Opera – the good, the bad and the really wicked!
Chances are, even if you’ve never even stepped inside a theatre, you know some opera already! How about that World Cup song that Paul Potts sang when he won “Britain’s Got Talent”? Opera. Or the British Airways advert music? Opera. Or the music to the Stella Artois beer adverts? Opera! Advertisers love it, film makers use it all the time, and yet people often say opera is ‘snobby’ or ‘inaccessible’. Rubbish! The composers who wrote opera created it for one reason – for people to enjoy. Just like Andrew Lloyd-Webber or Cameron Macintosh, most opera composers wanted to fill their theatres with happy audiences who had paid good money for their seats!
In all fairness, opera did start out as entertainment for the really rich, such as kings and emperors. The first operas were more like ballets with singing, as much about movement as music. However, as the rich people who had paid for these shows began to run short of cash, opera composers needed to change their tunes – literally.
Probably the most famous composer whose operas became really popular in the theatres of Europe was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Some of his operas were indeed written for wealthy patrons, such as Emperor Joseph II of Austria. Joseph II may have provided the cash for the operas, but he didn’t always appreciate what he had paid for; he famously told Mozart that his opera “The Marriage of Figaro” had “Far too many notes”! Mozart, however, didn’t restrict himself to working with the nobility. He teamed up with one of the great impresarios of his time, one Emanuel Schikaneder, to create a show about a young girl who is in the clutches of a magical cult, and the young man who is sent by her mother to rescue her – and kill the cult leader. But, it turns out that the cult members are actually the good guys, and the girl’s mum has some serious hangups… Sound like a soap opera? That’s exactly what Mozart intended (if soap operas had been invented in the 1780s, of course!) The opera may be called The Magic Flute, (Die Zauberflöte in the original German), and feature boys with superpowers and three rather foxy ladies who may or may not be witches, but deep down it’s about growing up and making your own decisions. It’s also more like a musical than you may expect, with dialogue and lots of comedy from the hero’s sidekick, the bird-catcher Papageno.
After Mozart, opera became much more commercialised. People began to flock to theatres to see the latest operas, complete with their celebrity lead singers. Composers borrowed from the latest novels and adapted them for the stage, just as tv and film does today with famous books, and audiences couldn’t get enough of them.
Perhaps at this point it might be useful to look at what an opera actually is. The Oxford dictionary defines opera as “A dramatic work in one or more act, set to music for singers and instrumentalists”. The word itself dates from the mid 17th century, from the Latin word meaning 'work’. So, how is an opera different from, say, a play or a musical?
In most operas, there are no spoken words, everything is sung from beginning to end. In Mozart’s day, composers replaced the dialogue between big numbers – the solos (arias), duets and chorus numbers, etc – with a form of sung dialogue, called recitative, or recit for short. The recit moves the action along, whilst the big numbers are more reflective. You can see the same effect in modern musicals such as Les Miserables; songs like “Castle on a Cloud” or “Bring Him Home” don’t actually advance the action much, but let you know what the characters who are singing these songs are feeling. It’s the same in opera.
Yet opera is more than just music – it’s drama too, so if you are only listening to the music and not watching the story, you’re missing half the action! You’re also missing out on the thrill of seeing it live, which makes a big difference. Just as people love to go and see their favourite pop band live on stage, then nothing beats the excitement of seeing opera live on stage too. As soon as the music starts, you’re on a rollercoaster ride of music, action and emotions, with a story that often makes “Eastenders’ look like a stroll in the park! You can actually feel the music in your body, sense the power of operatic voices almost rattling you in your seat, and yet there will be moments when the whole theatre goes quiet, and everyone is waiting for the next soft note to sound.