Previously on Saturdays, I’ve been doing personal reviews and opinions about various musical theater shows. But I’ve got a secret…I really like opera too!
Hear me out.
Musical theater comes from opera. Opera is a vocal and instrumental artform, first debuted in the 1600’s. It has endured since then, and gone through evolutions of its own as well. We also have operetta, such as Pirates of Penzance. And through those evolutions, speaking was incorporated, and eventually musical theater as we know it today was born.
People find opera inaccessible and think that it’s fancy or high-brow. Let me be the first to tell you that it’s definitely not fancy! There are plenty of dirty jokes and innuendos in opera. There are also pretty silly plot lines and goofy antics. We have to adjust our idea of what an opera is before we can appreciate it.
Many operas are in another language, but usually only because that’s the language the composer spoke. There are plenty of English language operas. And even if the opera is in a foreign language, most opera performances have supertitles with translations so you are easily able to follow along with the performance.
We’re going to do some operas here and there, and I just wanted to prepare you for that. I encourage you to watch the operas as well, just to see if you like it. You might be surprised!