Birmingham Verse

The Most Famous First Page of Any Score in All of Opera?

A lady named Hermione Lee says that all marriages are inexplicable.  Yeah, and a guy named Harold Bloom goes on to say that Shakespeare taught us the black box theory of marriage.  We never know why we married, why marriage did or didn’t work, and, after it crashes, we can’t recover the black box.

Such is love.

There were twenty or more singers at the Opera Birmingham rehearsal for The Marriage of Figaro on Saturday.  And just about the first thing I noticed was – when the singers weren’t actually singing – how “over it” many of them seemed to be.  During this all-afternoon run-through – which is admittedly work for them – there were lots of times when singers were off to the side, “off stage”, waiting around for the moments when they got to perform, looking a little bored, typing on laptops, i-tech, and cellphones.  Or maybe just snoozing.  I thought, “Do they not like this?”

So I’m there for the whole afternoon to watch from the sidelines and – of course – I’m spellbound by the whole thing.  Even with no costumes, no sets, no orchestra, and few real props, it’s a terrific performance.  Not just the singing and performance details, but just the spectacle. In contrast to what I thought about the singers, I could barely take my ears off it.  And I wondered how it would be possible to sit in that room and not pay attention.

But after sitting there a while and watching the performances, I’m certain my first impression of those singers was wrong.  It’s kind-of like something I’ve occasionally called The Bob Dylan Effect: What would it be like to be married to a genius?  Someone who could be effortlessly new all the time?

For example, let’s say I somehow wrangle a date with Regina Spektor.  I’ll admit that I’d probably get a bit nervous.  In fact, I’d probably be in awe, just on general principles, and then even more amazed that she somehow liked me back.  Shoot, let’s be honest, I’m amazed when anybody likes me back.  Let’s say – just in bizarro world – that I manage to marry Miss Spektor.  (As long as I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony.)  How long could it last that I could sit around and listen to her singing and tinkering around at the piano, before I got up and needed to do something else?  Would I listen less as years went by?

Like Billy Crystal says in When Harry Met Sally, “You take someone to the airport, it’s clearly the beginning of the relationship.  That’s why I have never taken anyone to the airport at the beginning of a relationship.  Because eventually things move on and you don’t take someone to the airport and I never wanted anyone to say to me: How come you never take me to the airport anymore?”

Put another way, I’ve been lucky to date a few truly beautiful girls and found that – directly contrary to what I thought would happen when I was fourteen – after a while, I start paying attention to her as something entirely more than just beautiful.  In fact, I can almost forget the beautiful part.  Until we’re at the grocery store and she walks back an aisle to get some salad dressing or something and I get absorbed in some other thing until I happen to look up and see this beautiful girl from a hundred feet away and having just an instant to wonder “holyCOWwhoisthat?!?” before realizing that it’s my girlfriend and it makes me amazed all over again that such a beautiful girl could think it was cool to hang out with me.

Or maybe, when you date someone, you tend to stay pretty close to her when you’re out and you don’t get enough chances to appreciate her from ten feet away, or a hundred feet away, or the next table over at a restaurant, or to just stare at the back of her head like we all used to do in school.  Those perspectives are mainly for the people outside your relationship.  Those people who can still see her and be spellbound by how beautiful she is.  But you’ve traded those perspectives for a closer and more complex view.

Back to those opera singers . . . they’re inside the relationship.  At some point, they met the opera and they were spellbound because she was so beautiful.  And they asked her out.  One date became two, two became three, and the blink-of-an-eye later, they were studying and training and singing – pressed right up close and in a relationship with this beautiful thing.

When I was fourteen, I misjudged marriage too.  I read Romeo and Juliet, looked around at adults, and thought, “How is it all so routine?  Where’s the passion?”  But it’s there.  You don’t commit to a relationship – or spend your Saturday afternoons at practice – without a good bit of passion.  And love.  And comfortable, well-worn, mutual respect after years of wrestling around with each another.  Relationships are full of nuance.

On the other hand: “Genius, and not marriage, is my subject, and the age-old advice not to marry a genius probably is sound enough.”

Thanks again to Daniel Seigel and Opera Birmingham for letting me watch another Opera Birmingham rehearsal.

I enthusiastically accepted when Opera Birmingham invited me to come watch a practice.  If it’s not already on your calendar, take note that they’re preparing to perform The Marriage of Figaro in a couple of weeks.  On both lists of “Best Operas” that I could find quickly (here and here), Figaro ranks in the top five.  For that reason alone, you probably should make a point to go in person and see it performed.  Go ahead and ask yourself: When’s your next opportunity to see a “Top Five” anything in Birmingham, Alabama?

I visited opera rehearsal in the context of just finishing my RPM Challenge album for 2010.  If you’re an opera fan and reading this piece, then you’ll have absolutely no business whatsoever thinking about or listening to my completely amateur musical and singing efforts.  All you really need to know is that RPM challenges musicians to write and record a whole album of music all in the short month of February.  So the time between the creative idea and the realization of that idea is extremely (and perhaps excessively) short – just 28 days.  Which allows precious little time for contemplation or technical mastery.  You just rush to get in, get it done, and get out.

I speak from experience when I can tell you, even in a rush and with simple ideas and limited time, that the original inspiration always gets altered in translation.  There are chord changes, lyrics, or ideas that just don’t fit.  So they get taken out or changed.  The finished product is at least a few left turns and veers removed from how it was envisioned that first week in February.

The flip side of the always-rushing-around coin would be something like The Marriage of Figaro.  Mr. Mozart did his part for Figaro in the 1780s.  That allows over two-hundred years between that particular genius idea and Opera Birmingham’s particular realization of that idea.  It’s a pretty short list of works of art that regularly get performed two hundred years later.

The bad news is that Figaro’s expression is complexicated because – not only is Mozart’s idea as old as our country (and my-oh-my how times have changed) – it’s written in Italian.  It also requires independent interpretation from a full cast of more than twenty singers, an orchestra, a conductor, and a director.  Inevitably, stuff gets edited, pushed, pulled, and altered.  The good news is that artsy, creative, and scholarly people have had over two hundred years to ponder those changes.  And the performers have spent a lifetime on the details of technical mastery.

When something like Shakespeare’s plays, Bach’s fugues, or The Marriage of Figaro are performed, they stagger through your door with these generations of interpretational baggage.  This contrasts with more modern entertainment.  With movies, for example, you can often walk in unprepared and they’ll make a good faith and self-contained effort to explain it all to you.  With that in mind, it’s my belief that every scrap you can learn about works like Figaro – before you go – will pay you back in spades.  But don’t feel bad if you don’t know much about opera.  Just like it was said at the rehearsal, “Remember, probably thirty to forty percent of this audience will have never seen opera before.”  (I’ve only seen one.)

It’s not like you have to do anything highfalootin’ like study.  Take this tidbit for example: Alabama native Susanna Phillips – who is cast as Countess Almaviva – wore her grandfather’s cowboy boots to practice.  Isn’t that cool?  Overheard there: “It’s not often you see a soprano in cowboy boots.”  Do you like her more?  I do.  Will you visualize her in orangey-brown, broken-in boots even when you see her all “divaed up” on stage?  I might.

Howabout this info: Apparently, The Marriage of Figaro is significantly fast for an opera.  Though some others can stretch like five sentences of content into twelve minutes of singing, Figaro apparently requires a nimble tongue, a sense of timing, and some judicious editing of the audience’s titles.  Like a a highly revved engine.  Or an Italian and musical version of the Gilmore Girls.  When you go, doesn’t that make you want to pay attention to the sheer speed?  It does me.  Will you be sensitive and listen for cast members that might miss lines or sing them over one another?  I will.

Finally, back in the 18th century there weren’t any trailers, like for movies.  So I’d imagine that an audience would find some other way of learning the general story before they went to see the show.  Why not take a look at a synopsis (like here) and get an overview even before you get there?  Let yourself concentrate on other things, like just how lovely the music can be.  Even at practice, it was.

Thanks very much to Daniel Seigel and Opera Birmingham for this cool opportunity.  My favorite random line of the day: “I’d pay real money to see Juilliard play Birmingham Southern in football.”