Opera
Since I just put in the request for topics, I'm choosing my own today.
There is an article in today's Guardian about boredom, or, perhaps more accurately, about being bored by certain art forms within certain contexts. Opera is the particular form mentioned, but there's a certain branching out, both in the article and the comments to other things: long movies, Shakespeare, certain novels. (I admit, I still haven't gotten through bloody Ivanhoe.) According to the Google Doodle, it's also Maria Callas birthday (and I know it's my Dad's 81st).
I saw my first opera, Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck, when I was seven. My mother had seen her first opera a few months earlier, Madame Butterfly, and fallen in love with the form and with Puccini. He's still her favorite, though Tosca has taken over as her favorite opera. She was already over thirty and wanted to be certain her children wouldn't be as ignorant as she felt she was about the world of high culture.
Then, as now, I preferred ballet, but I enjoyed the performance. A few years later, we were back in the US and The Kennedy Center opened. Sometime in its first year, Hansel and Gretel was performed, and Sis and I were once again taken to see it. The sets were nowhere near as good as the Royal Opera House production, but there was an interesting piece of staging. While the parents are searching for the children, they sang from different parts of the theater. We were in the balcony, and I remember seeing the singer playing the mother in the aisle right next to me.
I love opera. I don't like all operas. And I think that's an area people don't really talk about much -- or at least not with children.
There are two streams in popular culture. One is all opera is boring and no one really likes it, they just pretend to. There's also a stream that says if you like one of something (ballet, opera, P!nk song...) you must like all of them. Both are, to my mind false.
When I was tutoring, one of the really hard things was getting the girls to have an opinion -- any opinion. It didn't matter how many times I said I didn't care if they hated something, as long as they could define something about it, they never believed that there weren't consequences for disliking what I liked.
It didn't matter that I had Jesse McCartney on my iPod (okay, it was a few years ago. He was popular then.) or that I listened to a wide variety, they were afraid to tell an adult that they didn't agree with her opinion.
Whatever flaws there may have been in my childhood, having a distinctive personal musical taste was never punished. I wasn't even really teased within the family. I listened to Mom's music -- which ran to classical or Mantovani. I listened to Dad's jazz (and some pop -- he got me into Paul Simon as well as Errol Garner). I listened to show tunes, Osmonds, and Gershwin. I consider this to be part and parcel of the part of my parents that let me read anything I wanted, too. The only rule was that I had to attend performances with them when they bought tickets for all of us. If I found I didn't like it, that was all right.
This comes back to the boredom and the Wagner discussion in the original article for me. I don't care for Wagner. I've seen Parsifal and Flying Dutchman (I like Flying Dutchman better). I've heard bits of Siegfried, but his music doesn't make me thrill. Verdi's music does. Benjamin Britten does (seriously, I've seen Albert Herring). I prefer Massenet to Puccini. Bellini is great, and I like Gluck better than Handel.
None of these are pronouncements from on high. gileswench is not fond of Der Rosenkavalier and it's one of my favorites.
But the thing is, I was never bored, not even sitting through Aida at Wolf Trap when the mosquitoes decided I was the buffet. That week at the opera -- my mother took my sister and me when Dad was on his third tour in Vietnam -- we saw Aida, Madame Butterfly (which my sister liked best), Norma, La Gioconda, and Le Nozze de Figaro. Was I completely enthralled the whole time? No. Did I fall in love with beautiful music? Absolutely.
So, what do you like? Is opera a thing for you? Whose music thrills you?
There is an article in today's Guardian about boredom, or, perhaps more accurately, about being bored by certain art forms within certain contexts. Opera is the particular form mentioned, but there's a certain branching out, both in the article and the comments to other things: long movies, Shakespeare, certain novels. (I admit, I still haven't gotten through bloody Ivanhoe.) According to the Google Doodle, it's also Maria Callas birthday (and I know it's my Dad's 81st).
I saw my first opera, Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck, when I was seven. My mother had seen her first opera a few months earlier, Madame Butterfly, and fallen in love with the form and with Puccini. He's still her favorite, though Tosca has taken over as her favorite opera. She was already over thirty and wanted to be certain her children wouldn't be as ignorant as she felt she was about the world of high culture.
Then, as now, I preferred ballet, but I enjoyed the performance. A few years later, we were back in the US and The Kennedy Center opened. Sometime in its first year, Hansel and Gretel was performed, and Sis and I were once again taken to see it. The sets were nowhere near as good as the Royal Opera House production, but there was an interesting piece of staging. While the parents are searching for the children, they sang from different parts of the theater. We were in the balcony, and I remember seeing the singer playing the mother in the aisle right next to me.
I love opera. I don't like all operas. And I think that's an area people don't really talk about much -- or at least not with children.
There are two streams in popular culture. One is all opera is boring and no one really likes it, they just pretend to. There's also a stream that says if you like one of something (ballet, opera, P!nk song...) you must like all of them. Both are, to my mind false.
When I was tutoring, one of the really hard things was getting the girls to have an opinion -- any opinion. It didn't matter how many times I said I didn't care if they hated something, as long as they could define something about it, they never believed that there weren't consequences for disliking what I liked.
It didn't matter that I had Jesse McCartney on my iPod (okay, it was a few years ago. He was popular then.) or that I listened to a wide variety, they were afraid to tell an adult that they didn't agree with her opinion.
Whatever flaws there may have been in my childhood, having a distinctive personal musical taste was never punished. I wasn't even really teased within the family. I listened to Mom's music -- which ran to classical or Mantovani. I listened to Dad's jazz (and some pop -- he got me into Paul Simon as well as Errol Garner). I listened to show tunes, Osmonds, and Gershwin. I consider this to be part and parcel of the part of my parents that let me read anything I wanted, too. The only rule was that I had to attend performances with them when they bought tickets for all of us. If I found I didn't like it, that was all right.
This comes back to the boredom and the Wagner discussion in the original article for me. I don't care for Wagner. I've seen Parsifal and Flying Dutchman (I like Flying Dutchman better). I've heard bits of Siegfried, but his music doesn't make me thrill. Verdi's music does. Benjamin Britten does (seriously, I've seen Albert Herring). I prefer Massenet to Puccini. Bellini is great, and I like Gluck better than Handel.
None of these are pronouncements from on high. gileswench is not fond of Der Rosenkavalier and it's one of my favorites.
But the thing is, I was never bored, not even sitting through Aida at Wolf Trap when the mosquitoes decided I was the buffet. That week at the opera -- my mother took my sister and me when Dad was on his third tour in Vietnam -- we saw Aida, Madame Butterfly (which my sister liked best), Norma, La Gioconda, and Le Nozze de Figaro. Was I completely enthralled the whole time? No. Did I fall in love with beautiful music? Absolutely.
So, what do you like? Is opera a thing for you? Whose music thrills you?