Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Opera Laughs

Even opera has humor woven into it, as a necessary balance to the high drama. Just as in life, laughter in opera affords us, the audience, a reprieve from the roller coaster ride of emotions, the highs and the lows of human feelings.

I adore opera. The music. The drama. The extravagant productions. The ecstasy of love. The bitterness of betrayal. The angst of separation and death. In short, the heights and depths of human emotions. Yet in the midst of it all, opera has its comedic moments, more of them than you might expect. For laughter is a deep human emotion.

When I brought friends to Seattle Opera’s production of Carmen, their first opera experience, they were surprised to learn it contained some humor. Often it’s the director’s creative ideas of adding some fun. Sometimes it’s the way the opera house translates the libretto onto the supertitles, with a clear intent to amuse. Other times it’s comedy that is written into the opera itself.

In Tales of Hoffman: Picture an extremely large diva swaying her girth slap- stick style to the music she’s belting out, flanked by two swaying male dancers, and you’ve got roll-on-the-floor laughter at the opera house.

The recent production of Orpheus and Eurydice had the female goddess Amour dressed in a whimsical outfit, riding a golden bicycle and adding some playful fun as balance to the wrenching emotions the tenor was singing.

An updated version of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutti was the ultimate, complete with cellphones, laptops, lattes, and the show-stopper, men half-clad in black leather, and half-naked in tattoos. Just hilarious! But with no disrespect to the music. Amadeus knew the value of laughter. He would have loved it! The rough translation of this opera is “Women are Like That” or as one opera lecturer put it “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Photo: Seattle Opera/Rosarii Lynch

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