In my novel, The Monkey Tribe, a life coach takes his client to his first-ever opera recital. It was fun to go into the head of someone having their first-time exposure to opera, and I thought the readers of Operaville would enjoy it, too.
They climb the broad staircase to
find a mob of socialites in the upstairs reception area, sipping champagne and
chatting up what seems like an actual storm. Ben stops to study the crowd,
launching into lesson mode.
“In
understanding your cause, Jack, I realize that I have spent a lot of time on
the rastafarian/bohemian/beatnik side of the equation, and I didn’t want you to
think that there weren’t similar delights to be plucked from the land of the
hoity-toit. There are, of course, many people who are here mainly to be seen.”
“And
to have their cleavage seen,” says Jack.
“Yes! But I would bet that even the
sixty-year-olds with the teenage breasts have a sincere affection for this
artform, because there is passion in
opera, and violence, and good old-fashioned smut! Not to mention
heartbreakingly beautiful music. Be forewarned, however. Do not listen too
intently; don’t get intellectual about it. Just soak it in. I think you’ll like
it.”
They
head downstairs to a side entrance. The theater’s interior is so stunning that
Jack can’t quite maintain his balance. He decides to keep his eyes on his
shoetops until they are safely seated. Once there, he lifts his gaze to the
ceiling and finds one half of an African sun, rays of gold, orange and brown
slithering toward the stage like desert snakes. The proscenium arch is outlined
with Hellenic figures in gold plate. The ceiling over the balcony is covered
with rough geometrics, painted in Western shades of green, brown, rusty red.
“This
theater is…”
“Yes
it is,” says Ben. “Seventy million dollars’ worth. And wait till you hear the
acoustics.”
Jack
glances at his program, filled with foreign words. He expects to be entirely
lost.
“I
expect you might feel a little lost,” says Ben. “Now, just to be clear, if you
were at an actual opera, they have
translations above the stage – supertitles – so there’s no reason you can’t
follow the story. With a recital, however, you are sadly out of luck.
Fortunately, you are seated next to a genius.” He pulls a small notepad from
his breast pocket. “I brought this with me, and I will sketch a few notes as we
go along. You will find a handy floor light next to your seat.”
“Oh.
Okay.”
The
audience starts applauding, for no apparent reason, but then the conductor, a
white-haired man with finely rimmed glasses, pokes his head over the railing of
the orchestra pit. Two tall men walk to center stage, both wearing dark suits,
and the conductor starts the unseen orchestra into a slow, sweeping intro. To
Jack, it sounds like a sunrise. The black man, looking a bit like the pop star
Prince, sings in a high voice to the other man, who has an olive complexion and
curly hair, and responds in a lower voice. It seems as if they are telling
stories to each other. Ben hands him a note: They’re talking about a hot chick.
The
next performer is a slender Indian woman in a gown of burnt orange, singing
from an opera called La Traviata. She
begins with a stunning fusillade of notes that rankles Jack’s ears – he’s not
used to such high, piercing sounds. Then she stops suddenly, and goes into a
dreamy, waltz-like ballad. Ben’s note reads, She’s hot for a guy, but doesn’t want to give up her independence.
Jack thinks immediately of Audrey.
The
next piece is from Il Trovatore
(which sort of sounds like “troubador”) and features a chorus of two dozen
singers. The men are in tuxes, the women in various ensembles of black. Two of
the men push carts onstage holding anvils. This seems very odd, until the
refrain arrives and the men pound on the anvils with hammers. Jack recalls the
tune from a TV commercial; the familiarity gives him a small thrill, an island
upon which his hard-working senses can rest.
At
the end of the anvil song, a slender woman in a spangled white dress comes out
to sing to the chorus. What’s with all
the skinny women? he thinks. Aren’t
opera singers supposed to be fat? The woman has dark, angular features and
an Italian-looking nose with a slight hook, giving her the appearance of a sexy
witch. Next to the white chocolate of the Indian woman’s voice, hers is a dark
mocha, and she seems to be telling them a story filled with foreboding. Ben
finally scrawls a note and passes it Jack’s way: Downtrodden rebels led by a charismatic witch. And yes, you’ve heard
the Anvil Chorus before.
It
goes on this way for an hour and a half, different people singing, Ben
summarizing the action. The music grows on Jack, and he begins to understand
some of the things that the singers are after. Many of their notes have little
lives all their own, growing and lessening like restless creatures. The best
singers fashion their songs into conversations, as if they are simply talking
in music and this is a perfectly normal way to behave.
Soon
they are down to the final piece. A man and a woman enter the stage; the man
carries a chair, which he places at a spot that seems to be preordained. The
man has a medium-sized torso and legs, but his chest is quite broad; he has
thick, slightly wild brown hair, and the kind of neatly trimmed beard that
seems typical of opera singers. The woman is short and busty, dressed in a
blueblack sequined jacket and a long, dark skirt with a slit along one leg. She
has thick, dark hair arranged in a fanciful up-do, dark eyes, a broad nose.
When the man comes to take her hands she smiles, her eyes squinting
pleasurably. He gestures toward the chair; she sits to listen to him.
The
man’s voice – what they must call “tenor” – has a bright resonance that stands
out from the others. With a gun to his head, Jack would say that it has a
“ping,” an electric quality that slices through the air. He reaches the crest
of the song, a melody that rises and falls like an arch, holding his arms as if
he’s about to embrace someone. Ben passes Jack a note: Trying to impress hot neighbor-chick with life story.
He
ends with a grand flourish. After the applause, the woman rises to tell her own
life story. But of course, thinks
Jack. This is every first date I’ve ever
had. She is timid, unsure, but her emotions seem to take hold of her; as
her singing rises in force Jack notices something extraordinary about the
woman’s voice. It’s nearly radioactive. It doesn’t merely slice the air like
the man’s voice, it spins wildly, like those whirligig rockets that shoot away
from the center of pyrotechnic explosions. The woman shapes her phrases like
the other singers – lessening, growing, slipping away, returning from nowhere –
but she gives no indication of working
at this, and somewhere through the Italian words, Jack understands her
completely. She is smitten with this new man, but also afraid – that he will
discover some dark, secret thing about her, that she will scare him away. As a
poker player would put it, her “tell” is her tremendous passion – it’s not
entirely appropriate to the moment. She seems to realize this herself; at the
end of the aria, she rambles into a string of small, apologetic syllables.
The
audience responds with thunderous applause; several people down front stand
from their seats. The woman keeps her eyes on the tenor, staying in character. It must be very difficult, thinks Jack, to take all that love without exploding into
ecstasy. Finally, the orchestra starts back up, and the man sings a swaying
melody, the tone of which is something like, “What are you worried about?
Everything will be fine!” (Oh yeah, he’s in love.) The woman joins in, and then
they do an unusual thing: they link arms and walk offstage. Even after they’re
out of sight, they continue to sing, the woman rising to a high final note, the
man just beneath her. The notes go on and on, and when they finally cut off the
audience lets out a roar, punctuated by individual exclamations of “Ho!” and
“Woo!” A woman behind them yells “Brawvee!” which makes no sense at all. The
man and woman return onstage for their bows; after a moment, they’re joined by
the rest of the evening’s performers. The audience rises, section by section,
until they’re all on their feet.
The
applause goes on for a long time. Jack finds his arms tiring out, and as he
lets them dangle for a moment he realizes that he has not yet received his note
from Ben. When he looks to his left, however, he finds Ben transfixed by the
scene, clapping wildly, tears streaming down his cheeks. This opera is strong medicine, thinks Jack. He shakes his arms and
goes back to clapping.
They
follow the crowd as it oozes from the theater, and Ben cuts left to the
restrooms – a welcome vision for Jack, who has watched 90 minutes of opera
directly following an enormous Thai iced coffee. Back in the hallway, Ben leads
him outside to a patio area covered in squares of blue-gray granite. Ben stops
to study a wall fountain, rivulets of water murmuring a tall rectangle of black
stone.
“That
last piece,” says Ben. “Puccini. La Boheme. The Garret
Scene. Most astonishing stretch of melody in opera. Three ‘hit
songs,’ one after the other: ‘Che gelida manina,’ ‘What small, cold hands’; ‘Mi
chiamano Mimi,’ ‘I call myself Mimi’; ‘O soave fanciulla,’ ‘Sweet, beautiful
girl.’ The poor poet Rodolfo discovers a neighbor girl, Mimi, whose candle has
blown out. He tells her of his life. ‘I am a poet. How do I live? I live!’ She
tells him of her life as a seamstress, and all the sweet little things that
bring her joy: the rooftops of Paris, the first light of spring, rosebuds in a
vase. What she doesn’t mention is that she is dying of consumption, which is
why she pays such close attention to these small things. And then poof! Rodolfo
and Mimi are in love, and they run off to the Café Momus to join their friends.
Love happens very quickly in the opera. It’s partly a technical problem. It
takes much longer to sing words than to speak them, so everything must be
compressed. But still, it’s always a… surprise… when it comes.”
Note: the final tenor/soprano duet describes a performance at the Opera San Jose 25th Anniversary Gala with two of my best opera friends, Christopher Bengochea and Barbara Divis.
Michael J. Vaughn At the time, I was entering my tenth year as an opera critic and finally beginning to GET it. And getting passionate about it. Then I did an interview with a budding opera singer, Jennifer der Terossian, who possessed a gorgeous voice and a great opera-brain to go along with it. I've always told fiction writers to write about your passions, so I decided to pursue an opera novel. I took Jennifer out to dinner, parked a tape recorder next to her enchiladas, and asked her every question I could about opera and the perspective of the singer. She was invaluable as far as far as getting the character of Gabriella right, and the opening scene - in which young Gabriella torments her neighbors by screaming for hours on end - is absolutely Jennifer's story. And yes, one night the cops actually showed up.
Kirsten C. Kunkle Fabulous! I'm always afraid that my singing will lead to neighborly complaints and police intervention, too!