Okay, my grandma actually recommended this book to me. It's called bel canto, which translates to "a lyrical style of operatic singing using a full rich broad tone and smooth phrasing". It was a wonderful book. I think that it loses its appeal to someone who is not involved in music. It's sort of difficult to explain. One of the main characters, named Roxanne Coss, is a world-famous opera singer. She attends a party to celebrate the birthday of a Japanese business man in a country in Latin America (never specified) and all the guests are held hostage by a radical "terrorist" group of impoverished young adults (some of them are children).
I don't think many people would notice how integral music is to the development of the characters and the plot. I don't mean most people won't read into it enough. To truly understand the bond that music creates between the hostages,the way it brings them together, I think you need more than an appreciation for music. I think you need to have created music of your own to truly understand why it is so important to Roxanne, and her accompanist, and everybody else. I believe the author chose opera, and not piano, or musical theatre, or just plain singing because a) opera is sophisticated b) it is (correct me if I'm wrong) one of the most difficult and laborious art forms to learn and c) it is universal. Obviously, instrumental music is universal. But singing is more personal than playing an instrument, and the major hindrance in any communication between the hostages is language. Opera does not need a translator. It is not as dependent on words as theater is (but the lyrics/meaning are important). It relies on technique and emotion to tell the story. That's why it creates bonds and relationships.
There is one person, Gen, who is a translator. He is the only one who completely understands what people are saying (the guests are from all over - Russia, US, France, Japan, Latin America, Italy, etc.) In the end, Roxanne and Gen (SPOILER ALERT) get married. They did not fall in love. But they were the only two people who could communicate and effect people. Gen could understand the languages people spoke, he could negotiate, do whatever they needed him to do. The only other person who was as important to him was Roxanne. She was the reason the party happened, and she was this human manifestation of opera, of what it represents and what it can build.
This was very rambly I apologize.
I agree that opera is universal. In fact, I think it has to be. Unlike other songs that sound beautiful if you don’t understand the words such as “Call of the Flowers” (a song Bella Voce is singing in French) opera needs to be clear, with all audience members understanding the content purely from the singer’s/actor’s intonation and variation of voice. Composers have written operas in so many different languages like German and Italian that although when written were understood word for word by viewers because the operas were performed more locally, now one would think meaning would be lost because of the language barrier. However the opposite has happened. I vaguely remember seeing a performance at UCSC when I was much younger that combined little bits of different pieces from the same composer into a story. Some chunks were instrumental, and the rest was opera. I understood perfectly what was attempting to be conveyed because of the versatility of the art itself. This added job of audience understanding is also why it is so difficult to perform opera properly. It’s one thing to sing well, another thing to sing AND act well, and a completely different story altogether when it’s in another language.
ReplyDeleteI think your three points about opera; that it is sophisticated, difficult, and universal, are very interesting. I never really put much thought into it, but opera can be very complex in that way, more than in other forms of music. However for all of its interesting complexities, and the shier amount of time and effort that must be put into it, opera is not something you will ever hear on the "Top 20" on the radio, and while there are people who enjoy listening to opera regularly, they are definately a minority compared to people who listen regularly to say, pop, or rock, or country. Today we would be shocked if we found someone who didn't know the Beatles, however, Giuseppe Verdi, composer of Va Pensiero, is not a name known by everyone. I wonder if it is because of the complexity of Opera that it has a smaller nitch of followers. For people to get the most out of it, a lot of work has to be put in.
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