I think I may be opera’s biggest fan; I am certainly always investigating not only the well-known repertoire, but also the far-flung corners of the wonderful world of death by heart-break / consumption / avalanche / singing we know as opera.
What distresses me about the opera world though, is that it is stuck – its successes have, in so many ways, become its biggest downfall. Tremendous operatic success stories such as Carmen and Butterfly mean that they are being performed all the time. But I will ask you a question – how many new operas (ones written this century) have you been to recently? Is your answer none? Do not be ashamed, you are not in the minority. But opera needs new blood. It is fast becoming a museum for pretty tunes and dear old works that we are so fond of. And that is not what opera is all about! Opera is revolutionary! Opera is passionate! Opera does not live in a glass case on a dusty bookshelf. It is about people who breathe and bleed. And sing.
Opera has a sort of lingo all of its own. You will hear audience members saying things like “Well, of course, I heard Sutherland’s Lucia so nothing can compare” or “Can you believe they had to transpose 'Di Quella Pira' down for the tenor to manage the ending.” Well, why is that such a problem? Rather have the singer able to sing something then make a god-awful noise because someone in the audience is expecting that aria to be in exactly that key. There are times, of course when transposition creates difficulties (for example ensembles or where it would mess with the musical structure) but in reference to “Di Quella Pira” (Il Trovatore) the top Cs expected from tenors are not even written in the score. Traditions (and recordings) dictate that that is how it is done. (Interestingly Verdi asks for Azucena, the gypsy in Il Trovatore who is a mezzo, to sing a top C. Not many do…)
It feels nowadays like the printed score is some kind of Bible, which has not always been the case in opera’s long history. Initially (in Monteverdi’s time) operas were written to be performed once. This carried on until roughly the late seventeen hundreds, when operas began to be repeated. But even then, composers would add and subtract from the score to suit the singers. Think of Mozart and the two tenor arias from Don Giovanni. “Dalla sua pace” was written for the first performance in Prague. “Il mio tesoro” was added later for a different singer. But now tenors are expected to sing both, despite the fact that they require two different kinds of voice. No doubt some tenors can manage both. And some very palpably cannot. It also unnecessarily delays the action, in my opinion, to have both arias.
I was amazed and enlightened by a performance of Dido and Aeneas I heard recently. The opera is short, and one I know inside out. What was fantastic about this performance was that the creative team had interpolated pieces of text from Christopher Marlowe’s play Dido Queen of Carthage between numbers, to highlight or expand on the drama. Besides being effective, it meant that the listener did not know what to expect next aurally, and so listened with new ears. The same thing happened in a performance of The Magic Flute which I attended in Cape Town. Aside from a wonderful visual performance with a solid concept behind it, they used a number of sound effects and even interpolated pieces of music (live or recorded) under some of the dialogue as appropriate. I also noticed the addition of a harp in the orchestra, which is most certainly not in Mozart’s orchestration. While I’m not sure what motivated this decision, it made me listen with renewed interest to the orchestra.
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Both of the above-mentioned operas are staples of the repertoire, and probably ones that most of us have sung / seen or at the very least listened to on recordings. Which brings me to my next point.
Recordings. They are wonderful. They fill us with joy to listen to them. We have all kinds of gadgets to listen to them on. We use them to learn roles. To discover new repertoire. To hear our favourite singers. But for goodness sake, you cannot compare a live performance to a studio recording! They are two totally different beasts, and to criticise a singer in a performance based on a recording you have heard is academic to say the least. This particularly applies to size of voice, but also accuracy, diction, breathing, etc. Caught up in a performance, with an audience, props, a set, a wig on your head and a co-star who sings constantly flat, you may behave differently to when you are in the studio where they can doctor your voice to within an inch of its life. Listen to some live recordings too, to balance your perspective. You’ll hear singers drowned out by cellos, ensembles teetering on the brink of disaster, and singers reaching up to a note that just isn’t there; but you’ll also hear minor miracles (and some pretty major ones too). I have a most incredible recording of Maria Callas singing Il Trovatore live in Rome in 1951. Largely a dreadful recording for various reasons (one being very loud bass!), but her two big arias are object lessons in being a star of the lyric stage. Especially her high Ds are out of this world. There. I have just done what my hypothetical opera audience member might do. I have used opera-world lingo. Except I would never compare any singer to that recording. I just enjoy it for what it is.
Now, I am not saying we should stop performing Carmen and Butterfly and concentrate on everything from Schoenberg upwards. But I am questioning why people are so reticent to attend new works.
Perhaps it is because, in the interval, they feel they will not have anything intelligent to say if they have never heard the opera before. How will they know if the tenor is meant to be singing a high C or not? And they will not have heard Sutherland singing Adès! It could also be because the operas that are standards of the repertoire are packaged like some kind of commodity. Just as we walk into a supermarket and head for the branding we know, so we walk into the opera house and head for the opera we know. We know how long Carmen is. We know when our favourite aria is coming. Wen know that chorus everyone knows.
When we are children we are like sponges absorbing everything around us. But when we become adults, we stop doing that, we become less perceptual and more conceptual. We stop just listening and looking, laughing and crying. And the operas we know are safe. We do not know how we will respond to something new. We do not know, that is, until we try.
Andrew Godbold
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