{"id":10112,"date":"2021-02-17T20:21:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T19:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rickzullo.com\/?p=10112"},"modified":"2021-09-11T23:39:16","modified_gmt":"2021-09-11T21:39:16","slug":"is-opera-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/is-opera-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Opera Dead?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Photo Credit From NYT: “Exit Arias: What Opera Can Teach Us About Dying<\/a>“<\/p>\n Is opera dead? Like Mark Twain, rumors of opera\u2019s death have been greatly exaggerated<\/strong> over the years. \u201cExperts\u201d have been proclaiming for decades that the art form is at once too dry, too melodramatic, and too elitist for modern audiences.<\/p>\n Up until recently, they\u2019ve been wrong. Despite its many antiquated leitmotifs<\/em> (misogyny, racism, and class discrimination among them), people still bought tickets for La boh\u00e8me<\/em> without fail.<\/p>\n But that was before the coronavirus ravaged nearly every aspect of our lives. While businesses and schools gradually ease back into some vague sense of normalcy, by all accounts, the performing arts will pretty much be the very last thing that opens back up again<\/strong>. That is, assuming they can survive the prolonged absence of ticket-buyers and deep-pocketed philanthropists. <\/p>\n Sadly, many companies will not survive. Even the mighty Met has decided to pull the plug <\/a>on all performances for this season. <\/p>\n A Message to Our Audience:<\/strong><\/p>\n Some performing arts organizations (notably The Met) have released streaming archived performances, and other online platforms, in attempts to engage their rapidly dwindling audiences.<\/p>\n A noble effort, for sure, but increasingly it seems that nobody is really paying attention\u2014there are just too many voices clamoring for our eyes and ears.<\/p>\n And we all have bigger issues of our own to address these days, so it feels almost insensitive to indulge in a patronage for the arts when people’s very lives are so uncertain. Especially for an art form that was “supposedly” on its way out anyway.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But before we bid \u201cAddio del passato<\/em>,\u201d (Farewell to the past) let\u2019s have a look back at the rich history of opera.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Opera was not an art form that grew organically from a long tradition. Rather, it was deliberately invented by a group of scholars, who named among <\/strong>its members none other than Vincenzo Galileo, the father of the famous astronomer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The group was formed in the city of Florence during the 1590s, and they were known as the Camerata. They sought to revive the power of Greek drama<\/strong>, incorporating musical features, just as the Greeks did, to enhance the emotion of the story. These experiments led to the development of the stile recitativo<\/em>, which became a precursor of opera lirica<\/em>, the opera that we know today.<\/p>\nOpera History 101<\/h2>\n