WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT...
CALLAS
It would somehow seem sacrilegious (well, for me) to start an opera blog without first paying due respect to the diva who came into my life in 2001, my first year at university. My flatmate brought home a DVD and I sat and watched a mesmerising soprano with the most expressive eyebrows I'd ever seen. Turned out quite a lot of other people liked her too. And even if they didn't like her, they liked to talk about her. Her turbulent, passionate romances, the dramatic revamping of her image (did she eat the tapeworm or not?), her rivalries, histrionic temperament and all the rest, but above all, the voice. How glorious it was, her style, her versatility, how she both seduced and alienated the crowds, it's tragic demise and the myriad reasons for it. The bottom line: Callas was the true definition of an artist. She embodied the roles she sang in a way no-one had done before.
Not long after my first exposure to her, I bought a Callas Greatest Hits or something similar and decided the aria for me (aged 18) was "Ebben...ne andro lontana" from Catalani's opera La Wally. I took it to my singing teacher who looked at me sideways and said, in her thick Scottish accent that never diminished after half a lifetime in New Zealand, "I don't think the worrrrrld is rrrrready." My first conversation about appropriate repertoire choice - and not my last.
So while Maria inspired my love of opera, my love of opera inspired this blog. I say it needs to be talked about because quite frankly, not enough people know about it. I've had friends come to watch me having never in their lives stepped inside an opera house. The only "opera" they'd ever heard was something used in an airline commercial (listening to it again years later I realise how badly it's sung - my ears! My ears!) Jargon like "aria", "recitative", "coloratura" and "trouser role" means nothing to them. They can't name a single composer other than Mozart, and it's only because they had to watch Amadeus at high school. None of them would say that being introduced to opera wasn't worth the time and effort. Some of them even grew to like it and started going to performances that I wasn't even in! I like to think that in a small way, I am doing my bit for a generation that has been, in general, deprived of the most glorious of art forms.
Georgia Jamieson Emms, September 2013
CALLAS
It would somehow seem sacrilegious (well, for me) to start an opera blog without first paying due respect to the diva who came into my life in 2001, my first year at university. My flatmate brought home a DVD and I sat and watched a mesmerising soprano with the most expressive eyebrows I'd ever seen. Turned out quite a lot of other people liked her too. And even if they didn't like her, they liked to talk about her. Her turbulent, passionate romances, the dramatic revamping of her image (did she eat the tapeworm or not?), her rivalries, histrionic temperament and all the rest, but above all, the voice. How glorious it was, her style, her versatility, how she both seduced and alienated the crowds, it's tragic demise and the myriad reasons for it. The bottom line: Callas was the true definition of an artist. She embodied the roles she sang in a way no-one had done before.
Not long after my first exposure to her, I bought a Callas Greatest Hits or something similar and decided the aria for me (aged 18) was "Ebben...ne andro lontana" from Catalani's opera La Wally. I took it to my singing teacher who looked at me sideways and said, in her thick Scottish accent that never diminished after half a lifetime in New Zealand, "I don't think the worrrrrld is rrrrready." My first conversation about appropriate repertoire choice - and not my last.
So while Maria inspired my love of opera, my love of opera inspired this blog. I say it needs to be talked about because quite frankly, not enough people know about it. I've had friends come to watch me having never in their lives stepped inside an opera house. The only "opera" they'd ever heard was something used in an airline commercial (listening to it again years later I realise how badly it's sung - my ears! My ears!) Jargon like "aria", "recitative", "coloratura" and "trouser role" means nothing to them. They can't name a single composer other than Mozart, and it's only because they had to watch Amadeus at high school. None of them would say that being introduced to opera wasn't worth the time and effort. Some of them even grew to like it and started going to performances that I wasn't even in! I like to think that in a small way, I am doing my bit for a generation that has been, in general, deprived of the most glorious of art forms.
Georgia Jamieson Emms, September 2013