Getting Opera: A Guide for the Cultured but Confused - Softcover

Dobkin, Matt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671041398 ISBN 13: 9780671041397

Publisher: Pocket, 2000

Synopsis

A fun, breezy guide to this often misunderstood musical form offers readers an irreverant tour of the opera world and the music it supports. Original.

About this title

About the Author

Matt Dobkin is a former classical music editor at Time Out New York, where his work continues to appear regularly. In addition to working as a freelance music, technology, and travel writer, Matt writes and records original rock music.

Reviews

Dobkin, former classical music editor of Time Out New York magazine, is a young, hip writer who, in this wonderfully engaging and enlightening guide to appreciating opera, specifically addresses his peers--"educated, in [his or her] twenties or thirties, a fan of theater, film, television, and music." Regardless of his target audience, though, persons of any age who are unfamiliar with this intoxicating yet intimidating art form but have a desire to understand it will enjoy Dobkin's approachable, nonlecturing style (for instance, he makes reference to "kick-ass portrayals of Norma"). Like a swimming instructor at the local pool, he eases his readers into the opera world shallow end first, before launching them into deeper water. His premise is that unless you have some preparation before entering the opera house for the first time, you may come away turned off by the experience. To help make that an unlikely event, he discusses such topics as opera history, the anatomy of the operatic voice ("opera singing demands total control over the voice and adherence to certain old-school notions of vocal production"), and even tips on how to get tickets and opera-night etiquette. Most of the book, however, is given over to reviews-synopses of 50 operas that he feels newbies should know about and try to catch in performance. Appended is a helpful, concise guide to record collecting. Brad Hooper

Dobkin's hip guide fits somewhere between David Pogue and Scott Speck's Opera for Dummies (LJ 10/15/97) and Barrymore Laurence Scherer's Bravo!: A Guide to Opera for the Perplexed (LJ 11/15/96). His knowledgeable style reflects a lot of time spent at opera houses, both as a fan and as an opera and classical music critic for Time Out New York magazine. Dobkin, also a composer and recorder of rock music, gears this book toward twenty- and thirtysomethings who already enjoy other forms of theater and musical entertainment but do not attend opera productions because they feel that they do not know enough to enjoy it. This fun read includes opera jokes, dispels some of opera's myths, draws some rock music parallels, lightly matches some operas with astrological signs, and profiles opera singers. Opera web sites and large opera companies in the United States are also described. In addition, Dobkin provides synopses of operas, hints on how to order tickets, what to wear, and what to expect at the opera. The appendixes include tips on how to start an opera record collection and a recommended bibliography. A companion CD of opera excerpts, Getting Opera, will be released simultaneously by Decca. Recommended for larger public libraries.
-Kathleen Sparkman, Baylor Univ., Waco, TX
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1 -- Getting Opera. How I got it and why I decided to write this book.

The year is 1983. I'm eleven years old. I've been singing in the children's choruses of the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Opera for about a year, but thus far have only managed to score crappy, low-paying parts: urchins, schoolboys, that sort of thing. Who is getting all of the meat-and-potatoes roles: the shepherds, the young princes, the "crippled" boys? Over the course of the last few months, I have managed to ingratiate myself with the aging chorus mistress (named Mildred-no joke) and am cast in the Met's production of Wagner's Tannhäuser as one of eight pages (underage footmen, essentially). We're only onstage for about three minutes and sing a total of just nine German syllables, which we learn phonetically. But my name will be in the program, my fee is jacked up (thirty dollars per performance!), and I can enjoy the satisfaction of having graduated to "small-ensemble work."

What's more, I'm now in good with the stage director, sharing my Nerds candy with her during rehearsals. She returns the favor by designating me "the urn boy." Unlike my seven prepubescent colleagues, I am entrusted with the care of a prop! The responsibility is tremendous: I have to walk in a circle on an inclined platform and present the metal bowl to various Wartburg Castle song-contest participants, who throw slips of paper with their names written on them into the vessel. I am directed to subsequently march up to Austrian soprano legend Leonie Rysanek and extend the urn in her direction, so that she can pull a name out of the hat, as it were, and inaugurate the Act II competition.

What if I trip while negotiating the ramped stage, scattering the strips of paper everywhere? The opera would be ruined! What if I block Rysanek's sight lines? Will she pull some crazy diva crap and come at me with the intent to cause physical harm? The pressure is considerable, but, like a male adolescent Eve Harrington, I am not about to let anyone stop me on my journey to the upper echelons of boy sopranohood.

Opening night finally arrives and, as luck would have it, I am sick with the flu. But it doesn't matter to me. I'm not about to let a little obstacle like a 102-degree fever thwart my shot at onstage glory. Nothing my parents can say will keep me in my sickbed. "I'll be fine, Mom! just bring me fluids! Orange juice! Egg drop soup! Now!"

By the time I get to the theater, I'm a mess: white as a sheet, clammy, and sniveling-but determined nonetheless. In the Level 2 children's chorus rehearsal studio, I slip into my costume (a heavy, purplish, dresslike robe, which, having been used for several seasons by a rotating cast of preteen boys, is in urgent need of a trip to the dry cleaner). I am already in a sweat and the garment makes things worse. Feeling increasingly unwell, I think I should perhaps visit the men's room and splash some cool water on my face. Why did I have to become sick on this of all nights?

Forlornly, I shuffle down the cement-floored hallway -- its width narrowed by racks and racks of old costumes -- toward the men's room. Waves of nausea gain power as I slowly near my destination. It occurs to me that I might not make it, that I will end up hurling all over last season's tunics. But just then, like Violetta in the final act of La Traviata, I feel my strength miraculously returning. The nausea seems to retreat. I stop sweating. I am going to make it!

Well, if you've seen Traviata, you know that Violetta's eleventh-hour recovery lasts about six seconds, at which point she simply drops dead. 1, too, come suddenly crashing back to earth. I fall to my knees, retch convulsively, and puke a steady stream of vomit, which splatters along the hallway's concrete floor, soiling the hems of costumes that have been worn by folks like Leontyne Price, Luciano Pavarotti, and Joan Sutherland. The fit lasts only a few seconds, and I immediately feel better. But my mortification is sealed when I look up from my prostration, mouth awash in regurgitated filth, and behold the stunned expressions of a crowd of horrified onlookers, engaged at that very moment in a backstage tour. Somehow I don't think the sight of a broken young child, collapsed on the cold, hard cement, heaving uncontrollably, is listed on their tour itinerary. The guide makes a few nervous remarks and hastily leads the group away.

Whenever people ask me about my first time at the opera, I invariably recall this incident. Although my entree into the world of classical singing was relatively smooth, the Tannhäuser barfing experience seems apropos as an example of an early dose of opera, since so many operagoers' first time at an opera house is so, well, sickening. It's unfortunate but true. A lot of folks who are perfectly game about giving opera a shot nonetheless don't take the necessary steps to prepare for their first time and really figure out which works they're most likely to enjoy. I'd argue that unless you have a strong sense of what to expect when you set foot in the Metropolitan Opera House or San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House for the first time, you're going to come away disappointed, if not downright queasy.

Many potential opera lovers don't even get that far. Most of my contemporaries (people in their twenties) wouldn't even dream of going to the opera. It's simply not on their radar. Foreign language. High ticket prices. General air of elitism. With so many easier, less costly forms of entertainment readily available, why would any savvy urban resident bother with, of all things, an opera?

Well, I am an opera critic. But I am also in my mid-twenties, have all my hair, and am more likely to have the latest Björk CD in my Discman than an obscure 1950s import of Lucia di Lammermoor. I don't have a doctoral degree in musicology, I don't stay up nights worrying about the twelve-tone/tonality conundrum, and I'd rather read Spin than Opera News. These stats combine to make me something of an anomaly among classical-music writers. Most of my colleagues are in their fifties, graying, and wide around the middle. They're also reflective of too large a sector of opera audiences today. Things are definitely changing, with the median age of operagoers steadily decreasing and opera gaining a certain degree of cachet among downtown types. But I still don't see enough people my age in the opera house these days, a fact that worries not just the opera companies, eager to lure new generations of fans, but me, as well.

If I hadn't had the early exposure I experienced as a boy soprano, I probably wouldn't think much of opera, either. But I'd be missing out. Although I'm not going to take the position of most rabid opera freaks, who say that opera is the greatest art form of all time, putting all others to shame, I will say emphatically that there is much to appreciate in opera that too many people aren't aware of These virtues became apparent to me at an early age, because I was immersed in opera from the time I was nine. Several nights a week, I found myself on the Met's stage alongside some of the greatest singers of the late twentieth century. Pavarotti, Domingo, Rysanek, Troyanos, and Caballé are all stars whom I heard up close before I even knew enough to realize that opera was considered a peculiar interest for a small child. As a result, operatic singing seemed like no big deal. The magnificence of opera's grand sets and costumes were commonplace. And a story told in a foreign language was par for the course. The fact that my parents and grandparents were season ticket holders didn't hurt my chances of forming an attachment to opera, either. But most people I know have had limited experience with opera, if any.

About twelve years after my voice changed (sending me i

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671041398
• ISBN 13: 9780671041397
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272