Greg Sandow -- Introducing Opera

Well, let's start with the singing. It's not realistic, of course. But it does have one big advantage over ordinary speech -- it's far more passionate. Imagine, for a moment, a typical operatic situation. The hero is about to die; he sings one last farewell to his beloved. Would anyone doing that in real life speak in an ordinary tone? In an opera house, once you understand what's going on, the surging passion of the hero's operatic voice is entirely appropriate. And that, in turn, helps explain why opera plots are so often exotic. Because it's so emotional, opera works best when the characters on stage swear vengeance or eternal love, and not so well when they're saying "Betty, please pass the salt." Recognizing this, composers have traditionally written operas with stories in which -- even if the plot has to be set in ancient Egypt -- thoughts like passing the salt will never, ever arise.
But now there's a problem. In operatic comedies, people do say ordinary things. And even in romantic operas routine information sometimes has to be conveyed (though of course it's likely to be colorful routine information, stuff like "The high priest is waiting for you in the temple"). So how does an opera hero sing when he's not going to die?
For casual dialogue, opera composers use a kind of music called recitative, which has the informal rhythm of everyday speech. In some operas -- like Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro -- recitative has an existence of its own, separate from the rest of the music. It's accompanied only by quick chords on a keyboard, and turns the opera into a musical drama with two levels, relaxed and intense. "I think I smell a woman," says the legendary Don Juan, chattering in recitative in Mozart's opera about him (which, since it's written in Italian, is called Don Giovanni). "God, what a sense of smell," sarcastically mutters his servant. Then the orchestra starts, bathing the action in its technicolor light -- and the woman in question sweeps on stage, pouring out a deeply emotional complaint about Don Juan himself.

In Verdi's operas, the same thing happens, but it's much more romantic. "It's strange," sings Violetta, the worldly, skeptical heroine of La Traviata, musing in recitative about a man she just met. "His words really touched my heart." But the orchestra is already playing her accompaniment. So when her music blooms into a deeply emotional aria ("Is this the man who can bring love to my troubled soul?"), the sweep of passion continues without an audible break.
By the time Puccini came around -- he's the only popular opera composer who lived into the 20th century -- things got even more unified. For minutes on end, the drama won't let you out of its grip. Still, some moments are clearly more important than others, and that's when the serious singing starts. In La Boheme, when Rodolfo, an ardent young poet, first meets his fragile upstairs neighbor Mimi, the music is tentative, almost hesitant. It's only when he reaches for her hand that both he and the orchestra come musically alive, as he confesses his love in full-throated song.
And that's the ultimate magic of opera -- the way music makes drama pulse with emotional truth. When you begin to feel how that works (and American opera companies help you, by staging their productions either in English, or with English subtitles), opera seems a lot less absurd -- even Verdi's Aida, whose hero really is an Egyptian warrior. In the third act, when night falls on the river Nile, you can almost taste the perfumed breeze; later, when the hero joins the woman for whom he'll later go to his death, his fevered excitement is as real to you as to him. Ancient Egypt never made so much sense.

Ten Popular Operas

Each year, Opera America (which represents the nation's opera companies) tallies the operas most frequently performed in the United States. Here are ten works that almost always make the list.

La Boheme (Puccini)

Romance, with a modern touch: Rodolfo tries to make love to Mimi when they meet, but she wants him to take her out first! There's something troubling, though; she has a cough that won't go away. Even Puccini cried at her death.

Tosca (Puccini)

Puccini's most dramatic opera could have been a 1940's movie -- with Joan Crawford as Tosca and George Raft as the suave, sneering chief of the secret police, who snares her in his trap. But when he gets her alone, he forgets one thing…there's a knife on the table…

Madama Butterfly (Puccini)

An American sailor abandons his Japanese child bride. Did he ever really care for her? Puccini seems to think so -- he ends the first act with Italian opera's most passionate love duet.

La Traviata (Verdi)

Verdi's operas always probe the deepest truth. Here he starts with a kept woman who finds true love, then ends with her despair. Her lover's family objects to her, and -- to prove she's really good at heart -- she leaves him.

Rigoletto (Verdi)

A hunchbacked jester hates the noblemen who laugh at him. He plans revenge, but a flash of lightning shows him who he's really killed -- his own helpless daughter. Verdi knew the story was shocking, but he couldn't resist the contrast between fatherly tenderness and crippling rage.

The Barber of Seville (Rossini)

It's not the crazy barber that makes this opera so funny, or even the deceptive ingenue, who turns out to be the biggest schemer of them all. No, it's Rossini's score, never equaled for its portrayal of sheer nonsense.

The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart)

Count Almaviva likes to chase women; his wife and servants teach him a lesson. Pure comedy? Not with Mozart calling the shots. You feel the Countess's pain, and, at the end, the Count's profound change of heart.

Don Giovanni (Mozart)

Fate stalks the legendary Don Juan. Three of his women turn against him. Then -- in a scene that would have been funny, if Mozart's music didn't make it terrifying -- the statue of a man he killed drags him down to hell.

The Magic Flute (Mozart)

A handsome prince, a princess in trouble, a clown who's half man and half bird…this opera starts as a fairy tale. But Mozart turns it into a haunting tale of spiritual growth.

Carmen (Bizet)

Bizet could have written Broadway shows; there's never been an opera with so many good tunes. Really, though, it's a tragedy -- the story of a restless gypsy who looks for love, and finds only death.