Bursting into Feeling

Today

There was a discussion on Radio Three this morning about listeners' first experience of opera. Responses varied from the magical to Radio Three's presenter Sarah Walker nearly having been put off for life by Pelias et Melisande as her operatic induction.

In My Day

Life at 4BH was permeated with music. My Parents ran the Henry Wood Gramophone Circle and my mother spent half the summer at the proms. So, when Daddy announced that he had bought a batch of tickets to hear the 
Carl Rosa opera company, I accepted it as a treat that was well within the normal parameters of what might be expected. The company was performing at the Streatham Hill Theatre which made it both relatively cheap and very close by - just a few bus stops away from home. I think I was about nine or ten at the time.

I remember seeing Aida and La Boheme. I recall very clearly the final scene of Aida when Aida and Radames swear eternal love and agree to die together in the vault. Being so young I couldn't really understand why Radames might choose to die. But I do remember the slaves' chorus and could sing it.

The next time I remember going to the opera (if you exclude routine visits to hear G&S with D'oyley Carte) was when I went to Paris with Mamma and Daddy. We had tickets to see Madama Butterfly at L'Opera Comique. Half way there, Daddy realised that he'd left the tickets at the hotel, so we missed act one altogether. I mainly remember Co-Co Sian's death (I think they used a revolver) and the arrival of Mrs Pinkerton, looking puzzled, lost and alien.

Later Mamma took me to see Tannhauser and Die Meistersingers and the film (with Elisabeth Schwartzkopf) of Der Rosenkavalier; experiences which I remember much enjoying.

Now, I love opera, but I don't see these early experiences, patchy as they were, as having the kind of  revelationary impact reported by contributors to this morning's programme. The enjoyment evolved slowly, alongside my own maturation.

Most operas deal with extremely adult themes and one needs to be an adult fully to engage with them.

My first deeply felt operatic experience was Monteverdi's "Orfeo" - the passion is expressed directly and I sometimes feel that no subsequent opera quite beats this first experiment with the medium. The only other opera that can compete, in my view, is Tosca - and I still listen to it spellbound. "Vissi D'Arte" will be with me on my desert island.

There was an interesting exchange in the film "The Quartet", along the lines that in opera and musical theatre, when you feel very strongly, you burst into song, whereas in rap you burst into speech. 

What matters is that you can still feel strongly and find ways of expressing it