My First Opera

I went to the Opera for the first time last night. I never went before because I knew I wouldn't appreciate it, but lately that has changed. I've taken music history classes before, so I wasn't that keen on taking it AGAIN because the history for music minors and the history for music majors are "different." I'm still not that thrilled about it, but my teacher is pretty awesome and honestly I have learned some stuff I didn't already know. Like how to appreciate opera.

So, it was back in the time of Shakespeare, when people went to see plays a lot. Plays could be comedies or tragedies, and were performed in verse (i.e. iambic pentameter). Songs were/are also in verse. There was this group of guys in Italy who decided to try an experiment and write a play that would be entirely sung. Not that weird, really. They tried it, and it was cool. So they did it again. And it caught on. And the costumes, the scenery, the drama, it's all supposed to be overdone. It's a show. I get it, I can appreciate it now for what it is. Even the recitative parts, I knew that that was more dialogue-ish parts but the way he taught us was that he handed us each the first three lines of the Gettysburg address and made us notate the rhythm of the speech. I so GET it now. Then I figured I should go to the Opera because I would be able to appreciate it. And I did. And I will again.