IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS...

  ...not this fat lady, but read on about    A NIGHT AT THE OPERA 
             

No, we’re not talking Marx Brothers, we’re talking Puccini, Verdi, Bizet, Wagner – well, not too much Wagner, that’s a bit heavy.  We don’t usually go ‘round humming a tune from Tannhäuser, although the second act is a singing contest.    I remember long-ago Saturday afternoons, listening to Milton Cross present the live broadcast of that day’s production of the Metropolitan Opera.  I think I liked his voice as well as those of the singers.  This month marks the opening of the new season at the Metropolitan Opera. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be there?

Did you know that over these last decades many of our favorite popular tunes have been politely borrowed from the world of opera?   And many of opera’s popular tunes were originally borrowed from what were then popular tunes.  The music goes round and round.

For years, British Airways has used the music of the “Flower Song” from Delibes’s “Lakmé” as their theme. Nissan’s uses the “Ride of the Valkyries” from “Die Walküre”, yes, by Wagner.  The music for “Stranger in Paradise” and other songs in “Kismet” came from Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor”. For Jackie Wilson’s “Night” the music came from Saint-Saëns’s “Samson and Delilah”. Don’t be put off by some of the long titles of opera pieces: they’re usually just the first few words of the song.  That piece from “Samson and Delilah” is titled “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix,” and means “My heart opens at your voice.” You needn’t remember the title – just appreciate the music. There are many more examples, but then this article would be a list of songs, not an appreciation of opera.

My husband doesn’t want to sit through or even hear an entire opera, but his favorite listening is collections of popular opera favorites. He's worn out the LP of Pavarotti's Greatest Hits, and we were lucky to replace it with a CD.  I love the opera, and can sit through one just to hear the music and watch the production, the same as with a Broadway show. 

“Porgy and Bess” is the best of both. I must admit that I’m happier seeing a show because the dialogue is spoken. Dialog is usually sung in opera, and it’s generally in a language I don’t understand. It helps to know the story line. Though they can be distracting, today there are subtitles on TV opera airings, and surtitles running on a box over the stage for the theater-goers.  At the Met they even offer “Met Titles”, electronic devices mounted on the seat in front to show you the translations. 

Though there are several comic operas, most operas are dramas and their music can be very moving.  The opera “Norma”, for example, is no “My Fair Lady”. Norma has a secret lover by whom she has two children that, in her despair, she is about to kill. What with one thing and another, Norma dies with her lover on a flaming pyre. I’ve never seen that staged. Not too light, is it? Yet one piece from it, “Casta diva,” was one of the most popular tunes of its day

One of our neighbors doesn’t like all those screaming ladies in the opera, and I can’t blame him much. Out of context and just heard in snatches, it can be quite unappealing. Today, many opera newbies would consider “Casta diva” a screamer, and I’d think them right if I didn’t appreciate the power in a voice like that of Maria Callas.  Hearing a recording of her singing that aria, or “Suicidio” from “La Gioconda”, will either give you chills or send you, screaming yourself, right out of the building. 

Larger-than-life characters with wonderful voices, like that of Callas, sustained opera. In recent decades, singers like Luciano Pavarotti helped to popularize it.  He was about as colorful and large a character as was ever seen in the world of opera. Thanks to him and others like Plácido Domingo, or Beverly Sills, who brought acting to opera, there is a wider audience today. New listeners have come to appreciate the great range of opera music from light, lyrical pieces like “The Bell Song” from “Lakmé”, one of my favorites, to beautiful duets and stirring pieces like the “Anvil Chorus” from “Il Trovatore”. 

            

From other disciplines, people like movie producer and director Franco Zeffirelli have brought modern staging, design, and costuming to update many of the classic operas. Opera, once found outside of the great cities only on the radio, has blossomed in productions all over the country.  It’s regularly offered on television and it can be seen live, in HD, in hundreds of movie theaters.  Near us, a series of eleven works, live from the Metropolitan Opera, will be shown in Charlotte at the Stonecrest 22 at Piper Glen. You can check it all on line at metoperafamily.org. 

Try it, you might just like it.


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