Welcome to my blog. I am retiring in August 2014 as General Director of Seattle Opera, a post I have held since 1983. I thought I would note this change in my life by beginning a blog recording my different activities and thoughts as I head toward a new chapter in my life, which will still concentrate on opera.
It felt irrational of me to have a sense that anything was missing from The Console, and had to think about why I felt that way since it the opera, besides being presented very well, having beautiful music, drama and suspense, was also significant.
I usually have this problem when an opera is presented with relatively modern clothing. It could just be because it is too close to home. The characters are less archetypal and readily identifiable without relating it in an analytical way.
Heros, innocence, bad guys, Gods, and so forth, are dramatized a bit. When the characters are presented in a more classically dramatic fashion that is almost unreal to us in this era, I suspect it allows us to go beyond our own lives with less or no conscious effort and into the world of symbolism.
I think that most people don’t even know what hit them when they leave an opera; they attribute it to it’s grandness, to the great music, to the ritual of it’s formality, but more is going on. In operas that are too close to home, it may be difficult for some to have that alchemical aspect take hold of their unconscious.
Porgy and Bess is modern too, but if you look at the characters, they are dramatized just enough that the transference to archetypal characters, takes us out of our personal story into a deeper, less heady place.
That is my best guess as to why some folks don’t go for an opera like The Console. It is a great opera. Probably some day when the characters are slightly more removed from our time, more people will have the desired Operatic effect they are looking for.
I wish it were not so, but I’m afraid you are right. I long for the time when this is not the case.