Sometimes it feel like the best way to find an aproach to a subject as vast as this is to feels your way in. Think less, feel more.
In the 3 days that I've been on board with the project amongst the many hours I've realised that this Opera, is powerful stuff. It has that magical quality that tells your brain to put goose pimples on your skin. It's easy to get swept away. But there are distinctive moments that I can grab with both hands, my ladder into the dizzy heights.
On Wednesday evening, Mark Tatlow talked us through through a 101 of musical and operatic basics. He began the talk by saying that he's a musical analyst, stripping the music down to the bare vibrations that make us feel a certain way. (Mind stick number 1.) He later went on to talk about, the trend in opera to return to the previous 'base' in order to move forward. Que mind stick number 2, there appeared to be many similarities to the cultural, musical and social backdrop to the first opera with today (but much more on this in another post). In the beginning opera we learned from a letter written by the son of opera founder, Giovanni (I need to check that last name) that it was intended to 'improve modern music' and 'astonish his hearers' it did this by producing a sound which combined 'imitated speech' with 'elegance', in a clean purity. This left listeners 'speechless with amazement'. So I think that becomes my new experiential aim: astonished and speechless with amazement!
Ledgend has it that Beethoven cut the legs off his piano in order to feel the music he was composing and you only have to listen to the first 40 seconds of
Beach Boys' Good Vibrations to get that warm fuzzy summer feeling. Vibrations connect us physically to what we understand we can see and hear. They are a natural warning system and a stimulus for pleasure and relaxation.But what are vibrations that make us feel despair or elation, and how do we combine them into a journey or an opera?
How is the experience of opera intensified when vibration becomes the primary instrument for composing?
The second moment of the last 3 days that I cannot dislodge from my head is, the reactionof one audience member. A regular opera goer, a fan I guess you could say both professionally and personally invested in the opera.
" I cried when I saw it the first time, and I cried now as well. Fantastic, [opera] at it's best"
What is it about something's ability to move us to tears that makes us value it so highly? We give great accolade to those who are able to reduce to a steady flow of blubbering. Personally I'd like to think that going to opera and leaving feeling energized, motivated and on top of the world would rate pretty high, but it seem we are rather more melancholic than that. Wrench our emotions through a roller-coaster and we've had our $400 worth of opera.
Can we design an opera with the intent of reducing the audience to tears, and does this make it more attractive to an audience?
