Why Opera is the Greatest Thing in the World

If you're not familiar with the erratic behavior displayed by some of opera's central characters, you might jump to the conclusion the genre is populated by dysfunctional hysterics. First of all, the structure itself is artificial: People don't walk around on the street singing to each other. Well, they do in my world, but I live in a very special place which Eli Lilly has yet to develop an effective psychiatric medicine for.

Yes, sometimes the dramatic, behavior of operatic characters may seem a bit over-the top, but over time you develop an understanding of the literary conventions of the art form. People fall in love at first sight with other people they barely met, have never seen; they will throw away their lives over what seems--to us--practically nothing; and seemingly baffling conundrums appear childishly simple. There are reasons for these larger-than-life melodramas: You see, opera is an intense, multi-disciplined means of expression which reduces the human condition to psychologically elemental archetypes, sets these situations to music, then plays them out, if skillfully constructed, in ways that not only entertain us, but strike familiar chords on very deep and personal levels. But the behavior of the characters, in order to convey these archetypal passions, must be over the top. Those people live large, love with everything they have, and when they die, they go out singing, which when you think about it, isn't a bad way to leave this world. You cannot judge an archetype by ordinary human standards. Like unicorns, centaurs and chimerae, they live within their own self-contained world of internal logic.

Not everyone sees this at first. It's easy to try to impose reality onto our fiction, but fruitless and unrewarding. We look at the behavior of King Lear and say, "No one in real life would behave that way." Well, at least we hope not. And yet the real world gave us Geoffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gayce, Oprah, Survivor, and Vanilla Ice. This is why we escape into fiction in an attempt to purge our minds, at least for a while, from the blight of the Real World. The worst are the amateur psychologists. I've heard Carmen described as bipolar and self-destructive, Calaf's behavior in Turandot diagnosed as Peter Pan Syndrome, and anyone who claims to know what the hell is going on in The Magic Flute is simply suffering from Munchhausen syndrome. It's ridiculous. These are not real people. These are fictional archetypes; psychological aches, pains and emotional yearnings given voice and set to music. Play the game correctly and you emerge cleansed, uplifted, embettered. Over-analyze and psychoanalyze and you may emerge humming an earful of pretty tunes, but you lose the big picture. But you have taken the first steps toward a career as a theater critic.

Opera sometimes condenses the actions of several years in the space of a few hours, and it does the same with people. The composer shows us, in words, music and action, our own humanity--our best, most noble heights of exaltation and our lowest depths of depravity--sometimes embodied within the same character.

I recently enjoyed seeing once again hector Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, the story of an old man who sells his soul to Satan in return for his youth, so he can seduce an innocent young woman named Marguerite. In contrast to Faust's worldly lust, Marguerite is a naive, romantic young girl. Blinded by her love, she has no idea she has been used as a lure by Satan to ensnare Faust's soul.

Rather than come out and tell us Marguerite is a young innocent, or have her proclaim "I'm a young naive girl who believes in romantic love, Sir--what would you have of me?" Berlioz performs a remarkable piece of literary character development: In Act Two, Marguerite stands on the balcony of her bedroom, looks out in the moonlight, and sings an achingly lovely and wistful ballad about a King who pines for his dead love. This tells us all we need to know about this girl and her attitudes toward love, and how we regret what's about to become of her in the hands of Faust and the Devil!



Of course, opera being what it is, after Faust has his way with Marguerite and abandons her, the devil collects his fee, Faust winds up in Hell, and Marguerite--who dies in prison--ascends to heaven. Yes, it's another one of those endings where you wonder if it's happy or sad. That's why opera is so great. You see, there is within all of us a dark streak to which we yearn to surrender, as Faust did--and yet--at least this is what I tell myself--counterbalancing that meanness is a greater, nobler impulse: a spiritual urge which delights when we witness the ennoblement and uplifting of the human being exhibiting the finest and best qualities, surpassing and overcoming his or her dark impulses, and coming out on top when the final curtain comes down.