we live in an era when television shows like The Bachelor and Jersey Shore are mainstream cultural touchstones, we are clearly not a people who got “too serious” for song and dance routines or who are too jaded to appreciate over-the-top melodrama.
Which makes me wonder: Clearly the operatic masterworks continue to move a select crew, and Disney has done its thing to the American musical. But is there a new “Grand Opera, 21st-century style” idea buried in the zeitgeist somewhere, sitting on a high E flat just waiting to get out?
Check out this very graphic topographical map of opera houses in Germany – all 83 of them:
http://www.miz.org/artikel/musiktheater.pdf
Did you know that Porgy and Bess is performed more in Germany than any Wagner opera? Deep down inside I think every German feels sort like an American, though they would never admit it. Here is a list of the most performed operas in Germany:
http://www.miz.org/intern/uploads/statistik22.pdf
And strangely, I think most Americans would like opera if they had a chance to develop the taste (a local house with a year-round season and affordable tickets.) La Boheme and The Magic Flute are pretty good stuff — especially when you’re up close and can experience all that vibrating flesh. The sensuality of pop pales by comparison.
Maybe the problem isn’t with the medium, but with the subject matter. Opera is, after all, a story, especially for the non-musician crowd. Magic Flute and La Boheme are great, and there’s a definite payoff for getting into them; but the immediate gratification is harder to find, isn’t it? Sensual and electric or not, we’re still reaching 100 years or more back in history when every other branch of entertainment is looking forward.
I’m not advocating for more high-concept staging or special effects… but what if a professional opera company featured all operas written in the our time, about our time? What about a season whose cornerstones weren’t The Marriage of Figaro or Tristan, but The Death of Klinghoffer or Powder Her Face? What would their audience look like?
Molly adds: Thanks for these ideas, Greg. I have long wondered if the whole bursting into song thing was just much, much, too much for modern audiences and so they needed the distance of “not our time/not our place” to deal. But I’m seriously re-evaluating that theory at present. Rufus suggests we also try and have a little fun, for goodness sakes.
Bill Clinton, the opera perhaps?