Opera Challenge: Days Twenty-four and Twenty-five

Day Twenty five (today): Least Favorite Misconception About Opera

That it's boring and inaccessible. This one really irritates me, because all it takes is one or two opera plots, and people are going, "What movie is that? I'd totally see that! Wait, it's an opera?!"

Opera, as I like to tell people, is brilliant because you can change the setting/costume/whatever to get at the story you want to tell, and yet the music never changes. And it can be utterly hilarious. "It's about a barber who helps this wealthy couple hook up despite all these problems!" or "He's a randy count who dresses up as a hermit and a nun to get to the woman he wants, and he still doesn't succeed!" or "And then she goes crazy and knifes her husband" or "And then he sleeps with his sister." Seriously, I do not understand how people can perceive opera as boring.

Actually, that may be untrue. I think people see it as boring because it's an old art form, and a very high class one at that. The common man looks at opera and thinks, "Oh, that's for boring rich people". They look at the singing as being terrible. I was really insulted, for one, that the author of the popular Percy Jackson series continually has the main character refer to torture as "being forced to listen to opera music for eternity". Way to alienate an entire generation of kids, you idiot.

Basically, I think we need to combat this attitude with wider dispersion of the operatic art form. And not as Broadway. I really don't like it when people confuse opera with Broadway. >_<

Day Twenty four: Best Opera to See Alone

All of them. Maybe I'm being cynical, but since I can count on one hand the amount of people I know who actually like going to the opera, I usually just go by myself. When you go with someone, you spend the entire time angsting about whether or not they're enjoying themselves, and that's just not fun. Some of the best times I've had this year is sitting down for the Met broadcasts, knowing that I don't have to deal with anyone whining about the music, or the set, or the costumes. True, this makes it difficult to discuss the opera with, but generally, I don't mind.

OFF TOPIC: Let's talk about how Jonas Kaufmann has canceled his trip to Japan because he has to get emergency surgery to remove some sort of "node from my thoracic area" (scroll down; it's in Japanese first, then English). I had to look that up: it's a second (fourth?) language way of saying "my chest". DISCUSS.