Opera Bob!

This summer, our musical adventures have mostly taken place with a new opera company in Minneapolis called Opera Bob! Yes, it's a weird name for an opera company, but the name is meant to reflect the company's goal to be a more accessible, less formal presenter of opera in the community.

Opera Bob was brought into existence to fill a void in our community: we have one major regional opera company here, The Minnesota Opera, but despite the many theater companies in the Twin Cities, The Minnesota Opera is the only opera company. There are one or two theaters in town that occasionally present an opera, and a few that present musical theater, but in a town full of small, independent theater companies and a community eager to patronize them, Opera Bob's founders thought that there exists a potential audience for independent opera that emphasizes the drama and the music as equal parts of the art form. So many people belive that opera singers are bad actors or that opera is melodramatic and cheesy (and sometimes, those things may be true!), but good opera as an art form doesn't emphasize the music at the expense of the drama - these elements go hand in hand. In good opera, the music serves the drama, and great composers throughout the centuries knew how to take even mediocre poetry and turn it into compelling theater. And that is what Opera Bob hopes to do: perform compelling theater by great composers.

Actually, you can read Opera Bob's mission statement here, on the website. (The website isn't professional-looking yet, but we are getting there!) There are so many neglected, rarely-performed gems by great composers, and this is where Opera Bob hopes to carve a niche in this city.

So, this summer, Chandler and I have been performing in fundraisers for Opera Bob, helping to raise the funds to underwrite our very first show at the Minnesota Fringe Festival in August. All the singers are emerging professionals (you can read the biographies on the Opera Bob website) who are helping raise funds (donate at the website - it's tax deductible!) because we are really excited about this new company. Our Fringe Festival show is actually five scenes from five different operas by four different composers that hang together on a common theme. We decided not to do a full opera, since we are limited by the Fringe to a presentation under 50 minutes, but I think these five scenes are going to hold together really well and give our audiences a taste of some fantastic drama!

I'll be back later to tell you more about our show!

Why I love opera

Doing this education tour has really made me think again about why I love opera and why I want other people, especially kids, to give it a chance. There are myriad reasons, but here are the things I love most about opera:

1. There are no microphones. Singers have to train their bodies and voices intelligently in order to sing in huge theaters without any amplification other than what happens in their own throats, chests, and heads. Yes, good acoustics in these theaters helps, but without vocal training, those acoustics wouldn't matter one bit when an entire orchestra plays and the hall is filled with thousands of bodies dampening the sound. It's amazing to me what the human body and voice can do - like athletes, we train every day, and we must do so thoughtfully and with intention. It's not as easy as it looks, and it takes years of study, practice, and physical development. This is the number one reason I fell in love with opera in the first place.

2. The music is sometimes beautiful, sometimes intellectually stimulating, and sometimes so passionate and emotional and thrilling that whether you are singing it or listening to it, you feel something that you can't put words to. It is that exact transcendent feeling that is why that particular music was composed in the first place - to give voice to something that words alone cannot express.

3. It's a take on our human tradition of storytelling that involves music, drama, movement, and visual arts (sets, lighting, costumes...) - everything - all in one spectacular live event. Oh, and that brings me to...

4. It's LIVE. Anything can happen on stage. When music is recorded in a studio, or when a film or TV show is made, there are all kinds of possibilities for editing, tweaking, changing things in the studio. In the live theater, you have one chance at that high note, one chance at that scene, and one chance to give the audience an experience that will take them into a different world for an evening. Maybe, if you're lucky, you get one chance to show someone who is experiencing their very first opera all the things that you love about it, and maybe that one night will inspire their love for it, too.

5. Every time you do a show, the same exact opera and maybe even the same exact production, it's different. You get a new opportunity to see into a character, perfect or change that character based on the way you are perceiving the music that day. You get to mold and play and create and take the audience along for the ride.

These reasons are the same for me both as a performer and an audience member. No matter how many times I see La Traviata or Don Giovanni or any other opera I've seen a number of times before, it's always a new experience. The notes on the page always stay the same, but the music and the drama are different every time they're brought to life, every single performance.

We might be in a recession, but that is why we need the arts more than ever - to take us away, just for a couple of hours, into something bigger and grander, more terrible and more wonderful. Get thee to the theater, friends!