Opera
everywhere

You see, if you think of opera simply as ‘classical’ music with song and dance, you will soon see it leap out of this ‘box’ and mix with many more genres of music than you could even imagine!

Until now we saw how opera was first performed to entertain aristocrats and their aristocrat friends in a serious Italian manner and then it ‘leaped out’ into public theatres and it became all sorts of things: it became French, it became German, it became Greek, it became digital, and we didn’t even get to see how it became Turkish, Chinese, or Argentinean. Sometimes it was funny and sometimes it was sad, sometimes it was tiny and sometimes way too long. So now it’s time we saw some examples of other genres of music that ‘leaped into’ the box where opera was sitting, how they played together, and what new songs they yapped together.

Our story here begins in the United States in the early 1900s, when music publishers began selling edited versions of popular operatic arias for the piano – that are called ‘arrangements’ or ‘vocal scores’. In this small but significant way, from aristocratic courts and expensive theatres, opera suddenly found its way into the everyday life of people who wished to enjoy, sing and play it in their living room.33L. Hamberlin 2011, Tin Pan Opera. Operatic novelty songs in the ragtime era, σ. 3-5. At the same time, similarly to the likes of Mozart who used traditional and popular music in their compositions, musicians from other genres of music experimented with inserting tunes from the operatic repertory into their own musical style. In this any many other ways that we will see in this section, ever increasing numbers of people came to contact with aspects of opera they could immediately recognise as part of this musical tradition or enjoy without ever knowing they were secretly dancing to opera.

The widely popular genre of the ‘musical’, which we now enjoy in theatres and cinemas, first appeared with the performance of the musical comedy ‘The black crook’ in 1866 New York. But wait a second, I can hear you protesting, if an art consists of instrumental music, song, theatre, and dance then surely it must be opera or operetta! And your objections are entirely justified. But let’s try it this way: If we think of operetta as the musical’s grandpa and opera as operetta’s older sister then we have a nice little group of related genres that are similar enough to belong to the same ‘family’ but are also distinguishable from each other. So what are the most important of these differences?

In opera singers deliver their text in the ‘recitativo’ style between the arias. In operetta and musical the text is not ‘sung’ in the recitativo style but performers speak like they would in theatre in-between their songs. Another important distinction is that performers in musicals sing their songs in the technique we find in all other genres of music, unlike opera where singers use the special ‘operatic technique’ that gives their voice a specific texture and colour. Dance is represented equally with the other arts in musicals and the singers-actors usually participate in the choreographies. On the contrary, when dance is included in opera it is performed by dancers. Therefore, if we sum up all these differences we will see that musical is a form of entertainment often performed by actors with advanced training in singing and dance, who perform popular songs. They do not use the operatic singing technique, the plot is advanced through spoken word, and dance is as important an element as the rest of the art-forms on stage.

Other beloved musicals include: The Phantom of the Opera (by Gaston Leroux, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber), Les Miserables (by Victor Hugo, music by Claude-Michel Schönberg). Popular musicals for the TV and cinema include: The producers (by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, music by Glen Kelly and Mel Brooks) as well as Chicago [screenplay by Bill Condon, music by John Kander, Danny Elfman, and Steve Bartek].

The famous American trumpeter Louis Armstrong, for example, who experimented with opera throughout his career, left musical references to Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto in his pieces New Orleans Stomp and Dina. Moreover, in his pieces Tiger Rag and New Tiger Rag he drew inspiration from Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci. And if you are looking for a particularly amusing example of this musical exchange between the genres, look up the song Mack the Knife, from Kurt Weil’s The Threepenny Opera. Jazz and pop music stars such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Boby Darin have performed this otherwise dark song with great success. How did these adaptations change the style of the original song? What other performances can you discover?

As for those of you with a preference for loud music, you must already know that in the 1960’s and the 1970’s important British bands, such as ‘The Who’, ‘Nirvana’ and ‘Pink Floyd’, composed music that was later termed ‘rock opera’. That is, rock music albums whose independent tracks tell a continuous story and contribute in this way to the development of a plot with individual ‘characters’, expressed in the musical idiom of rock. The first albums to present this style were S. F Sorrow (1968) by ‘The Pretty Things’ and   Tommy (1969) by ‘The Who’. In 1979 the band ‘Pink Floyd’ released the album The Wall, while a little earlier, in 1975, a ‘zong opera’ on the myth of Orpheus and Euridice became the first Soviet-Russian rock opera.

In the USA during the same period rock operas on Christian themes flourished, with Jesus Christ Superstar by British composer Andrew Loyd Weber opening on Broadway in 1971 and turning into an instant success both in the US as well as in Great Britain. In 2004 the BBC, Britain’s public broadcaster, aired the parody- opera AD/BC, a humouristic take on this 1970’s American craze. As you can see, rock opera has not only been popular entertainment for many decades but it has been so popular as to warrant the production of a comedy-opera on the theme of rock opera.

And if you are indeed into loud music and find the idea of rock opera appealing, yet you do not enjoy rock music, you could always test if a hip- hop opera is more to your liking. Similarly to the idea of rock opera, the experimental group ‘Clipping’ presented their inter-galactic adventure Splendor & Misery, which they described as a ‘hip-hop opera’. In a similar fashion with rock opera, the group maintained the story-telling aspect of traditional opera to tell a musical story in their own style.

Groups like ‘The Three Tenors’, featuring the tenors Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti, became particularly popular in the 1990s. Similarly you may remember operatic singers representing their countries in the Eurovision song contest, bringing opera into the house of audiences who would not otherwise choose opera for their entertainment.

Among the most famous collaborations of that period was certainly the one between Freddie Mercury from ‘Queen’ with the internationally acclaimed soprano Montserrat Caballe. In 1987, Mercury and Caballe recorded the song ‘Barcelona’ for the 1992 summer Olympics that took place in the city of Barcelona in Spain. As you can hear yourselves, the combination of Mercury’s high-pitch voice, with Caballe’s operatic style, and the accompaniment of a full orchestra resulted in a unique pop-operatic song dedicated to the city of Barcelona.

As we have already seen in the section about the birth of opera, popular music and dances that people would have recognised from their everyday life were included in the genre from its very beginning.

Naturally, this practice still continues. Elements from our cultures that are popular with the audience are often included in operas. See for example how much richer opera becomes when it mixes with singing styles and instruments that we would normally expect to find in other musical genres. In her opera Angel’s Bone, for example, composer Du Yun used elements from traditional, electronic, pop, as well as church music, while one of the leading characters of the opera sings in the punk style.

Since opera has become part of many people’s life, organisations such as the Greek National Opera run projects aiming to make opera accessible to as many people as possible. And since we do not all live in cities that have an opera house or can afford to pay for singing lessons, these large organisations created educational programmes that invite everyone to participate in opera in any way they wish and are able to. See for example the educational programme ‘Co- OPERAtive’, which invited unaccompanied asylum seeking young people as well as young Athenians to produce an opera together. If you are interested in music, and opera in particular, you can find relevant programmes run by organisations like the Greek National Opera or even write to share your own wishes and ideas with them. They will love to hear from you!

Why have so many boxes, though? Why not call all of the examples above ‘opera’, since it was the main source of inspiration for musicians, who also named their works ‘opera’? Take a moment to think about the differences between a ‘standard’ work of opera and a rock opera or a song inspired by opera. Are the instruments and the technologies in use the same? Are their themes and their style of performance similar? What audience does each genre attract? Are their differences important? Is their history similar enough so as to not warrant each a distinct name? Just like we store different thing in separate boxes at home to find them more easily, similarly we create musical boxes in order to know where to look for them. Other than this practical issue, the world of music is vast and the boundaries between the different musical genres much more permeable than you can even imagine. All you have to do to explore this world is to go online, listen to Louis Armstrong’s music, and enjoy yet another aspect of opera you could not even imagine existed.