Opera

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

Tom and I went to an opera at the weekend. I normally don't bother with opera unless someone I know is in it, because it's not really my thing, but his parents were enthusiastic (I hadn't realised his mother is treasurer of the university operatic society) and I figured I'd give it a go.
Donizetti L'elisir d'amore. Which is a comic opera. I don't generally like comedies either, but I hadn't paid enough attention to notice that might not be the best match.

Well, the singing and playing was exquisite, the costuming somewhat odd but nothing to complain about the direction. The surtitles were somewhat lacking in panache, but the diction of the singers good enough that i could mostly follow along, despite my Italian vocab being largely conspic by its a.

All in all, fair enough, but not my cup of tea.


But, I like musicals. Tom doesn't see a distinction, which I found interesting in itself. I can see the musical style as a defining characteristic, but often operas are similar to oratorios in stlye, and I tend to like those. Could it be storyline? I mean, I love Hugo so no surprise I love Les Mis, for example. Give me an opera in the same vein as 1776 and Hamilton, and maybe I'll go for that too? But instead, they often seem to have RomCom storylines, and I just find that dull.

So why do I like the one and not the other? Or are there operas out there for me, just not the ones I normally get recommended? I'm reminded of when I first liked whisky, after years of people offering 'accessible' whiskies I disliked, it was only when I tried Laphroig that I really started to appreciate whisky. Is it possible that I'm starting at the wrong end of opera?

Also, where does one draw a line between musical and opera?

Comments

[fivemack]

I think it's quite difficult to draw a line between musical and opera: maybe the amount of time for which the chorus is on stage, but there are chorus parts in Evita and it's sung through.

I think there's a continuum that goes from something like Verdi's Falstaff, through something like this Donizetti, through HMS Pinafore to Oklahoma!

Rent is called a sung-through musical; La Boheme is an opera; Rent is pretty clearly a remake of La Boheme.

Thinking of it more, I wonder if there's a first-person versus third-person distinction; opera arias are often about the characters' inner feelings, whilst most of the big pieces in Evita are clearly addressed at the audience.

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

For that matter, I didn't much care for Rent as I recall, so maybe it is about storyline. La Boheme was the last opera I saw actually, someone I knew had a production that was showing in the cinema.

[aldabra]

Half a dozen posts further down, I notice someone saying "Also I learned she really likes Caruso*, even while disavowing a taste for opera." [Footnote deleted.]

I know little of opera, and haven't heard of Caruso, but this looked like the kind of coincidence one might not want to ignore.

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

Ooh, thank you.

[juliet]

I like musicals and don't much like opera, but for me it's in large part about vocal style -- in particular I'm not keen on operatic sopranos and the music that tends to be written to showcase them. (In musicals the soprano solos are likely to be my least favourite bits, too.) I think there's some sort of musical continuum going on here but I'm not sure where the boundaries lie. Curiously, I prefer sung-through musicals (which I suppose are more like opera) to songs+speech; I sometimes find the suspension of disbelief harder with the "intermittently bursting into song" style than with "it's all just singing".

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

I tend to prefer sung through musicals too, although that's mostly because I often first encounter musicals through either the score or the soundtrack.