It seems that every time I try compiling my list of worst productions something gets in the way. This month’s digressive train of thought terminated at opera, so here we go.
There’s probably more rubbish talked about opera than any other art form. Yes, on one level it’s plainly absurd. As the great Ken Dodd said, opera is where someone gets stabbed and instead of bleeding, they sing.
And let us not forget the opera bores, those who consider it the apogee of artistic achievement, and sneer at anyone who dares suggest otherwise (tune in to Radio 3 for more, much more of this).
In my opinion, opera is a frustratingly mixed experience. Some parts can move you to tears, others bore you rigid. Often in the same performance.
Rigorously academic examinations of opera such as this often skirt around the thorny issue of padding. Take a symphony – Beethoven’s Fifth or Dvorak’s Hovis Bread. In each of the four movements you’ll get a couple of wonderful melodies, interwoven into one coherent whole. An opera, however, may have four outstanding arias (“songs”, to you and I), each lasting three to five minutes. In an average run time of two to five hours. You don’t need to be Adric to work out that there must by necessity be a lot of treading water going on here. The most common form of padding is recitative, where the lines are sung, but delivered as if they were ordinary speech, with the purpose of explaining and forwarding the plot. Imagine silent movie captions accompanied by a harpsichord. Or were I a Radio 3 presenter, “hey kids, remind you of anything? Yeah – opera is basically rap!”.
Do opera plots need explanation? Sometimes. At one extreme you have the Wagnerian epics, mired in dark Teutonic mythology, involving dragons, gods and ghost ships. And at the other, Rossini’s comic operas, which make Mrs Brown’s Boys look positively highbrow.
So where should the opera-curious start? I’m afraid this is the interval, so go and buy a staggeringly-expensive ice cream from the foyer and I’ll see you next month for Act II…