Don’t start what you can’t finish. I know. Currently, I am in the throes of three sewing projects, and not feeling particularly earnest about any of them, because…I’ve invested myself in all of them. The butter spread thin over too much bread. I bought this jacket at a thrift store, and decided once it was home that it looked matronly on me. I’ll whack off sleeves and collar, and make it into a vest Bohemian and Blowsy. But now, it’s late night—definitely not an ideal time for sewing. So I’ll talk about Opera. A natural turn in conversation.
In some company, I have been embarrassed to admit that I like opera (the music). It is ridiculed by little boys and old men alike, bemoaned by most little girls, and avoided scrupulously by many women. Teenagers consider its strains to be sheer torture. But I like it, I do. Today, as I was driving and listening to one ebullient song whose name I don’t know (I dubbed it “The Three Men in A Bathtub Song”), I thought for awhile on the perplexities of taste: why some people love opera, and some people hate it. Here is what I think.
Why people hate it: Let’s start with little boys, and think Tom Sawyer. For reasons best left to another discussion, no little boy, in even moderate touch with his masculinity, can long endure high-pitched melodrama. The sort of display he might have to endure from a pedantic great aunt (or third-grade teacher) who feels threatened by his boy-ness, and is trying to convince herself (and him) that she thinks he’s adorable. He squirms under her notice, he cringes at the fluctuating intonations in her voice. If he has to sit next to her at church while she sings solo despite the congregation’s unison, he is doomed (under the pew) to dislike opera forever (“Kum-Ba-Ya” or “Annie Laurie” in the classroom can have the same effect). He cannot stomach the vibrato (or is it falsetto? little boys don’t like either). He cannot forgive the theatrics. Heaven forbid she cries… Actually, most little girls might not like all that either. And both boys and girls have a profound effect on the adult world, whether we care to admit it or not. If only for the simple reason that they grow up.
Why people love it: I was once a little girl who craved haven-under-the-pew therapy. I even became concerned about singing at all, worried I sounded weird. Then one day my sister Mara Lee played “Pie Jesu” for me (sung by Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles, who happened to be a little boy at the time). She told me, before she turned the music on, that it took her to a place of serene, otherworldly romance. I was there with her as the first notes sounded. Entranced, beguiled. And suddenly open to harder stuff. Now, when I’m listening to what sounds like a buxom soprano bursting with pathos, I feel the same cathartic resonance that I experience when Scarlett says she’ll never go hungry again, or when Becky cries for real in Vanity Fair, or when Edward finally proposes to Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, and she hiccups sobs. I’m there, and so glad someone can emote for all of us. Haven’t we all wanted to do that? Stand on top of a mountain, fling our arms out wide, and sing to the world in the most emphatic notes about what is stirring our souls and breaking our hearts? Or at least jump into the volcano with Joe?
Ok. Enough. Tomorrow, I’m back to sewing.
