Opera is profound!

Oh, gee thanks, Dan, tell us something we don't already know.

Okay. Even opera rehearsals are profound. This week, I started attending (and blogging) the rehearsals for Wagner's Ring Cycle, and in 10 minutes, I learned two profound things, and re-learned a basic truth.

As you know, the Ring is an unabashedly pagan story. None of Valhalla, Valkyries, Fafnir nor Fasolt fit well into the monotheistic orthodoxy, yet here is the Ring being rehearsed Our Lady of the Angels Parish Lyceum. To my untrained eye, that looks like the gymnasium/auditorium of a Catholic school, next to a Catholic church, which is right next to a Catholic cemetary. To me, that juxtaposition is fairly profound.

Artistic director Jonathan Eaton spoke with the actors/singers at the end of yesterday's rehearsal. Paraphrasing, he said the following: "We singers learn the opera backwards. First we learn the notes, then the rhythm, then the words, and finally the "why" of the words. Yet the composer works in the opposite direction. Wagner started with the story, then refined it to a libretto, then adjusted the words so that they would fit in a rhythm, and ultimately composed the score." As a singer (and sometimes songwriter), I know that he spoke the truth, and yet hearing it spoken so succinctly was immediately enlightening. But then he added something which transformed enlightenment to profundity. He said that what can make a singer great is the embracing of the "why". He said "In the words lies meaning; in the meaning lies the music."

In the Blues tradition, this is called "owning" a song. When you own it, everyone not only hears what you sing, but feels that you mean it. I once heard a singer first do a Blues number about how his woman done him wrong. His voice was excellent, his timing superb, but I didn't believe him. Then shortly afterwards, he did a number about how much he loved his wife. And he shined, his face glowed, his words rang true and pierced my heart, and I knew he sang the truth. He owned that song. Perhaps that is what moved me to tears when I heard Annick Massis close the first act of La Traviata two years ago. I didn't understand the words of her aria, but it pierced my heart. Now, knowing that you have to "own" the words won't make you a great singer. It is the owning, not the knowledge. But I am certain that the gravity of Mr. Eaton's words will shape the performance of the Ring. I'm looking forward to seeing it!

I have a friend who is a close-up magician, a prestidigitator, and he can make things appear and disappear right in front of your eyes. Some people are entertained by his magic. But I believe that he is not a magician – to be that, there would need to be real magic, and I am not sure I believe in it. He practices sleight of hand, so that what you think you see is not really what is happening. In the art, this is called a "pass". When I watch him work, I know that at this point in his patter, there must have been a pass, but I don't see it happening. I am equally entertained by his skill as I am by the "magic". When I blog for the Opera, I am making a rash assumption that while there are those who love to hear the magic of the music, acting, and scenery, there are also those like me who equally appreciate how the magic is made. Even if you don't see the wires, you can still appreciate Peter Pan flying – and even if you don't attend rehearsals, you can still appreciate the result. I'd like to share what I see, but I don't believe it will spoil anyone's enjoyment of the actual performance.

I'd like to paraphrase Terry Prachett (who, in my opinion, is a brilliant satirist in addition to being a very funny man). He wrote that "People feel sorry for composers who have lost their hearing. They feel that they are unable to hear the music that they have written. In fact, quite the opposite is true. They just don't hear all the distractions." That, in and of itself is a third profoundity, but not one that I leared at rehearsal last night. What I saw was that making an opera is hard work. People sweat, focus, learn and re-learn, and try new things. Rehearsal is as much about invention as it is about the ultimate realization of the artists work. The artists don't just practice the music, although there is a lot of that... There are a dozen things going on all at once, and none of the movies about theatre that you have seen can capture it. Sets and props are being built, singers are singing, the director is working on blocking (where people move and stand), supernumeraries are moving props, the chorus is preparing – and that was just at the Lyceum! Soloists are practicing elsewhere, and the orchestra works at night somewhere else. It is sweaty, exhausting work, and it goes on for weeks (the troupe had been working for over a month before I started blogging). On the one hand it is utter chaos, and yet it all magically comes together. And as Geoffrey Rush says in the character of Philip Henslowe (in "Shakespeare in Love"), no one knows how. Yet somehow it does.

Okay, maybe I do believe in magic... This is going to be fun!