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| "The French Comedians" by Antoine Watteau (Metropolitan Museum of Art) |
For a decade, I'd take a group of 100 Sun-Times readers to the Lyric Opera. Then the Lyric got their nose out of joint over something I wrote, and told me to scram. That was five years ago. But the Lyric Opera is performing "Carmen" in a few months, and I thought it a good time to venture back. In rooting around the column closet, checking out matters operatic, I found this, and was surprised to discover where my opera predilection originally came from. I had forgotten.
A sure sign of autumn, as definite as the Canadian freezer air whooshing over the city: my wife searching for the big pasteboard sheet of Lyric Opera tickets, which arrived in the balmy days of summer and was squirreled safely away.
She found the tickets, alas. I wasn't exactly rooting for them to be lost, but I wouldn't have been heartbroken, either. Six operas between now and Valentine's Day.
And mountaineers think their sport is a test of endurance. Hah! What can climbing the Matterhorn demand compared with sitting through five hours of "Gotterdammerung"? I did that last season, and should have gotten my picture taken afterward, thumb in the air, a look of giddy victory on my face.
Granted, the music isn't bad. I even like certain operas. But nothing is so good that it doesn't start to grind you down after a while. If the Lyric offered an evening of naked supermodels performing the opera "Neil Steinberg Is Swell" I still would be fidgeting and glancing at my watch toward the end of the third hour.
Of course I could have resisted subscribing. I always consider objecting, consider waving the "Money's tight!" flag that my wife so happily hoists whenever I propose an entertainment more costly than tossing cards into a hat.
Marriage is a give-and-take, however, and I know that resisting opera would only come back to haunt me. I will be struck by some terrible disease, and want to go to the Mayo Clinic to see an expert, and my wife will give me that look and say, "Who's throwing money around now, Mister Fancy Clinic?"
So I didn't say anything. Besides, she didn't ask me. She got tired of all my throat-clearing and eye-rolling, and just went ahead and got them, without consultation.
So now opera is officially routine. An established part of our lives now includes plump middle-aged Italian ladies pretending to be German milkmaids at the top of their lungs in a language we don't understand. I'll just have to live with it.
I know what my wife will say when she reads this. "But you like opera," she'll say, which only shows how successfully I've been fooling her all these years. I see too many of those grumbly, scowling hubbies harrumphing after their terrified wives.
Can't be like that. Better to go and enjoy what I can and pretend to enjoy when I can't. Being Jewish helps. Like many Jews, I grew up attending services I only dimly understood, and years of neglecting my faith, such as it is, haven't made Hebrew any more comprehensible.
Growing up, I was trained to sit through it, nodding along and waiting for the parts I could appreciate.
Rather like opera. I'm surprised the two institutions, opera and Judaism, don't learn from each other. Oh, some synagogues have opera-singing cantors. But why not borrow more? Supertitles, for instance, those translations projected above the stage at operas. They might help enhance prayer services, too.
Or not. Perhaps too much is lost in translation. While the singer is reeling off a mouthful of Italian — "Il mio sposo! Oh Dei! Son morta. Voi qui senza mantello! In questo stato . . . un ricevuto foglio, la sua gran gelosia"*— the supertitle is always something like: "My husband! We're in trouble."
Congregations might not be too happy to see some cherished prayer — "Here O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One" — projected in front of them as: "Hey Israel! The Lord's one."
Opera definitely could benefit from a synagogue tradition called "staying until the end." There is a final blessing and everybody kisses one another and shakes hands and goes home and gets something to eat.
At the opera, about three minutes before the end, a shocking percentage of the audience leaps to their feet and bolts for the exits as if the place were on fire.
Any subtle sense of pleasure the music may have instilled is wiped away by the shock of watching these people. If your time is so precious, if you can't wait 10 minutes for your coat or a cab, then why are you sitting through five hours of Wagner? Why go out at all? Stay home and work.
My only hope is that these fleeing people, at some moment in their hectic lives, will realize they have lost their souls. I hope that, kneeling down beside Fluffy after she has been run over by a car, or watching their home burn, or whatever, they will look up and have a flash of insight: "This is because I left early at the opera. This is because we couldn't even stay and applaud for the 50 people who had just spent three hours singing their throats to a pulp. We have earned every bad thing that can ever befall us."
Me, I clap heartily, big, potching claps, drawing my hands about three feet apart and slamming them together, cheering. This is the best part of the opera. It gets the blood, which tends to settle during hours of inaction, going. And I am genuinely delighted and enthusiastic— I mean, the thing is over and we get to home.
And mountaineers think their sport is a test of endurance. Hah! What can climbing the Matterhorn demand compared with sitting through five hours of "Gotterdammerung"? I did that last season, and should have gotten my picture taken afterward, thumb in the air, a look of giddy victory on my face.
Granted, the music isn't bad. I even like certain operas. But nothing is so good that it doesn't start to grind you down after a while. If the Lyric offered an evening of naked supermodels performing the opera "Neil Steinberg Is Swell" I still would be fidgeting and glancing at my watch toward the end of the third hour.
Of course I could have resisted subscribing. I always consider objecting, consider waving the "Money's tight!" flag that my wife so happily hoists whenever I propose an entertainment more costly than tossing cards into a hat.
Marriage is a give-and-take, however, and I know that resisting opera would only come back to haunt me. I will be struck by some terrible disease, and want to go to the Mayo Clinic to see an expert, and my wife will give me that look and say, "Who's throwing money around now, Mister Fancy Clinic?"
So I didn't say anything. Besides, she didn't ask me. She got tired of all my throat-clearing and eye-rolling, and just went ahead and got them, without consultation.
So now opera is officially routine. An established part of our lives now includes plump middle-aged Italian ladies pretending to be German milkmaids at the top of their lungs in a language we don't understand. I'll just have to live with it.
I know what my wife will say when she reads this. "But you like opera," she'll say, which only shows how successfully I've been fooling her all these years. I see too many of those grumbly, scowling hubbies harrumphing after their terrified wives.
Can't be like that. Better to go and enjoy what I can and pretend to enjoy when I can't. Being Jewish helps. Like many Jews, I grew up attending services I only dimly understood, and years of neglecting my faith, such as it is, haven't made Hebrew any more comprehensible.
Growing up, I was trained to sit through it, nodding along and waiting for the parts I could appreciate.
Rather like opera. I'm surprised the two institutions, opera and Judaism, don't learn from each other. Oh, some synagogues have opera-singing cantors. But why not borrow more? Supertitles, for instance, those translations projected above the stage at operas. They might help enhance prayer services, too.
Or not. Perhaps too much is lost in translation. While the singer is reeling off a mouthful of Italian — "Il mio sposo! Oh Dei! Son morta. Voi qui senza mantello! In questo stato . . . un ricevuto foglio, la sua gran gelosia"*— the supertitle is always something like: "My husband! We're in trouble."
Congregations might not be too happy to see some cherished prayer — "Here O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One" — projected in front of them as: "Hey Israel! The Lord's one."
Opera definitely could benefit from a synagogue tradition called "staying until the end." There is a final blessing and everybody kisses one another and shakes hands and goes home and gets something to eat.
At the opera, about three minutes before the end, a shocking percentage of the audience leaps to their feet and bolts for the exits as if the place were on fire.
Any subtle sense of pleasure the music may have instilled is wiped away by the shock of watching these people. If your time is so precious, if you can't wait 10 minutes for your coat or a cab, then why are you sitting through five hours of Wagner? Why go out at all? Stay home and work.
My only hope is that these fleeing people, at some moment in their hectic lives, will realize they have lost their souls. I hope that, kneeling down beside Fluffy after she has been run over by a car, or watching their home burn, or whatever, they will look up and have a flash of insight: "This is because I left early at the opera. This is because we couldn't even stay and applaud for the 50 people who had just spent three hours singing their throats to a pulp. We have earned every bad thing that can ever befall us."
Me, I clap heartily, big, potching claps, drawing my hands about three feet apart and slamming them together, cheering. This is the best part of the opera. It gets the blood, which tends to settle during hours of inaction, going. And I am genuinely delighted and enthusiastic— I mean, the thing is over and we get to home.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 15, 1996
I've seen opera on TV, so as for going to the real thing, I'd rather spend the time doing something far more pleasant, like shoveling shit in a slaughterhouse!
ReplyDeleteI'm delighted to read this, as the attitude expressed here is much more in line with my own than the plaudits you've offered in more recent references to opera. Alas, despite many outings, my appreciation has never evolved nearly as much as yours seems to have since you wrote it. I like the parts I like, but most go on WAY too long.
ReplyDeleteWhile "My husband! We're in trouble." is not a very thorough translation of the footnoted passage, I submit that it's better than nothing. If it weren't for the subtitles, I would certainly be prevented from enjoying the proceedings even as much as I do. I always wish there were more of them, not less. While a woman is "dying" on stage for 12 minutes, it's not like you don't have plenty of time to look elsewhere to figure out what she's trying to say...
This piece, specifically referring to the slog of Gotterdammerung, is particularly noteworthy given your much later embrace of the opportunity to see the full "Ring" cycle.
While we were very fortunate and grateful to be among the last group of readers you graciously welcomed to the Lyric, for "Faust," when the John Adams masterwork "Neil Steinberg Is Swell" is finally commissioned and performed by the naked supermodels, I hope they stream it on YouTube!
Thirty-six years in Chicago, almost half of that as an adult, and I never went to the Lyric Opera. I was younger and a lot poorer then, and I only went to Orchestra Hall a handful of times. But all that changed when I moved to Cleveland. I've made many trips to magnificent Severance Hall, home of that band of renown, the Cleveland Orchestra. I have even attended opera performances a couple of times.
ReplyDeleteOne was for "Die Fledermaus"...does that count? Even if it was only an operetta? It was very silly, and had sung music as well as spoken dialogue, and it was in Italian. Operetta is a lighter version of opera, with a frivolous story, music, singing, and spoken dialogue, while opera is more theatrical, and combines drama, music, song, and sometimes dance.
I did see one other opera..."The Magic Flute."...and had an okay time, despite the distraction of having an earphone that was giving me the play-by-play of the deciding game of the Cleveland-Boston series, the winner of which would advance to the next round of the MLB playoffs, and possibly the World Series, which Cleveland did that year (1995).
It was very disconcerting...excuse the pun...to hear sounds that had nothing to do with the opera onstage. There were whoops and gasps and low moans and muffled cheers all through the performance...until Cleveland finally won the game. Evidently, I was not the only one with a radio that evening.
Almost thirty years have passed. I have never gone again. But I wouldn't mind going. Maybe to "Carmen"...if the opera-tunity ever presents itself. I've always wanted to see that one, because I've liked the music ever since I heard it on the radio. When I was three. Got an early start.
I never got opera, but there are a lot of different types of music and entertainment I don't get.
DeleteThere are probably many who find the acquired tastes of opera, baseball, and expensive wine equally disinteresting.
Too bad about your falling out with Lyric. You've missed some enjoyable evenings in the theater. Like all the fine arts, opera requires some work. Get familiar with the stories. Listen to recordings of great singers of the past. Try attending some Met broadcasts in movie theaters. There's a reason that long, complex works continue to be offered the public. I've seen nine or ten productions of Mozart's Mariage of Figaro and found something new to like in each one. I would just as soon never sit through e.g. "The Sound of Music" again.
ReplyDeleteTom
Not sure if I got what you said in the preface. Did the Lyric actually ban you because of something you wrote, like Radio City Music Hall did to that lawyer that sued them?
ReplyDeleteI went to see carmen . it was my first time at the lyric. my best cousin took me. I had high expectations.but was disappointed . I thought it was me but , during the second intermission she said : wow this is dull. I agreed and she went back for our things and we left. along with some others.
ReplyDeleteI searched out a review on line and I could have written it. something was off. it wasn't just me