I thought that Sterlingkay was a woman, too.

I have been visiting this site at least twice a day for the past two years because,
– despite the occasional Internet vitriol that caused me to stop posting about anything, anywhere, a number of years ago — you folks educate me daily about opera. Not a day goes by when I don’t learn something I didn’t know. And, believe me, there is a lot I don’t know.

Although I live in New England, I actually found this site via operachic.
And I quickly discovered that if one’s operatic focus, for better or worse, is the Met, this is where you need to be. This is where you find out what’s going on at Lincoln Center long before it hits the Grey Broadsheet …
Often, it is where you hear about Met things you’ll hear nowhere else.

I was not raised in a musical household. Musically self-educated, I listened to a lot
of Springsteen …
Then my wife kinda, sorta dragged me and our then-5-year-old daughter to the HD
of The First Emperor.
She’d seen a production of Vanessa in Chicago. I’d seen Pavarotti on TV.
That’s about it.

So, yeah, it’s not like we had much experience with opera.
The Tan Dun? With Domingo?
Well, I thought it was … interesting?
But I agreed to go again.
So, we went.
Even though, at that point, living in Maine, it meant driving two hours roundtrip
through the snow to a fairly distant, fairly awful multiplex.
I kept going along, thinking some of the music was kind of, uh, nice? LOL.
Although I did wonder what in the hell made Alagna ever agree to wear a power-blue suit …
Understand, I am a former sportswriter, a shot-and-a-beer lapsed Irish Catholic.
My mother had some Sinatra Christmas albums …
Our idea of culture, growing up?
Hmm …
Yeah. Well.
Anyway, I went to college. Took stagecraft. To meet chicks.
If I knew then what I knew now, I would have taken those classes and productions a lot more seriously.
Hell, I might’ve ended up a standhand instead of a writer.
My wife was a theater major as an undergrad. But that really doesn’t enter into it, either.
Part of what happened was, I went to India for a second time a few years ago and saw a
production of Madame Butterfly in Mumbai.
It wasn’t great.
But it was fun.
And it was Puccini.
Then we came home and the next HD was Frengo’s Boheme …
Hey, if you hate it, you hate it.
But, for me, it was one of the most incredible things I’d ever seen or heard.
From then on, that was it.
Opera became my thing. I decided to educate myself and build a collection, because I found the whole experience — listening, going to the HDs, going to the Met, reading books about opera, reading Parterre and operachic — just .. so damn fun.
A great escape.
Yes, it helped that my wife also got into it — albeit more from the theaterical standpoint, whereas I am the one who studies up and listens to other versions before an HD or a live performance.
And, yes, it also helped that my daughter got bitten by the bug early, from seeing/hearing Dessay and Florez in La Fille.
I imagine there aren’t that many now-8-year-old’s with an iPod that’s loaded with opera. But I digress.

I am 45. I don’t necessarily know that that qualifies as the “young” audience that has been referenced in this thread.
On the other hand, I know that our small family of three is on the younger end of the demographic at the soldout little theater in Maine at which our family purchases an entire row of HD tickets by the season.
(Thankfully, we don’t have to make that long drive to a multplex anymore. We’ve spent the past three seasons in a beautiful building that serves lunch, wine and where a prominent local restaurant opens early after the opera to serve free snacks with a cash bar. The HDs are quite an event.)

I know our relative “youngness,” so to speak, doesn’t necessarily speak well for
the long-term health of the art form.
But we’re young, comparatively.
That counts for something, right?
And given the fact that without the HD broadcasts, we wouldn’t be here at all?
That, to me, means that the HD broadcasts are doing what they’re supposed to do.
They certainly hooked us.

I am not prepared to say that Peter Gelb is an effing genius …
But I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be listening to opera, wouldn’t be buying recordings, wouldn’t be about to embark on our now-annual three-opera vacation to NYC in the not-cheap seats, if it weren’t for the HD broadcasts.
And that is something that I have communicated to both Mr. Gelb and Mr. Woolfe in recent months.

Thanks for listening.
I’m happy to be here, learning.
If nothing else, this thread got me to stop lurking.

I just think it’s important that people here understand that SterlingKay is not a voice in the wilderness. I read the posts here everyday and can tell you for a fact that much of what he has posted rings true to me.
And I think it’s not very nice to rip “young” opera fans for not having been born earlier.
Not our fault.

I very much appreciate your point of view…your comment that part of theater is make-believe brings up a running argument I have with some older, more conservative opera-goers. They pretty much argue your point…what does it matter if a singer doesn’t really look the part or he/she doesn’t act convincingly…use your imagination…don’t be so literal. Yet these same folks are the first to scream and yell if a set design is not realistic or representational. They can’t suspend their disbelief about that. They can’t use their imaginations. The set and costumes need to look EXACTLY the way the libretto suggests. There’s an inconsistency there, no??

I remember having an argument with an older gentleman about the Minghella BUTTERFLY. He could not abide the puppet used instead of the child. He claimed it was ridiculous… that you could not believe it. He could not use his imagination in that case. But he would have no trouble believing in a Butterfly who weighed 250lbs!

I’m not talking physique du role here. I’d be happy to see a plump Salome any day, if she was really committed as an actress and could handle the notes. And my guess is that Sterlinkay would agree.

Now, that “ought to be” is not necessarily invalid; I never suggested that. But what I do say is that the “ought to be” is the work seen from only one angle; a great opera (and most of the standard operas are great) deserves to be seen from many different angles.

So that’s not at all “innovation for innovation’s sake” — rather it’s “innovation for the sake of seeing work more clearly.”

(And I should clarify, I suppose, that when I say “see” I’m speaking metaphorically about the experiencing opera performance. A conductor who returns to the autograph score, restores cuts, and tries to find a compromise between “what the composer would have expected to hear” and “what is effective for the specific audience for which the piece is now being performed” is doing exactly the same sort of “looking at the work from a different angle.”

Doesn’t it depend on the nature (and duration) of the binge?

Some theater directors are also successful opera directors. But being good in one genre is no guarantee of competence in the other.

The old warhorses do not need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century…
…a noble sentiment, but operas aren’t pictures; they don’t remain the same for 300 years while we change all around them. Operas (like plays!) have to be performed anew every time; and it’s all too easy for then to become encrusted with routine. And we’ve been dragging them kicking and screaming into the 20th century throughout the 20th century; it’s inevitable. The sheer inertia of so much theatrical routine is what makes new productions necessary. Even a period-dress production of Rigoletto, say, isn’t the same in style nowadays as the original 1851 production in Venice. Maybe it should be–but to recapture the style of Venice in 1851 would require a lot more work that is possible within the confines of a repertory theater revival like the Met presents.

As for Gilbert, Tony T and some other peddlers of Youth = Hip = The Future keep trying to make him cool– multicultural background, “young” (hardly by conductor standards), open to contemporary rep.

In truth he’s a clear improvement on the dreadful glitzy Maazel but a bit of a Kapellmeister yawn.

as for the meds, you are just being rude,and you should maybe lay off them a bit. any one will catch the reference I made to a woman who didn’t look the part and wasn’t “camera pretty”; came out was laughed at, much like your supposed young friends you claim don’t like opera.
And she “sang”, and that made all the difference.
The world bought her record enough to make it a best seller…get it now? People actually want the goods, a voice for a singer, does that work better for you now that I slowed it down for you? Hope you got it now.

and if not, move on you don’t want a discussion. You want to manifest at the altar of Gelb and that is that.
No, my friends who don’t laugh actually took time to KNOW the field, and didn’t wait for it to be acted well before they gave it a side ways glance and I think them much smarter than you.

I on the other hand only mentioned I had seen more than you will ever forget, as a way to share with you maybe you need to expand your knowledge a bit. Scary thought for you obviously.

By the way I love when people quote the witty things they say to other people. It’s certainly the sign of a healthy ego…

Would that more people read the Observer so that there can be a “fair-and-balanced” dialogue in the city concerning The Met. Every critic has an ax to grind. since the Met has gotten a pass at The Times why not have an adversary elsewhere. BTW those critisms of NY Phil and NYCB were well deserved. If only there were someone at NYT to cast a spot light on the “smoke-and-mirrors” shenanigans going on at The Met.

Time to take your medication. Your posts are becoming increasingly incoherent as the evening wears on. I tried to decipher your last one to no avail. Your Susan Boyle reference baffled me. Same as your admiration for Chairman Mao.

I believe your argument is basically: I am right. I am old. I saw everything. You know nothing. You are wrong. You are uneducated. I have lots of friends. I have young friends who laugh at the singers today and they never laughed at the older singers (which of course begs the question: how “young” could these friends be?? Maybe you’re 80 and they’re 60??). I have friends…I know people…they all agree with me.

You seem a bit insecure to always have to buck up your arguments by telling us how many people agree with you.

The medium is drenched with choice.

Opera is Dead only because the shows make people laugh, and the singers, according to Miss barely park and yet barks everything, Dessay says it is a stupid unreal world that she just fell into by mistake, she wanted to be an actress. Yet I argue, heatedly, but stressing only it is my opinion shared by a lot of my friends who are STAYING away, that that may not be the only reason opera seems unpopular.

Anyone see any grammy nods for a classical voice except seeing Placido hand out best rap duo album to JC. Where is the exposure? In London now the exposure is to a muppet faced and haired Rolando Villazon coaching a bunch of pop singers to sing opera or some form of it as the only chance to gimmick an exposure to opera. The musical evenings at the white house had some limited exposure to opera and I do mean limited. Every other musicale so far after has been quite varied. They call Josh Groban an opera singer??? Can we all say embarrassing? Or at least my friends will call it that.

We get nothing but hope that at least in the theater you go to to hear the real thing, it doesn’t sell out and cop out just as it has been doing.

Ever see Jon Vickers in anything? Olivero, Stratas, Rysanek, Varnay, and the list goes on?

In a way, this does support Sterling’s feeling that the difference in viewpoint is generational (and not “educational”). Surely the population that saw those singers live and in the house is getting smaller by the day.

Why not educate with specific qualities instead of just saying that if you weren’t there in the 60′s then you’re stupid? Doesn’t encouragement grow the opera audience more than denigration?

“Bored” and “world-weary” certainly don’t describe her Laura or Isabella or Dalila either.