Re: RAT SUPERBOWL INTERVAL HIJINKS

[Audie McCall <audiemccall@yahoo.com>]

Here here, Chris.

I would also add that for the playwright, watching
opera (I stress WATCHING) is a fascinating, deeply
inspiring endeavor.  It's one thing to study the
dramaturgy (God that word never ceases to make me
cringe) of Shakespeare or Mamet-- a very necessary
thing, I think.  But to see how Mozart tells a story,
builds characters, shapes relationships with music...
well, it's like watching Picasso create architecture:
not terribly practical, but amazingly beautiful and
eye-opening.

(BTW:  I have no idea if Picasso ever created any
architecture, though I'm pretty sure our ol' buddy
Marcel Duchamp is responsible for the ubiquitous IHOP
design.)


--- Chris Jeffries <cjeffries@seanet.com> wrote:
> I too must leap in.  First, there is indeed a huge
> resurgence in opera 
> attendance.  We don't hear about it because in
> America, the opera houses 
> are nonprofits, and therefore Entertainment Weekly
> and the conglomerate 
> newspapers, who are owned by corporate interests
> directly competing for 
> those entertainment dollars, naturally sweep it
> under the rug since they 
> themselves don't get to cash in on the extra
> publicity (sound familiar?). 
>  
> 
> Opera "elitist?"  Maybe it seems that way in the
> always-gets-it-wrong 
> U.S.  So what.  Go almost anywhere in Europe and see
> if you can hurl 
> without some of it splashing against a busy,
> thriving, fun, popular opera 
> house.  There are tons of places in the world where
> fights break out in 
> the pubs over this week's opera (I saw this in
> Sydney, a jock town if 
> ever there was one).  Not a sign of "out of touch"
> to be seen.  Leave it 
> to us to turn a fabulous art form into a snobs-only
> furfest -- but as 
> Allison points out, even that ground is shifting
> radically as we speak.  
> As is the nature of opera itself -- it pops up in
> many guises besides the 
> one we think of.
> 
> Opera "high art?"   Heavens.  Nearly all operas,
> famous and forgotten, 
> are potboilers written for a mass audience.  Most
> are claptrap.  Most are 
> glorious.  Opera is the Evel Knievel of concert
> music.  The singers, 
> players, and conductors are all performing awesome
> feats of athletic 
> prowess, or failing spectacularly at same.  Some
> operas go the 
> Shakespeare route and manage to also be high art,
> and some are hermetic 
> and only try to appeal to connoisseurs.  But most
> were written to be 
> nothing more or less than rip-roaring crowd
> pleasers, and they still 
> would be if we didn't all settle for the party line
> that what we're 
> watching or performing is important, and serious,
> and boring.        
> 
> By the way, what Peter Sellars does with opera is
> the tip of the iceberg 
> if you ask me.  His takes are fresh, and funny, and
> sometimes big eye 
> openers -- and he does long rehearsal periods, which
> is refreshing -- but 
> it's still the same package, with all the same
> trappings.  It only looks 
> like the cutting edge if your reference point is
> creaky old Met stagings. 
>  The real advance guard is taking it out of the Met,
> way out.  But that 
> aside, I'd rather see even a same-old-same-old opera
> production than most 
> "theatre."  As the kids say.
> C       
> 
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