Opera is a little like Eggplant. It is out of the ordinary. It is an acquired taste that some people acquire while others never do. And here’s the most striking parallel of all: a lot of people who dislike it in fact have never actually tried it. (I have to admit to falling into that last camp.) I have devoted a fair amount of my life to nurturing people’s hesitant interest in Eggplant. . .oops, I mean opera . . . and am pretty sure that I’ve made some difference in this little corner of the globe. But this past Friday I was confronted by a scenario like none I had ever faced before.
The setting was very familiar- a classroom in Tallent Hall on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. The hosts were familiar to me as well: the organization A.L.L., which stands for Adventures in Lifelong Learning. (What a fabulous name!) I have taught many music classes for them over the years and it’s one of my very favorite things to do. The topic – Opera – was familiar as well. And many of the faces were familiar as well.
What was out of the ordinary is that the 55 students who crowded into that classroom were a very striking mixture of opera fans and opera skeptics. . . and the latter, not surprisingly, have not been much of a presence at any of my past opera classes. There have been a sprinkling of skeptics over the years, I’m sure, but in this case we’re talking about maybe a dozen or more who had formed a pretty firmly rooted aversion to opera. But for various reasons, each of them decided to give this one-shot opera class a try. So anyway, I went into this class knowing that there would be this odd mix of students- ranging from life- long opera fans who love it as much as I do….. to outright skeptics. What to do? I sort of felt like I couldn’t teach a standard “So you think you hate opera” sort of class because of all the fans who were there – and obviously a class designed specifically for fans was no in order either. Not surprisingly, I was in my office at Carthage Thursday night until almost 11 p.m., watching various DVD’s and videotapes and trying to organize what I would do. But even after all that, I was left with only the foggiest notion of what i would do or of what was going to ensue.
It was actually only as I was standing at the front of the class, just a couple of minutes before we were scheduled to start, that I decided how I would begin. After a very few words of introduction, I put on an opera video without much of anything in the way of preparation- not even the title of the opera. I told the class that it would probably become clear who the two characters were and what was happening, thanks to the subtitles. . . and otherwise, I just wanted them to watch, react, and then be prepared to talk about their reaction and whether or not they liked or disliked what they saw and heard. The opera I chose was Samson and Dalilah by Camille Saint-Saens, because it would obviously be a familiar plot and familiar characters to everyone there. I chose the end of act two because it was just the two main characters and no one else, so it was a rather intimate sort of passage. (I didn’t want them distracted by live elephants in “Aida.”) And I decided to lay it on fairly thick, so I played them the last 18 minutes of the act. . . and without any running commentary from me at all. (Typically, I would be chiming in with “listen to how the orchestra creates a sense of tension here” or “pay attention to this next melody because it’s going to be coming back again and again.” But none of that in this case.) I knew that might be a bit much for the skeptics, but so be it – Sooner or later, liking opera means NOT looking at your watch. Finally, I chose a scene which included one very famous and beloved tune, “Mon coeur souvre ta voix” (“My heart at thy sweet voice”) but heard in the midst of a lot of other music that would not be particularly familiar even to the opera fans in the room. And I chose a recording which featured two dynamite performers, Shirley Verrett and Placido Domingo.
As the curtain came down on act two – with Samson having just succumbed to Dalilah’s charms, losing his hair and his strength and being overpowered by the guards – I walked to the front of the classroom and asked “so what did you think?” One woman in the front row was wiping tears from her eyes, saying “It was almost more than I could stand!” But at the back of the classroom, I could see some stone-faced people with quite a different response. How to make sense of the differing perspectives in the room? I decided what mattered the most was to try and hear from both sides of the aisle, in hopes not of converting anyone but at least of helping folks on the opposing ends of the spectrum to understand where the other folks were coming from. Why do its fans love it so much? And what exactly turns off those who don’t? We would talk about that a little bit, and then I would try to figure out what to show them after that would be meaningful to everyone there. “Good luck,” I thought to myself as I went to the board.
So I asked first what it was that the opera fans in the room liked about what they had just seen, and their answers were plentiful and heartfelt . .. the gorgeous music, the amazing voices, the dramatic contribution of the orchestra, the opulent costumes and sets, the intensity of the emotions…. and one person quite insightfully mentioned the prolonging of the emotion, almost past the breaking point. On and on we went, and I could scarcely keep up with all they wanted to say about why they love opera and had enjoyed this particular scene so very much. I don’t know how long all that went before it was time to turn to the opinion of those in the room not so enamored with opera. And just as we were beginning, as I was encouraging them to speak freely, I invited the fans in the room to jump in if need be with their own ideas on how someone might have trouble enjoying opera. . . in case the skeptics were hesitant to speak up.
Holy Cow! I need not have worried about that one bit! The skeptics were excited to talk – and moreover, their observations were thoughtful and insightful and in no way the proverbial knee-jerk “I hate all that screeching in a foreign language” harangue that one sometimes hears with this topic. One woman teaches theater, so she had something to say about the over-the-top intensity of the acting. . . while someone else remarked on how long it took for anything to happen . . . and someone else talked about how the highly trained voices of the singers had a distancing effect for them, making it harder for them to relate to the singers. Someone else complained about the subtitles on the screen and what a distraction they were, prompting a lengthy discussion just about that. And on and on we went, in what turned into a robust and spirited discussion. It was amazing! And by the time the discussion had run its course, it was 11:50, and there were ten minutes left for me to tie the loose ends together and play one more excerpt. (If I had known how all this was going to go, I wouldn’t have walked into the room with fifteen DVD’s.)
It was amazing! I could not have asked for things to have gone any better! And it dramatically underscored for me how exciting it is – and nowadays how exceedingly rare – for people to calmly and constructively discuss things about which they disagree. One almost NEVER sees that anymore around any kind of topic, partly because it’s so easy for us to clump together with those who agree with us on whatever the topic or question might be. But how fun and fascinating it is when those across the aisle from one another actually talk – and share ideas – and learn from one another.
pictured above: Shirley Verrett and Placido Domingo in act two of Samson and Dalilah.