"I went to the opera last Friday night"...

...to fulfill a requirement for my Intro to Music class, and I got an article out of it, too. Click on the picture to read it, and view my original version below, the one I had to cut for space and, in the words of my editor, "dumb down."

I went to the opera Friday night. I’ve always wanted to say that. Well, maybe not always, but certainly since watching the theatre intrigues in books and movies like Persuasion, Vanity Fair and Madame Bovary. What was so captivating about the opera for 19th-century audiences?

I got my chance to find out when donors to the San Diego Opera offered subsidized student tickets this month for Mary, Queen of Scots, or Maria Stuarda, bel canto opera written by Gaetano Donizetti in 1834. As we took our seats I could hear the orchestra tuning up, building the excitement. “It’s a perfect marriage of music and drama—Italian style,” Nick Reveles, director of education and outreach, said of the opera in an introductory podcast offered on the San Diego Opera’s Web site.

The orchestra’s introductory passage set the stage for the drama as the curtain rose, and then receded to complement the opening aria sung by Elizabeth, played by mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich. Elizabeth determines that as her half-sister Mary, sung by soprano Angela Gilbert, poses a threat to the throne of England, she must sentence her to death. Opera is not about a captivating plot, or even accurate history (Elizabeth and Mary never actually met), but rather broad strokes of emotion. At center here is the vicious power struggle between two would-be queens.

“You love opera, and you don’t even know it,” Reveles said. “Your entire life has been surrounded and scored, if you will, by opera.” Indeed, attending the opera was like watching a flawlessly scored movie. The orchestra swelled and ebbed around the voices in exquisite nuances of emotion. Elizabeth, proud and fierce, declares her hatred for the enemy of her state, which is sharpened by their rival affections for the Earl of Leicester. Mary, the soon-to-be martyred heroine, defends herself in their venomous confrontation scene, but ultimately submits to her fate with magnanimous grace.

The elaborate costumes recalled the lush fashion of the era. The sets, minimal but stylistically evocative, including a notable park of Fotheringay Castle surrounded by a ceiling-high wrought-iron fence, effectively set off the action of each scene. Through a pair of rented binoculars, I spotted Dr. J. Craig Johnson, associate professor of music at PLNU, as a bemused English spectator among the choral crowd watching the sister-queens meet for the first time. Thanks to Reveles, I listened with relish as Mary spit out her infamous “vil bastarde,” or “vile bastard!”

Though the entire opera was sung in its original Italian, I understood every line, for an English translation was projected above the stage. As two candelabras glowed orange high above the stage, a harp intertwined itself with Mary’s final aria, illuminating her victimized cry of forgiveness towards Elizabeth. As the executioner raised his axe above her outstretched neck, the stage went black.

It’s not just about the opera, I discovered, but about the entire experience. To hear singers who can fill an opera house with pure, resonating sound, to listen to a subtly penetrating orchestra embrace and elevate, to experience the acute visceral culmination of the sets and costumes, and to sit side by side with people who can afford the ticket I only got through the generous donors’ offer—that is what captivated me.







The pictures are black and white because I couldn't get the red eye out. Angelica blinked in the last one, but it was the best one of us all together, so . . .