Perhaps you've been to the opera, but you probably haven't: a 1992 study found that only 3.3% of Americans had ever sat down in person to watch a robust person sing, and, while the data is thin, the percentages were probably lower in many other places—and even lower now, when attendance at all live events has struggled with Covid and the internet. Take a moment to explore the origins of opera, then discuss with your team: what makes it different than Broadway-style musical theater?

• The origins of the art form known as opera originated in Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it drew early upon its older traditions of medieval and Renaissance courtly entertainment. The Italian word opera means "work", both in the sense of the labor done and the result produced. The Italian word in turn derives from the Latin opera. Opera is also the Latin plural of opus, with the same root, but the word opera was a singular Latin noun in its own right. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today, although with only five instrumental parts it was much more like a chamber opera than either the preceding intermedi or the operas of Claudio Monteverdi a few years later. (read more abt opera here)
• In my perspective, I see opera as the art where musical theatre, plays and opera on the same level as live art forms of entertainment. What makes opera much more different from a Broadway-style musical theatre is the way how they present the material. When we think of the word “opera” we imagine The Magic Flute from Queen of the Night aria by Mozart. Singing in a high tone, probably in Latin in and indefinitely inaudible almost hard to understand and you're left with context clues from the characters on stage, actions they do and faces they make. Reminds me of watching a ballet with the beautiful costumes and the atmosphere the cast brings on stage but they’re singing in a foreign language. (k10)

Champions of opera have noticed its declining popularity. In Italy, they've offered young people cheap seats—you can listen to a mezzosoprano for the cost of a double espresso. Others have reimagined live opera from the ceiling down as a multimedia experience. Audience members at the recent premiere of Somnium in China bumped shoulders with roaming robot rovers; those at a mid-pandemic Rigoletto in Serbia had to worry less about their toes getting run over and more about frostbite. At both, an LED screen was such a key player that it could have worn a tuxedo. Also during the pandemic, one opera company—led by renowned opera innovator Yuval Sharon—put together a drive-through version of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle in a parking garage. Consider these examples, then discuss with your team: is it possible to reimagine opera in ways so immersive that they aren't really opera anymore? If so, what is opera becoming?

• “Young people between 18 and 25 will be able to go to La Scala for two euros starting with the next season at the iconic Milanese opera house, Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli said Tuesday… it's an initiative aimed at the new generations who often consider culture with skepticism or because they experience malaise, culture is not a solution but it can help, Bonisoli said. The plan has been proposed to Italy's other 14 opera foundations and they have all accepted, he said.”
• With screening on a 50-meter long façade, which was used as a scenography of the famous opera, ’Rigoletto’ was performed not only for the visitors but for the audience across the world as well, via online streaming on the channels of the ’Novi Sad – European Capital of Culture’ project and broadcast on the national public service. The opera performance in the open was implemented in co-production with the oldest Serbian theatre, the Serbian National Theatre. It was conducted by Luis Gorelik, a conductor from Argentina, and directed by Aleksandar Nikolić. This year, the opening of the Kaleidoscope of Culture in Novi Sad was held at the site of Great Liman, a district in Novi Sad which is currently being transformed, as part of the preparation for the title year – from the neglected industrial complex to the centre of Novi Sad artistic production and contemporary creation. (2020)
• Yuval Sharon has amassed an unconventional body of work that expands the operatic form. He is founder and co-Artistic Director of The Industry in Los Angeles and the Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director of Detroit Opera. Sharon has directed and produced new operas in moving vehicles, operating train stations, Hollywood sound stages, and various “non-spaces” such as warehouses, parking lots, and escalator corridors. (read more about him AND the work he had done, i feel like this guy wouldve been a producer for Jonathon Larson’s Rent the Musical since was originally adapted from Puccini’s La boheme, an opera and it was turned into a motion picture sooooo)
• A vast Midwestern heft of underground storage, conveniently on one dystopian level and now the home of “Twilight: Gods,” Yuval Sharon’s radical drive-through adaptation of Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung” for Lyric Opera of Chicago. The private automobiles, symbolic referents to which also suffuse the work, are led by guides in funereal procession through different stations in varying sections of the garage. At each of the five destinations, the driver stops in a precise spot. As you navigate a tight corner, you may have to take care not to hit a cellist. He’s not looking at you. The running time of the epic piece is 70 minutes and you should know that a good chunk of that is taking up by moving from place to place at three miles an hour. The first scene takes place on high-definition video, matching the multi-media conception… since groups of cars are entering every 10 minutes. (study the plot and memorize the characters in Twilight: Gods)
• I feel like operas were overseen by the public eye as it seemed to be only for the highbrow culture but it really used to be as a way to get into the highbrow culture like the vibes and all that whatever. If operas were “too” immersive by who knows what, like moving chairs, air effects, water sprays it might be a 4d opera ride, might as well get thrown side to side (what a ride!). But the essence of an opera would lose it if those were included like a traditional opera where you sit quietly in a theatre and watch both acts. Wait don’t opera theatres have like a coat rack before you enter and sit? maybe its just from the movie I watched or it’s a European thing.

Maybe that LED screen wouldn't need to rent a tuxedo after all. Defying a tradition which many believe can alienate modern audiences and perpetuate racist and sexist institutions, some orchestras are rethinking what their performers should wear. Discuss with your team: how much does the look of a performer matter? Should orchestras allow their performers to dress in athleisure, or like Lady Gaga—or is there a risk of distracting from the music? Would it be okay for a conductor to wear yoga pants? Does forcing all members of an orchestra to follow any dress code at all, let alone one better-suited for (the men at) a 1920s soiree, unfairly limit their freedom of expression?

• Samantha Ege says “It gives me even more of an opportunity to express myself… I think about colours and moods, and how those will make me and the audience feel.” It’s that by viewing everything she wears through a sexualised lens, they’re presenting her as a sexual object first and an artist second. There is no room in this worldview for women’s clothes to be both an artistic and personal choice. We don’t just hear – we see musicians performing. (make a list of performers, what they wore, and their statement of their fashion with their performance in the article)
• Black suits, shirts, and long ties will replace the traditional white tie and tails, while full-length black dresses, skirts, or pants remain. According to Drexel University fashion professor Joseph Hancock in the Inquirer article, white tie and tails became the standard formal wear for men in the mid-19th century. “That entire look represented a culture of white elitism and that just doesn’t work any more. All it did was draw the market away from the orchestra. The customer just couldn’t relate. Society doesn’t want to relate.” “This new look is about strengthening the connection between the audience and the music and the musicians.” (read more and take note of the people in the article, i will not copy paste the whole thing its too much)
• Lady Gaga favours a glamorous Old Hollywood dress code, but avant-garde outfits defined her early career. In 2010, she attended the MTV Music Awards in an outfit made from raw meat. Forget risqué “naked dresses”, the “meat dress” was – and still is – one of the most divisive outfits in history. Stylist Nicola Formichetti called upon Franc Fernandez to design the unique piece, which was fashioned from flank steak. It was made from raw cuts of meat from a local butcher shop and was meant to be a statement about how people view women in the media. A taxidermist was tasked with preserving it, beef jerky style. The meat dress was succeeded by sculptural headwear. According to Lady Gaga, the dress did have a slight smell. She said that it was a combination of "raw beef and the scent of expensive perfumes.” (She made a video with Vogue explaining the meat dress, who helped her and who styled her.)

For those who think operas (like subject outlines) are too long for Gen Z attention spans, the British radio station Classic FM has retooled classics of the genre into 30-second animated shorts, such as this take on Bizet's Carmen. Others, worried that opera (like global rounds) can be too expensive for people to attend and too hard to find outside of large cities, have tried streaming operas into movie theaters. Discuss with your team: do you think these approaches can win new converts? Do they sacrifice anything of what makes opera opera?

• It was exactly 105 years ago, in January 1910, that the Metropolitan Opera in New York began transmitting radio extracts of Tosca and I Pagliacci, starring legendary tenor Enrico Caruso, all the way across the Hudson River to New Jersey. Ever since that historic broadcast, as technology has advanced, all the leading lyric theatre companies. Operas in streaming services have done well in sales.
• This new approach can definitely win new converts and attract people especially those who live far but want to watch operas and don’t have the resources/ or those who were always curious about the art form but don’t know where how to to start in the opera art. On the good note it becomes more accessible to a wider global audience. A potential downside is that it can be difficult to ensure that the audio and video quality are up to a professional standard. Also, it can be hard to create an immersive experience since much of the atmosphere of an opera comes from the live performances… at least it isn’t filmed like a Broadway bootleg right?

Classical works—many of which reflect a white, Western-dominated cultural milieu—can be reimagined for a more diverse world. Explore this production of the 17 century opera Orfeo, one that merges parallel Greek and Indian mythology, songs in English and Hindi, and musical instruments and styles, then discuss with your team: how well does it succeed? Can you think of other operas (or musicals, or even Disney movies) that should be reengineered in a similar way? Is it misleading to show two traditions coexisting so harmoniously in the same work in a world where cultures still more often collide than converse—or is it aspirational? And is the fact that the original opera was an Italian masterpiece proof that Western culture is still being given dominion over its Indian counterpart?

• Opera North’s adventurous new production of an ancient tragedy is told through a meeting of the worlds of Indian and western baroque classical music. The bowed strings of the violin and the tar shehnai, the hammered strings of the santoor, the plucked strings of the harpsichord and sitar, and the rhythms of the tabla shape a unique musical encounter. Laurence Cummings, who also conducted Garsington’s Orfeo, is here joined by Jasdeep Singh Degun as co-music director to weave together their respective traditions of Indian classical and western early music. An onstage orchestra of 19 players includes a baroque ensemble of violin, viola, cello, bass, trumpet, percussion, harp, harpsichord, lirone and theorbo, as well as Indian classical instruments including sitar, tabla, santoor, esraj and bansuri. The cast includes performers trained in western and Indian classical traditions, with tenor Nicholas Watts singing Orpheus and British-Tamil Carnatic singer Ashnaa Sasikaran singing Eurydice. In this meeting of East and West, OperaVision closes a month dedicated to opera’s ongoing fascination with the myth of Orpheus. (You can watch the opera here, its free)