Saturday, November 17, 2012

The Opera...

The Opera is not at all what I expected it to be. It was extremely long, however; I can not say that I didn't enjoy parts of it. It was comical at times, and sometime it was a bit over the top, however overall i liked it. I was absolutely amazed at the ability of the musicians and singers to be in sync in every possible way as music was an emphasis upon the singers' movements. I found a parallel, yet difference between operas and plays: While they both tell a story through actions, it was was interesting to see how at certain times when the actors wanted to emphasize the current part of the story taking place they would do it through their voices, while still acting. Whereas in a play, the emphasis would have been drawn out through facial features or body gestures. (I'm quite aware of the obvious difference between the two, but its intriguing to see how each performance expresses dramatic things in different ways)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I agree. I found myself glancing less and less towards the subtitles and more towards the actual actions of the characters as the opera went on. Perhaps they want to make use of interpretive movement as well as just tone and tenor in their singing.

Madeline Davis said...

During the opera, I mostly paid attention to their movements and gestures. Their over-the-top body language ended up telling a lot of the story, which I really appreciated, since there were no subtitles for portions of the show. I knew if was a comedy, but I wasn't expecting the acting to have that much physical comedy. Parts of it seemed very "three stooges" to me and I found myself laughing even when I had no idea what the exact context of what they were saying was.