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Opera is one of my passions. On this site I hope
to make it one of yours, as well; at the very least
I hope to convince you to give it a try. Opera is
about music and emotion. True, the plots, ldon't
always make the best of sense and the characters
don't always make rational decisions. But, this
isn't real life. This is entertainment. It is music
with drama. And it's among the very best of entertainment,
too. On stage, opera is a feast for the eyes as
well as the ears.
It's the absolute distillation of emotion into
sound .................. but, what does that mean?
This: a soprano's range is such that for one third
of it the listener cannot understand what
she is singing.You may think you can, because you
know the words lut in fact, you cannot. Her
voice has passed into a frequency range where the
vowels cannot be distinguished from each other.
A good tenor is in that place for almost a quarter
of his range, too. The words become pure sound,
and the sound is pure emotion, melding with the
music of the orchestra to produce an experience
unequalled.
Wagner once wrote that in opera, the words were
"the obedient daughter of the music." Peter Allen,
longtime announcer, writes "the miracle of music
can transform a seemingly unworthy story into a
profoundly satisfying emotional experience. And
even successful stories and plays have been given
deeper and more lasting success by transformation
into operas--La Bohéme, Carmen, La Traviata,
Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, are but
a few examples."
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