Four hundred eighteen years... If you're thinking that's a long time for anything to have been around, it's not that long a period over which something can evolve. Opera, archaic though some may think it, has become quite the sophisticated and edgy (To all my kindred spirits, go on and cringe, cringe, cringe.) art form in only four centuries. Once upon a time, the equation of Medieval chant multiplied by what we now consider to be classical sounds (a little violin jammin', a little lute pluckin') plus some chorus/folk-inspired vocals, with a few words on demigods thrown in, equaled the operatic norm. Nowadays, audiences aren't surprised (though they might in some cases be justifiably dismayed) to see synthesizers in the orchestra pit. More than that, as literature has progressed to make ample room for the science fiction and horror genres, blood and mechanics have become familiar to fans of the performing arts everywhere. Of course, this gradual metamorphosis comes with a little weirdness, though a few of the bizarre ideas composers and librettists have had in the present century and the last have actually been pulled off with a surprising level of creativity. Some that have yet to be staged promise plenty enough of the imaginative and odd to reinforce my hope for yet another "Golden Age" of opera composition.

Moby Dick: Prima Balena of Opera

The First Whale of literature made a subliminal operatic debut with the Dallas Opera in 2010. By subliminal, I do, in fact, mean that Jake Heggie's splashiest smash hit of the same name as Herman Melville's greatest novel doesn't call for the appearance of the book's white titan onstage in any visible sense. That makes the outlandish idea of transferring Ishmael's story from prose line to vocal line a little less... outlandish. So, why did I choose it for this feature? Think about it... How many people do you suppose conjure the words, 'epic disaster on the sea,' when stewing over the next opera they might consider attending? The difficulties the director and designer encountered during the process of mounting the acclaimed original production were complicated enough without the D., itself. I'm more than a little impressed at the work done by Leonard Foglia, who found a way to make the thrill of a chase on broad waters come to colorful life using projections (not unexpectedly) and other media (i.e. decorated ladders to generate the illusion of men in boats). The obvious seeming impossibility of the whole idea (an idea suggested by Heggie's famous friend and collaborator, playwright Terrence McNally) was pointed out well in advance of the initial performance by the Dallas Opera during the conference wherein they commissioned a work from Heggie that, according to their proposal, would center on a subject of the composer's choice. Their response to the words, Moby Dick, was, "Anything else?" The whole thing wound up making a surprisingly stable and practical spectacle of itself, however, as Heggie convinced them it would, solidifying Heggie's reputation as one of the foremost opera composers of the new millennium and shackling fresh opera fans at each of its revivals. Sure, Ishmael doesn't open the opera with his iconic first line, and his name, for whatever reason, has been changed to Greenhorn (erm?), but I don't think Melville's story of a hyper-intelligent whale and his ill-equipped adversary has ever been so delightful (wink).

The Shining: Stephen King-Sized Scares for Opera Fans

For years now we've all been pleasantly uncomfortable watching Jack Torrence trying kill his wife onscreen, but now he's going at her on the opera stage. The Shining isn't the first opera to be based on a novel by everyone's favorite modern wizard of terror, but according to reviews of the sold-out Minnesota Opera premiere, it's definitely the scariest. That's right, opera newbies. You can now get the same experience in a seat at a concert hall or opera house as you can with a ticket to "Blair Witch." Stephen King, himself, rather eloquently panned the 1980 Kubrick film's script and casting, but voiced no qualms about Mark Campbell's libretto. According to Operavore, he approved it within days of reading the final draft, and since then the Minnesota Opera seems to have proven to audiences once and for all that opera truly does teem with modern possibilities by topping this creepy offering with enough musical and visual trimmings to make the hearts of even those who know the story well bust open. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Paul Moravec, has been praised as "a masterful musical dramatist" (Opera News) for his by turns romantic, suspenseful, and terrifying score.

The Secret World of Og: Goblins, Kiddies, and the Loch Ness Monster

Have you ever walked into an opera house with your kids and sat down for a performance with a view to escaping from the world of HBO and AMC? If you have, I'm sure that at least once or twice after a finale you've spent the drive home wondering in certain disappointment if you've just seen an opera or a sung and staged episode of Game of Thrones. Happen to be on a hunt for kid-friendly operatic entertainment? Mozart's ever-famed fairy tale (title unnecessary) won't be the first option to come to mind for much longer. The Sarasota Youth Opera will present the American Premiere of Dean Burry's The Secret World of Og, based upon the bestselling Pierre Berton children's book, on November 12, 2016. Watch and listen as a family of people-in-development descend into a world where the only word known to anyone (goblin/gremlin/gnome creatures all over the place) is 'og.' Kidnapping, a little action a la Loch Ness, and child endangerment are a couple of things parents should be aware of, though anyone who's been to see a Pixar film knows these little no-nos can be a lot more fun to watch on a screen (or a stage) than they are to read on paper-- figuratively.

The Cunning Little Vixen: Into the Woods Away from the House

During the years between 1900 and 1930, opera composers were among many who started losing patience and reserve as the seeming fall of the world began. Expressionism and realism burst onto the artistic scene, each a side to a well-preserved and now widely cherished coin that represents the basic essence of modern classical music. Leos Janacek (pronounced YAHN-uh-CHEK, for those who, like me, don't speak Czech) assisted in its creation for around half a century, carving his name into heads (realism) and tails (expressionism), along with the names of his most celebrated operas. On heads, we find among other black pepper grains of daily life a drowned infant and a suicide. On tails, we find something a little weirder... for opera, at least: Vixen Sharp-Ears, a fox with a love for life in the wild who escapes the conditions of domestic petship only to wind up on her wannabe owner's wall. I suppose that if your kids like crying during Disney movies, you could give a family night at a performance of The Cunning Little Vixen, the very opera of which Sharp-Ears is the star, a whirl. It's a story about love, loss, a marriage necessitated by gossip among forest animals, and the natural cycle of life. There's plenty to love if you're like me and have wished that a little more than sustained injuries were the collective result of all the action in "The Fox and the Hound."

Potterhead Mayhem: The Mozart Academy has Gone and Done It...

And by "it" I mean Harry Potter, the opera... or, rather, Harry Potter, Parts 1 and 7, the opera... Either way, I have no video footage of it to post. With the help of some very short and bright-eyed Potter-crazy members of the cast, costuming and set design for the 75-minute one-act was completed with all the necessary finishing touches-- including some clever makeup on the nose of the Academy's Voldemort, Serkan Kocadere-- for the May, 2015 premiere. I guess it's not too weird, but I know none of my pop culture glutton pals have expected scenes from the first and final installments of the 21st Century's most popular fantasy series to be adapted for the opera stage. Opera-loving Ravenclaw that I am, I suppose I couldn't ask for much more, could I? Or...? Okay, so I'm not too happy that the initial run of performances took place in Turkey (far away from any theatre within driving distance from my hermit hole), nor do I think it's purely cynical of me to wonder if the Western World will ever see it at all in view of J.K. Rowling's charitable request that all of the opera's box office earnings be used for the benefit of children in need. Perhaps there is a company out there that is willing to provide necessary assistance to a few hundred precious underage have-nots and can spare the costs??? Anyone (Cough... Met Opera)? Anyone???

​I haven't posted in a long while, I know. I hope to make up for lost time with higher quality posts in the very near future and a newsletter to make every Lucia and Tosca out there wanna die over and over again. I know that personal circumstances are personal. You guys, my awesome readers and fellow opera crazies, are worth as much time as I can put into my work here. Keep being amazing, buds! I'll do my very best to post regularly henceforth.

Two men in tuxedos walk out onto a brightly lit stage. One stops at the center, but the other takes a few more steps and seats himself at an ebony Yamaha. The one standing bows to an audience of hundreds; the pianist nods and smiles. After a short pause, the pianist lowers his head. His fingers begin to flutter over the keyboard. The standing man straightens himself. His eyes narrow, and he suddenly seems overcome by something, lost in a moment of reflection. His voice begins to fill the theatre with soft classical sounds of sadness, each sound responded to with a synonymous tone from the piano. Within moments the audience is enraptured by what can best be described as a whispered musical conversation. After some minutes, the singer closes his eyes, and the pianist lifts his hands. Then a smile crosses the faces of the two musicians as the audience breaks out into applause, and for a moment the emotion of their music fades to a pastel shade of itself.

What's the Essential Difference?

The above scene is more than familiar to the world's classical nuts, and it's only growing more common as more classically trained singers opt for a career that doesn't involve complicated stories, rolling around on the floor, and being suspended five meters above a stage in a superhero suit (Check the news, Stemme fans. This is happening!). It's not because they're lazy. In fact, the no-frills genre they take up requires the development of two skills that opera singers often live out entire careers either not bothering to learn or not having to learn, skills that vocalists can take years of performing to polish: intimacy and subtlety. Some of the greatest concert singers have said that while opera forces one to belt and project, Art Song forces one to actually sing. Of course, that's up for debate, but there's no denying that Art Song, carved out of the operatic genre, is something special, and it's not only so because everything sung in its style is sung with the voice alone.

Let Me Explain...

As a rule, a piano and a voice are the only two instruments required for an Art Song performance, and the hand gesturing that opera singers do is eschewed (fun word, isn't it?) by an Art Song singer. I know... It sounds a little rigid. Why can some of us (me, me, ME!!!) not get enough of this seeming stiffness? Beauty. Yup, that's the real core of it. The balance between the soft and the loud that an Art Song singer is required to keep puts it among the most beautiful of all classical forms. Why make this balance a stipulation? Well, it comes down to poetry. Most of the most famous Art Song is set to great poetry and designed completely around it so that a singer has to tone his or her vocal stylings up a little or down a lot in order to make the words mean in music what the poets meant in letters... and maybe add a bit more color and atmosphere. There is no other classical form that places just as much importance on words as on notes.

Some of the Great Singers and Composers

Franz Schubert's is arguably the most famous Art Song ever composed, and it was he who made the form what we know it to be. Being that his songs were written in German, they are called "lieder." However, there are several other composers who contributed extremely notable art songs, including Piotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Faure, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hans Hotter, Thomas Quasthoff, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf were some of the most famous singers of German Art Song (lieder). Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Boris Christoff, Gerald Finley, Martti Talvela, and Galina Vishnevskaya were and are some of the most famous champions of the Russian branch. Susan Graham is presently one of the outstanding interpreters of French Art Song (melodie). There are styles of Art Song that were developed in Italy, Spain, China, and other nations, too, which have and have had their champions!

The world of Art Song is, indeed, growing, and a rich world it is! If you have a favorite, leave it in a comment below! If you'd like to hear more Art Song, "Like" Everyone's Opera's Facebook page! Until next time, my friends, happy classical listening!

​Image: Hartwig HKD Blowing in the Wind

One thing most opera newbies don't realize is that when all of us crazies get tired of damsels with pasts and brides with issues, we have other places to go, continents of the opera world that were founded and are ruled by composers to whom bloody tunics, dull axes, and murder-happy families were or are the norm. I am not only referring to Richard Strauss, but his shocker tragedy about girl vs. momma, for which I'm completely bonkers, is screaming in my mind and... okay, so I am. "Elektra" is definitely not your usual operatic soiree. Before initially delving into its altar fire, regicide, dance of death chaos, I wasn't prepared for it to ruin my life as wonderfully as it has. Here are four things you should be warned about before you give this sinister fun-fest a whirl.

1. Syngenesophobia

So, most of us have a problem with relatives in large numbers, but watching and listening to this opera's title character's family problems has made picnics and house parties at my g-parents' occasions that call for carrying pocket pepper spray, though I can probably shrug off the possibility of my becoming a reunion's human sacrifice. Iphigeneia, as the story goes, was the first in-house victim of Elektra's closest blood relations. The fact being that she, burned on an altar alive, was Elektra's sister, I guess I can feel safe knowing that, should the grill or oven demand a human steak or roast, any one of my female cousins would most likely be the first chosen offering.

2. Ecophobia

Orest, being a Greek soldier, probably didn't know much about the fear of going home, nor did he likely find out even after his sister, Chrysothemis, let him know what went down at the palace after he went off to battle. For me, the message is clear enough after a one-Act demonstration: If your dad's ticked your mom off, especially if he's done so by throwing one of your little sisters on anything with a high temperature (i.e. your fluish cousin, Randy's head) for, say, the love of the god of microwavables, having been left in charge of things when your mom took off to the store after work on a Monday, just hope that you have sufficient warning via text before deciding to go home from your study buddy's house... or from war. Your dad might be locked in the "dog house," code for "chamber of horror populated by clown suits and porcelain dolls," (Don't try to be subliminal with us, O smiling breakfast-makers who gave us life!) and another of your sisters might be plotting against mom for her actions and relationship with Dean Koontz. From axes and knives to small armies, "Elektra" proves that you can't overestimate how ugly a family fight can get.

3. Paranoia

If this one isn't obvious... Ever wondered what goes on behind closed doors in the highest places on the planet? "Elektra" is chock full of clues. The opera also hints at the psychological damage that working in close quarters with figures of government can do, making its admirers wonder about the accuracy of conspiracy theorists everywhere. Plus, after seeing Elektra's famous happy dance, you'll probably never look at those videos of guys dancing at train stations and Wal-Marts for no seeming reason quite the same way again.

4. Sadism

That's right... After you've seen all the bodies and the rest of the mess that once made "Elektra" singular among opera's great masterpieces, you just might be shocked by how happy you are about it. Let's be honest: If you're a fan of the operatic genre as I am, you probably have the same problem I do, which can be described simply as a need each day for music that is more intense than the music you heard the day before. "Elektra" definitely contains some of the most striking music, and if you haven't applauded Tosca's suicide with joy in awhile, you're gonna jump up and down once the knives and swords are pulled out in its final scene.

The simple fact is that "Elektra" doesn't make the list of works that most people think of when the word, opera, pops in their heads. Are you ready to give it a try? If so, don't forget what you've read here, and, to use a word that Strauss wouldn't dare give the censors, enjoy!

Giuseppe Verdi, Alban Berg, Daniel Auber, Richard Wagner, and Benjamin Britten belonged to a human species that has teased the world's imagination for centuries. This species is the artistic revolutionary, its defiance of social and stylistic norms coming in the form of musical, poetic, prosaic, and pictoral expression. Music is one of the most powerful means by which artists reveal truths or force the public to acknowledge facts that move about with them in their lives. Below are five demonstrations of that, five operas that have helped to change the way people think about the human condition, the social scene, government, and (of course) music itself.

Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco

Over 130 years before Les Miserables, Verdi composed Nabucco, which contains "The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves," an anthem from his first hugely successful opera that carries a similar message to "Do You Hear the People Sing?", though his characters lived to complain another day, literally. Nabucco translates to Nebuchadnezzar, no synopsis necessary. Verdi used the prayerful cry of the Israelites for their Promised Land as a voice for the Italians of his time, who lived in search of one leader or another who would unify their country by whatever available means. This was the start of Verdi's musical and personal involvement in politics, a patriotism that would inspire some of his most popular 'everyone's operas' and most critically acclaimed works, additionally starting a tradition in music that even now has composers everywhere fitting their scores to the issues and problems of the "little people" and building reputations as the hard life's soundtrack makers. "The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves" was sung by an Italian chorus at Verdi's "second funeral," the entire country of Italy having mourned his death in January of 1901.

Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

Ever wondered why John Williams's, Howard Shore's, and practically every black-and-white film's composer's music sounds the way it does? The reason we don't hear much of Beethoven's or Bach's or even Verdi's influence in the symphonic scores of the movies has a name, Richard Wagner. Wagner is famous in popular culture for "The Ride of the Valkyries" and "The Wedding March," but opera crazies acknowledge him as the composer of one of the biggest game changers in operatic history, Tristan und Isolde, and for constantly fighting with Verdi. We'll focus on said opera here (an "Artist Apprezz" feature to follow next Wednesday with an explanation of the rest). Tristan und Isolde is  the first complete operatic work wherein no set rhythm or traditional 'tune' is to be found anywhere. That means no arias, either. Instead, its music floats like a line of balloons tied to the wrists of  nine-year-olds, the nine-year-olds being what are called leitmotifs. "Luke's Theme" and the "Imperial March" from... well, you know where from... are examples of leitmotifs. They keep the works they belong to on a specific musical path and usually are the themes on which every other line of notes is based. Wagner wasn't the first composer to write leitmotifs, but he was the first composer to make music that relied  completely on them, transforming the way composers after him worked with the art he served.

Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes

Once upon a time, there lived a fisherman named Peter Grimes in a village full of very judgmental and gossipy folks who didn't know anything about giving people second chances but were well versed in weeding out perceived problem-makers. Two dead kids and a disappointed girlfriend into the story, he became Britten's symbol of the difficulties that humanness encounters when it tries to fit into the space enclosed by the upside down glass bowl of societal expectations and customs. Benjamin Britten, being a member of a subculture that was socially unacceptable in his time, was very interested in things like group psychology and the sour, even violent, tendencies in a person that are fostered by the isolation that being shunned by one's community enforces. In Peter Grimes, he explored social theories and emotional concepts of all kinds and made his revelations as candid and memorable as possible. The theme of the story being, in Britten's words, "the struggle of the individual against the masses," Peter Grimes was the Twentieth Century's first "People's Opera," which carried a message that not only a particular nation (Britten was a native of England), not only Britten's fellow homosexuals, but an entire generation could relate to, bringing attention to some of the modern day's standing issues.

Alban Berg's Wozzeck

I've reviewed Berg's most popular work, Lulu, on this site recently. Now I say, "Hello, again," to one of the most revolutionary Twentieth Century composers, member of the "Second Viennese School," a group of music makers who helped to make modern classical music what it is today. Berg was buddies with the "School's" head, Arnold Schoenberg, who did something very special with Richard Wagner's style that made it sound more chaotic, more emotionally direct, more human. However, while Schoenberg liked to explore what was in his time accepted as "the usual drama" of life, focusing on his revolutionary techniques with music and spectacle rather than plot innovation, Berg liked to take realism "all the way." Wozzeck is the first on the list of Berg's operatic goodies, carrying a theme that offends even now, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding the clash of religion and humanity, so well as the harshness of life in a rural military town and, above all, the sadism that swims in the nature of even everyday people. Wozzeck hit hard in Nazi Germany and became a smash everywhere else in the world, making Berg very financially comfortable and very, very important as a composer. It was the first opera of the Twentieth Century "new," influencing the psychology and sound of most famous modern stage music  ever since its first run of performances.

Daniel Auber's La Muette de Portici

Now for the opera that made all the rest of the works on this list possible. La Muette de Portici is held as the first Grand Opera, which means it was the first opera to bring more than the traditional amount of life's elements to the elegant stylings of early Nineteenth Century vocal music. Grand Opera became known for its elaborate set designs, huge orchestras, casts that could fill island countries, and superior acting requirements (or, at least, more varied stage gestures and movements), all of which we're now used to, all of which Auber expected for the first performances of his groundbreaking work, based on the 1647 uprising of Masaniello in Naples (Yes, this one also introduced political statements to music.). La Muette de Portici was banned for awhile after a disturbance arose during a performance of it in Brussels, a disturbance that occurred in parallel to the July Revolution in Paris. Of course, any anti-monarchy pedal-pushing the opera did was alleged and unintended, and Auber's reputation only continued to soar once theatre doors opened to it again.

There ya have it. Are there any titles you can add to the list of operas that changed the world? If so, I'd be happy to read all about them in your comments. Thanks for reading, buds. I apologize for the late entry, which comes after a battle with my Internet supply, and I thank all of you for your support of Everyone's Opera! Happy opera loving, all of you! I hope you come on back next week for an "Artist Apprezz" feature on composer Richard Wagner.

There are some operas that even the mainstream can't ignore. They're stuffed with rhythm, emotion, charm, and heat, enough that their music has become something practically anyone can love. They are what I call "Everyone's Operas," and while we fans may be disappointed that only a handful have made it into that category, we're happy to know that some of the world's greatest music has reached the ears of billions who, though they may not share our particular musical preference, have a taste for cinema and animated comedy. One of such operas is "Carmen" by Georges Bizet, which is usually somewhere near the top of every list of the most famous operas in the world.

Let's Play!

For those of you who don't know, this one's not exactly what you'd call a date night opera. Carmen is a character who runs hot in her lust for a good game of man chess and who is the perfect manipulator of the board, her affections as cool as her manner and mezzo- soprano voice. She makes no secret of being a woman of many moves, walking right out of the cigarette factory that pays her bills and hissing the first lines of the "Habanera," which go, with a rhythm of seduction that anyone who's into Superman knows very well, "When will I love you? Good Lord, I don't know. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. But not today. That's for sure." We come to understand after the first fifteen minutes of the opera that she's already captured a few hopeless pieces from the white side of the table, but the beaten pawn of the story we follow to the end is Don Jose. He's not initially in the market for a bratty beauty, but by a huge, HUGE fault of his own (attraction to the energy of the more vicious fraction of nineteenth century Spain's lower class) he quickly falls prey to Carmen's queen. Little does the Spanish Miss know that this game will leave both sides with nada. Why? As it happens, lost loverboy is trained in combat, and Bovary's fickle nature has nothing on hers. Forty minutes in and any Hugh Hopeful in the audience might mentally evaluate his potential significant other a second time. What happens in the end? Well, I don't want to spoil it. She dies. What? Oh... Well, what did you expect? This is opera! Whodunnit? Hedunnit. The man, Jose, himself. That's what happens, ladies, when you step out on a soldier for a bull fighter.

If At First It Bombs, Just Wait a Couple of Decades

We've seen it in the cases of "Citizen Kane" and "Wily Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," a brainchild, formerly the victim of box office arsonists (Pauline Kael, anyone?), crawling into the Pantheon of classics. "Carmen" was the last thing the critics and public wanted from French wunderkind, Georges, who showed complete originality in almost every line of music he wrote after his "Symphony in C." In the Victorian days, newness wasn't a complete no-no, except when it came to switching from virgin female characters in veils to characters like, well, Carmen, the kind that made aristobrats smile a bit too big for the comfort of their moms and dads and made middle- aged heiresses suspicious of their husbands' business in the Mediterranean. Basically, Bizet went a tad too far for folks of his time. However, in the 1900s his masterwork became all the rave, in part because practically every tune sticks to the brain as irremovably as a horror movie trailer. That's not to mention the craving of twentieth century audiences for a break from the traditional ways of the Romantic Era, which gave the new composers and companies of the day license to make and revive music colored by rebellion and hormones.

And the Bull Fighter Comes to... Sing a Very Catchy Tune...!

I know that little of anything I've written here will mean much without a few goodies to flavor my theme. As one of the Everyone's Operas, "Carmen" is loaded with fun stuff, including the already mentioned "Habanera" and the song we'll keep humming to ourselves until all that are left to prove humans once existed are Hostess products and Pringles, the "Bull Fighter" song. Heck, the overture, itself, first number on the programme, is a toe- tapper you, if you're listening to the work complete for the first time, will probably recognize from your Pull- Ups years. Opera companies like to give audiences a great time with these. A couple of years ago, Arizona Opera distributed passes for seats in the bull ring. Sure, nobody was charged by live animals as the chorus chanted, "Toreador! Toreador!" Still, all the fans applauded.

I don't think there are many other operas that, like "Carmen," give practically everything opera's got. Very catchy rhythm and profoundly deep blues abound, and just the right amount of Spanish passion sprinkled over the top gives it a nice punching up. I hope that if previously you weren't convinced of opera's platinum- standard entertainment style, you'll finally be sold by Bizet's greatest hit. Check out my "Everyone's Opera" Facebook page for audio content and other "Carmen-" related goodies. Until next time, happy listening, my friends!

Images here used are protected under the creative commons license here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and are listed as follows: "Recursive Chessboard" by Alexandre Duret- Lutz, "Maria Callas" by Cliff, and "Pres des remparts de Seville" by Visualtricks