Opera Justified

Opera Justified. Those of us who love opera are at great pains to explain ourselves. Not to each other, of course. We must explain to Bob, a friend 40 years past, who averred that opera sounded to him like people doing scales. Or Joanne, who filed opera fans under the tab that reads “snob,” right after museum-goers and before wine connoisseurs.

And, nerds that we are, we try hard to explain, sometimes haughtily, sometimes humbly, rarely succinctly, never convincingly, usually compulsively. The compulsion to explain ourselves can be downright embarrassing. Look at Richard Gere, the billionaire in Pretty Woman, who finds himself constrained to justify his love of opera to a prostitute! And what does he come up with? A threat: you better love it the first time you experience it, baby, or pffft! you won’t be able to love it the rest of your life.

I bet Julia Roberts wished she said the same thing to Richard when they had their first time. Talk about amore in franto (Google it).

Not that I am complaining. Pretty Women is one of the few mass appeal movies in the past 30 years to present opera as something the stars could love without irony or middlebrow condescension.

Gere’s “love it or else” caveat is wrong, that’s all. Sure, I loved opera the very first time I heard it. But that’s me. I’m Italian. My love of opera is probably chromosomal. I love Ella Fitzgerald today, but I didn’t like her much as a younger listener. I went to my first symphony performance at the Philadelphia Academy of Music where I heard Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra when I was 10. I sat through it all but was not awake at the end.

Two years ago I went to hear the same orchestra — well, it was called the Philadelphia Orchestra, but they were probably different people, like with the Rockettes. The point is, I was not awake at the end. Much as I love opera, symphonic classical music puts me happily to sleep. OK, I do like that Lone Ranger theme, the first eight notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, and, if it counts, the Grand March from Aida, which probably doesn’t count because people sing in it.

Musically, when we start to love what we love depends on many factors and by no means always on a genetic predisposition lying in wait for that first exposure.

There are many doors by which to step into the thrall of opera. The music itself is one such portal. The greatest operas start as a dollop of black liquid in the reservoir of the composer’s inkwell. With only genius and a sharpened feather as weapons, the creator dips into the murky pool and tears from its depths the several discrete pieces of sound that will merge, blend, and communicate one with the other forging the melody that once brought into being upon the parchment cannot be erased from the hearts of those who drink it in. Imbibing ink may be a gimpy metaphor, but you get the point.

Story grabs some. Every opera is a narrative, always dramatic, melo or otherwise. Be it Mimi, Canio, or that other prostitute in Pretty Woman, Violetta (the one who wasn’t rescued in time), operas tell tales. I got the impression that’s what hooked Julia Roberts, and that’s what hooks a lot of people on opera. You enter, live, and leave a soul searing slice of someone else’s struggle with love and hate, joy and sorrow, derring do and tuberculosis.

In my opinion, though, what most frequently starts the neophyte on the road to operatic junkieism is bigness, plain and simple. The spectacle, the glitter, the crowded stage, the overpowering orchestration, and most of all, the very big notes of very big singing. Many of us remember the thrilling moment when we first heard Dame Southerland’s impossible resonance or Miss Sills’ preposterous flexibility, Björling’s exquisite precision or Lanza’s ear-popping power.

Those gatekeepers of old, from Caruso to Pavarotti, from Pons to Price, they had the key, the capacity to lure us through the doorway and startle us into a mesmerizing world of outsized talent, from composition to performance, a massive team enterprise whose sole aspiration is greatness.

It is a greatness achieved only rarely, in a searing and transcendent moment of unutterable alignment. The moment, when it comes, is always worth the wait. And never, ever, needs to be explained.