What's So Great About Opera? Well...Everything!

Sep 25, 2011
Becca Rader

Jose Carreras in Zagreb - Ivica Drusany | Dreamstime.com

Opera has thrived for over 400 years because there is nothing else like it. When it is great, it can take your breath away. Here are some other reasons.

When I was eight my grandmother made me watch Pablo Casals playing the cello on our 12-inch black and white Admiral television. On my ninth birthday she demanded that I see Swan Lake performed by the San Francisco Ballet. And then sometime after I turned 12, she dragged me to the opera.

I say dragged, because like most hip young kids I assumed it would be dreadful. These were the years of The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead. What possibly could be entertaining about seeing a fat lady scream for three hours? The opera was Puccini's Madama Butterfly and it was performed at the San Diego Civic Theatre. I slumped in my chair, rolled my eyes and tried to avoid my grandmother's dagger stares that seemed to shout: "sit up and look like you are enjoying this or I'll dismember you." And then a curious thing happened. The soprano, who sang the role of Butterfly began to sing the aria called "Un bel di vedremo" and the hair on my arms started to rise. I was transported to some far galaxy and experienced a bliss that only great music can deliver. In short, this one opera experience had radically shifted my perspective and my life would never be the same.

My reminiscence of my first experience aside, I could give you a thousand reasons as to why you should try the opera, at least once. I'll start with five solid arguments.

Opera is multi-sensory. We live in a world where most people cannot live without their smartphone or iPad. No one knows how to sit still, even at the movie theater. But opera demands this of you, and it succeeds. Because it combines ALL classical art forms: orchestra, chorus, dance and visual art, all the senses are satisfied. Moreover, when there are four+ principal singers, an orchestra of 70 musicians, a chorus of 30 or as many as 100, and an army of backstage crew (carpenters, lighting designers, technicians, wig and makeup artists, etc.) you feel the impact of the creative energy. Opera offers a "nuclear" experience because of the sheer number of creative individuals all focused solely on your satisfaction and enjoyment of the end product.
The Power of the human voice is amazing. People often ask me what makes opera so different from musical theater. The answer is simple. Unlike musical theater, opera offers no amplification, i.e., no microphones. What this means is that in order for a singer to project their voice over 1,500, or up to as many as 3,000, heads in a large theater, they must be one of the finest, most powerful singers in the entire world. In short, you are experiencing a miracle of nature every time you attend a grand opera production. And like my first operatic experience, it can literally be hair-raising.
Opera has real drama. Remember that great scene in Pretty Woman, the one where Julia Roberts' character goes to the opera for the first time? She ends up weeping as Violetta in La traviata dies of consumption and a broken heart. That's what real drama will do to your soul and opera has drama in spades: world-class betrayal, heart-wrenching unrequited love, unflinching devotion and heroic courage- oh, and some good old-fashioned murder and mayhem thrown in for good measure.
It gets better and better the more you experience it. I read Catcher in the Rye in high school and I loved it, but I doubt I'll ever read it again, and it is the same with most movies I've seen. They were great, and now I'm done with them. But opera is different in that regard. It is an intellectual art form in the sense that the more I read about a singer, a director, a composer, or the history of a specific piece of music, the more I want to experience an opera again so that I can see it, feel it and interpret it in a different way. Each production of Rigoletto, Aida, Don Giovanni, or Deadman Walking is completely different- partly, because each production has a new cast, with a new combination of voices, and partly, because often the director has re-imagined the sets and staging. I discover something unique in each performance. I notice nuances, intended or unintended by the composer, during each visit.
Supertitles make the story jump off the stage. Supertitles, translations that are discretely projected either on the backs of seats or above the stage, have been one of the revolutionizing agents of the opera industry. For the English-speaking world (that isn't fluent in Italian, German, French or Spanish) this invention has been phenomenal. Now great swaths of the population can attend the opera and do more than just enjoy great music- they can follow the story, word-for-word. The National Endowment for the Arts claims that opera attendance increased by 25% during the first 10 years of supertitles alone. Who would have thought that the written word would have brought a whole new generation to ancient music?

If you are a person who is tired of seeing a world in black and white and wants some multi-sensory, albeit dramatic, escapism for a few hours, why not try opera? You never know, it might just change your life!