The Rest is Opera – What’s it For?
There is a myth about opera, that it is elite and inaccessible. Spool back two hundred years and opera was the cinema of its day – popular entertainment. Handel played to packed London houses. The 20th century brought the risk of rarefication; increasingly inaccessible contemporary works have driven audiences away. Not much sign of reversing that trend in the 21st.
Does it matter if audiences dwindle, opera companies become increasingly dependent on government largesse and donors who can withdraw their support at a whim? You bet it does.
Opera is the one artform that confronts the senses full on. Sound, vision, and emotion combine to immerse audiences in profound artistic experiences – like Wagner’s Ring Cycle – and breathtakingly melodic moral tales – Mozart’s Don Giovanni. There is too much to lose. The medium does not deserve to go gentle into that good night of obscurity.
The advent of the internet has been a boon. Websites like Operavision.eu, Medici TV and the Met’s Opera on Demand, combined with a burgeoning number of live webcasts, have huge potential to revive popularity. Artists use the web to lift the curtain of mystery, sharing masterclasses and explaining the medium.
Two stunning exemplars; Sir Anthony Pappano, former Music Director of The Royal Opera House and Joyce DiDonato, the American mezzo soprano. Both provide electrifying online accounts of what opera means to them and buzz as they explain how it shines a searchlight into human emotions, stronger than any other. They – and many of their peers – are true ambassadors of the artform.
I’ve been an opera fan since my teens, raised on Scottish Opera productions when the young company was, in its 60s and 70s heyday, under Sir Alexander Gibson. In 2017 I was asked to become the opera critic for ReactionLife, an online current affairs and cultural publication. In a fit of unaccustomed humility, I tried to insist I was not a critic in the conventional sense – more an avid opera flaneur.
I lost that argument, so have been writing regular “crits” of productions ever since. They form the basis of this searchable website. So, I hope before you go to an unfamiliar production you might find it here. I am grateful to Iain Martin of ReactionLife for allowing me licence to range freely over my own preferences, prejudices and passions.
Operatic home is the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. But my travels in the US also take me to Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Glimmerglass and Charleston.
Beyond America, destinations such as Kyiv, Muscat, Paris, Lisbon, Bordeaux, Spain, Germany and Italy figure. Of course, Scottish Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and English National Opera’s Colosseum are haunts, along with the usual suspects, country house festivals in the summer season – Glyndebourne, Nevill Holt, Longborough, some even favoured by my long-suffering wife, Anne.
An epic adventure was to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia for a performance of The Barber of Seville, surtitles in Mongolian. The production was shared with Lyric Opera Chicago. The Lake Michigan skyline was an interesting backdrop for the Mongolian cast. Truly, opera without frontiers.
I am a devotee of small opera companies and performing arts groups. Young artists – mostly struggling – found them, work their socks off and mostly provide excellent, cut price, innovative performances. They nurture the main stage stars of tomorrow.
The work of the UK’s Grimeborne, (yes, that’s a self-deprecating joke), New York’s New Camerata and Florida’s Illuminarts is the tip of a talent iceberg that deserves attention and support.
I hope the content will entertain as much as inform. My journey to opera has been profoundly moving, has made me many friends along the way. Perhaps I can go some way to making it your journey, too.
In the interests of full disclosure, I serve on the board of the Metropolitan Opera Club, New York, am an occasional co-presenter of podcast Opera for Everyone, hosted by the inimitable Pat Wright, from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And have the privilege of being Longborough Festival Opera’s ambassador in the US.
The website features a Scuttlebutt section – bloggy news, gossip and – with luck – scandal. I can’t be everywhere, so have delegated that page to a critic’s most faithful friend. When Muckle Malone volunteered to take up the white dog’s burden, how could I reasonably refuse?
I hope you enjoy this website. Support and violent disagreement are welcomed as equal friends. Do get in touch with comments and suggestions, especially about productions that deserve more attention. My purpose is to bring life to opera – and opera into your life – if you’re a bit of a sceptic. Yes, it IS for you. And if after all that you still hate it – blame the dog.
