An Ode to Opera

Alright, for those of you who do not know this (i.e. you've not spoken to me in any meaningful way in the last 4 months or so), I officially own up to my appreciation-bordering-on-obsession of opera. My exposure to opera began in high school at the Seattle Opera with the school outreach program. As a budding theatre nerd, I was enraptured by the spectacle of it all and I've always had a special place in my heart for classical music. Sure, it can get a bit boring and having to read super-titles gets old (and can honestly hurt the neck and/or eyes), but, to me, opera was the perfect bread of theatricality, magic, and drama.

Then, for about five years, my exposure to opera lay dormant as I lived amongst the cornfields in Iowa and the cold tundra of Maine. But when I moved to Dallas and a theatre job turned out to be anything but fun, I found myself working at The Dallas Opera in the box office. And one of the perks of working at TDO was getting to see the final dress rehearsal of the operas. I was transported back to the days in high school when I felt enveloped by the production and transported away to Rome or Paris or Algiers. The orchestration swept over me and the arias carried away my heart. Even trying to explain how enamored I am of the opera here seems to be inadequate. Just trust me, to me, opera is breathtaking in every way: visually, aurally, emotionally.

I was sad at the close of the 2007-08 season when I had to leave TDO because I had grown to appreciate the work I was doing and the people there are, by far, those most fantastic group of artists and art-lovers you will ever meet. I was also sad because the new Winspear Opera House was opening and I would have loved to have been a part of the inaugural season. But life takes us where it will, and so I left for graduate school in Greensboro, NC.

At which point I began to sense the hold that opera had on me. It manifested itself when I created a design of La Boheme for a class project which drew upon my experience sitting in the audience in Seattle and Dallas (and subsequently won me the first place in the scenic design competition at KC/ACTF). But there was still a feeling of nagging loss until, in March 2009, I was able to see the final show at the Music Hall at Fair Park of The Italian Girl in Algiers and was blown away by the complexity and beauty of it all once more.

Now, as TDO counts down to the the world premier of a new opera based on Melville's Moby Dick, I am sad that I won't get to be a part of that magic. Fortunately, I have made plans to see Faust at The San Francisco Opera in June and have been keeping my eyes out for an opera company tackling Wagner's Ring Cycle (which has been on my list of "must sees" since high school). As any of my friends can tell you, opera has become my newest artistic obsession and I want to fill my life with live performances (sorry, CDs and live broadcasts are just not the same) until I die. I can't wait to be like the little old ladies I worked with at The Dallas Opera who could tell stories about all of the different versions of La Boheme they had seen (as well as fret continuously about where their season seats would be). Perhaps, if I get to really design a few operas in my lifetime, that would be pretty cool too.