Opera

I love opera. Of course, since I sing it and spent many years and lots of tuition money learning how to do so, I'd be rather masochistic if I didn't. I don't have the luxury of time right now to go into a long post about why I love opera, but fortunately, some other people on livejournal have already done so and I can point you to their wonderful words. First, anghara wrote this great post about opera and its influence on her, complete with links to YouTube clips. Then sartorias followed suit in this post with links to some of her favorites, inspiring some nice discussion in the comments. The short answer for me is this: it combines all the arts into one glorious package, and the music provides much of the subtext for the singer/actors.I had my annual audition for Indianapolis Opera today, and over the years they've heard me sing just about everything in my repertoire. So today I did something hot off the press--an aria from "Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater," for which I wrote the libretto and co-composed the music with Meredith Gilna, whose music rocks. It was so hot off the press that we were singing bits back and forth over the phone last night going over a couple of possible changes! We're working on getting a more finalized draft together since we had to rush back in February to get it ready for performance. I am passionate about keeping opera a living art form.I'll close this post with a quote from a story of mine, "The Golden Larynx," in which a character who grew up in the opera house is told, for various reasons too complicated to get into here, that she can't have a career as a singer, but might consider being an actress. This pretty much sums up for me why opera is such an important art form, though I don't share the character's view that the non-musical theatre is boring."I'd been to the theatre once, and it bored me. I had no interest in people walking about on stage gesticulating at each other, their voices unmelodic rather than soaring in song above a full orchestra. I realized that this was what I loved most of all: the sound I'd taken for granted for most of my life."