Today I went over to my friend Rachel’s house at her request and watched the first half of an opera: The Progress of the Rake. It was an interesting story, and the singing was quite impressive, so it made me wonder, as I have before: why don’t I like opera much? I mean, I can tolerate it. I can appreciate the magnificence of their voices and the way they approach their subject. I never really crave opera, though. Which is a bit odd, because I enjoy so many of the things that are like opera. I love musicals; one of the best times of my life was the time I lived in New York City for a while and got to watch Broadway almost every week. And I love live performance in general: the symphony, plays, live music, etc. Usually one of my comments about life is that if someone is passionate about what they do and good at it, I’ll enjoy watching them. But opera just feels oddly disconnected from my experience. It’s not particularly abstruse any more than, say, classical symphony, and yet I don’t connect with it as well. I thought perhaps it was the language barrier, but I saw La Boheme in English and it still just didn’t quite work for me. Perhaps its the characterization and caricaturization of emotions? But of course they do that in musicals just as much if not more so.
Yeah, I really don’t know what it is! I guess you just can’t love everything.
