MUSINGS ON THE USELESSNESS OF THE ARTS IN GENERAL

C'mon, it's hanging there in the air between us. Let's just admit it to ourselves. If and when the Oh-Shit-We-Bombed-Our-Own-Asses-Holocaust has come and gone, leaving us without cows or greenery, the opera singers will be the first to be eaten.

Shhhh, shhhhh. It's okay. We've both admitted it, now. When the time comes and you are about to tie me to the stake, I shall simply remind you that I have ovaries and therefore am of value. Then I shall offer you Big Gay Dave, who truly *will* be useless. (Sorry, darling.)

Opera singers are the collectible crystal minatures of society. We sit on your shelves looking stupid. I realized that today as I was proofreading the business school entrance essays of a dear friend. All these essays begin with sentences along the lines of, "My fluency in five different languages is of use because ..." I have probably given myself several different kinds of head trauma over that phrase.

I turned to Voltaire for solace:

"I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see wretched tragedies set to music; where the scenes are contrived for no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. Let who will die away in raptures at the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of Caesar or Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage, but for my part I have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned heads."

Ah, yes. Thanks, Voltaire. I needed that slap in the face to go with my bruised pride.

To get out my aggression and my feelings of angst on being a clinical Fuck Up, I wrote Voltaire a little note.

......

Yes. Yes, I am aware that Voltaire is dead. But that's okay. I needed to get this off my chest, and at the rate I drink, I'll be seeing him soon enough.

Dear Mister-Voltaire-Sir,

So, opera. Firstly, I agree totally with you on all points and I love you lot more for your honesty than I would for your ability to nod and smile. All the issues you brought up bother me, too. Since this is my profession, however, I've thought about those issues a lot, and after a couple years of agonizing, this is what I've come up with ...

It is a hard truth that OPERA SINGERS SUCK MONKEY BALLS. *Hairy* monkey balls. They're arrogant, hypocritical, cardboard-cutout, self-serving posturers with no sense of true reverence for the works they claim to live for.

But! Once in a while -- ONCE in a looooong while! -- you come across a passion that can transcend the awful trend of the medium. Voices that achieve something so powerful that they justify all that other crap. I have heard Kiri Te Kanawa make a toddler laugh and cry - a little two-year-old with hardly enough faculty to grasp what was going on around him, and yet the music made it clear to this boy when Kanawa was happy and when she was sad. I've seen pictures of Maria Callas before and after she purposely gave herself tape worms in order to lose weight so that opera theatres would hire her, and her level of dedication is apparent in her unbelievable technical skill, NONE of which was instinctual to her. I have seen Matthias Goerne repeatedly drive his accompanist to tears, heard Domingo Placido make an entire orchestra fade away to nothing for a note of no especial height or depth, and witnessed Cecilia Bartoli weep herself. These are the people I signed on for, and that's the experience that I, as a listener, long for. Is the opera a long shot, a conniving bitch, and ultimately a waste of my time? Absolutely. Am I addicted to the long shot, in love with a bitch, and OK with wasting my time for it? Stupid as it sounds ... yeah.

Here's the thing. I believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no one on planet Earth that could not learn to love those moments in opera I'm so addicted to. It's all the bad shit that gets in the way. You go to see the right people in the right theatre, and it's fucking amazing. No one who knows how to listen walks away from that completely unmoved. Some people don't know how to listen straight off, and that frustrates their ear, but the same could be said of any classical music, or of avante garde jazz -- it's just another superficial barrier, not a looming obstacle. In my opinion, opera shouldn't be about the opera freaks huddling together "appreciating". It should be about helping opera to permeate the public consciousness despite its flaws, so that it becomes more accessible and, consequently, as people relate to it better, more realistically produced and acted. That's not the burden of the casual listener - that's the burden of the very elitist bastards who insisted on alienating the medium in the first place.

I'm looking at your ass, Voltaire.

Which brings me to my ultimate point -- I will completely sympathize with the frustrations of fellow listeners, I will be the first to take up the torch and commit arson on a ridiculous soprano or a bad production, but that won't stop me in my grand crusade to make the world love opera. Because goddamnit, if I can't escape the misery of my all-consuming addiction, fucked if I'm gonna let all you scumbags prance around scot-free.

Hugs, Uncle Monty

Whew. I feel better.