Opera… you’ve got to be kidding!

One of the unexpected surprises of reaching middle age is a sudden interest in opera.  Up until about two years ago I had never given it a thought.  Although I had gone to my first opera in my mid-40s (La Boehme at Glimmerglass Opera in Copperstown, NY), I wasn’t that enthralled; in hindsight I guess I wasn’t ready.

Sue purchased tickets at Seattle Opera for the 2002-03 season.  I wasn’t the least bit interested in going.  She arranged with our friend Gregory, an opera goer for more than 30 years and a real amateur authority on the subject (more on that later) to accompany her.  At the time Seattle Opera was in the midst of building a new opera house and was using a modified hockey arena next door as the opera house.  While surprisely functional, it was certainly less than ideal. When she couldn’t make one of the performances I decided to fill in.  The Sunday afternoon performance was Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.  There was something about the whole experience that grabbed me.  Never really a patron of the arts, I certainly wasn’t in my element but I just enjoyed the pace of everything.  Perhaps it is my longtime fascination with anyone who truly excels at any endeavor.  To hear the human voice do amazing gyrations, to hear a woman fill a hockey arena with masterfully controlled sound is awe inspiring (Ewa Podles in Norma was simply stunning).  That week I bought tickets for the remainder of the season, I just had to keep going. 

What was fortuitous is having Gregory as a resource.  He is an amazing reservoir of opera knowledge.  He owns a vast collection of opera music with multiple versions of many operas, in fact it seems to be the exception that he has one of anything.  A while back I mentioned that I heard that Franco Correlli had died last year after listening to the NY Metropolitan Opera’s weekly radio broadcast intermission discussion (away fascinating) talking about his career.  The next Sunday I had three disks of music spanning his entire career.  I regularly get supplied with CDs of upcoming operas. 

One great learning experience is to listen to different performances of the same opera.  Every artist brings a unique element to a roll.  My first experience with really understanding this was La Traviata.  I first heard this marvelous Verdi opera on a Met broadcast.  Soprano Renae Fleming played Violetta and at the end of Act I she did something with her voice that I had never heard before called coloratura.  Gregory subsequently supplied me with several versions, one of my favorites is a bargain bin version on the VOX label (1996) featuring Virginia Zeani as Violetta. Another favorite features Montserrat Caballe along with Carlo Bergonzi, and Sherrill Milnes (1967 RCA).  For Christmas I received a version with Joan Sutherland, Bergonzi, Merrill and Pritchard (Decca 1963 recently remastered).  Although Joan Sutherland is fabulous as one would expect, I prefer Caballe.

A month or two after hearing it from the Met I discovered the opera was playing in a few months up in Vancouver, BC; we had tickets in a matter of minutes.  By the time the Vancouver performance rolled around I was thoroughly familiar with the opera from beginning to end.  The live performance did not disappoint, I loved it.  There is nothing like finally connecting the music to the story dramatically.  Once you make that connection it makes subsequent listenings all the richer since one really knows what is going on (language and unusual names does make it hard to keep things straight).

Interesting Opera Links:

Met Opera Guild

Met Radio Broadcast Schedule for this year

Aria Database

Seattle Opera