Now hold everything...

I just posted a tiny note about being in Paris, when Kim Witman's fantastic blog led me to an op-ed piece in a recent Baltimore Sun edition. It is something I miss while being abroad. The piece is so beautifully written that I will include it here in its entirety, without permission but I hope alright just the same.

It gets to something that has obsessed me lately. That when we talk about the powerful of opera (and when I say opera I mean the arts, but opera in particularly since, as Peter Sellars recently said at a forum on "Adriana Mater" at Santa Fe: "Opera is on of the few places we are stilled allowed to be profound") it isn't something intangible. Opera does have the power to make a change for good, to touch people. And lately I have been thinking not just the power, but also perhaps the responsibility.

Summer Nights at the Opera - by Diane Cameron

Picture this: Your life has just gone down the drain, so you swallow a lethal dose of poison. Just as your nervous system begins to fail, you sing a moving and beautiful song.

Crazy? Not at all; just another summer night at the opera.

As an opera fan, I'm used to hearing, "How can you like opera?" Friends complain that opera is unrealistic: "Who sings when they are dying?" They imagine, as I once did, that opera is for the old or the rich. It's true that opera isn't for everyone.

It's an acquired taste. But that's because to appreciate opera, you must first acquire some life experience.

This, more than any other reason, is why opera audiences tend to be older. The age of opera's audience reflects experience rather than merely years.

There are some young people who are old enough. So how do you know if you're ready? It all depends on your story.

Opera is all about story. We're attracted to good stories because stories are how we teach and how we learn. The old saying is true: A smart man learns from his own experience, but a wise man learns from someone else's. This is why we tell tales, why we gossip and why we go to the opera.

But critics say, "Oh, the stories of opera are so old, who can relate?" Yes, opera does have deep roots going back to ancient Greek theater, but the stories are timeless. The plots of opera's standard repertory read like headlines from yesterday's New York Post: "Disgruntled Bozo Snaps, Stabs Two" (Pagliacci) or "Seamstress Coughs To Death As Friends Look On" (La Boheme) or "Bride Goes Mad, Murders Hubby On Honeymoon" (Lucia di Lammermoor).

I didn't always love the opera. I remember the first time I went. I was in my 20s. It was something German, the night was long and I was bored.

So, what changed? I got older and life happened. When I look back at that time in my 20s, I realize that I hadn't yet begun or ended my first marriage and therefore didn't fully understand the concept of tragic-comedy. I hadn't yet seen people I loved dying and learned that singing is the least of the strange things people do on their deathbeds. And in my 20s, I hadn't yet had a serious illness of my own, so I hadn't learned that sweet and scary amalgam of fear, self-pity, courage and melodrama.

But what about all that singing? People don't really sing about their problems, do they? Well, ask yourself: Have you ever had a really bad day and found that talking didn't help, but when you drove home from work belting oldies at the top of your lungs, you found that you felt much better when you got home? Or maybe the day after a break-up, you couldn't move the gray knot lodged in your gut, but a song on the radio helped you to start the healing.

So how can you know if you're old enough for opera? Here's my theory: You have to have lived a little and loved a lot.

Ask yourself: Have you ever, against your own good sense and your best friend's advice, fallen for the wrong person? Do you know, despite the false comfort we offer teenagers, that sometimes unrequited lovers do suffer for years? Have you ever begged God to stop an illness, a death or someone else's decision? And have you learned that forgiveness doesn't follow a formula but that it can come like grace after something as simple as hearing a song?

When you are old enough - and have hurt enough - opera doesn't seem silly at all. If you know from firsthand experience that grief and humor are the two lines running parallel down the center of life's highway, then you, too, are old enough for the opera.