A Night At the Opera

Many of us have had the same pre-conceived notions when faced with an opportunity to consider the art of opera:

"It's a lot of screaming."

"It's too emotional."

"The heroine always die in the end after a lot of yelling."

That's the sort of determinist prejudice that I carried around with me for many clueless years. I was firmly grounded in my musical tastes- ABBA, Blondie, early 1960s girl-groups like the Ronettes and the Crystals- and I rarely strayed.

Then I went to Mississippi to visit a friend.

It was the summer of 1984, and my first solo road trip. I was 28 years old, and drove a late 1970s beige Plymouth Volare graced with a brown leatherette "collar" that surrounded the car's rear windshield and its smaller side windows. So cool.

My friend Sam was attending the University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg, a town that came with a lot of local legends, two of which have stayed with me:

"We have a drive-by funeral parlor; and down that street behind those

tall bushes is an old lady who lives in a house filled with cats."

Sam rented a room in a pleasant little bungalow run by his landlady, Fern, whose passion was her collection of ceramic bells. They were all over the house, came in all shapes and sizes, and she was the only person on earth who was allowed to ring them. Now, when someone tells you not to ring her bells, your first impulse is to want to ring them, and it's a monument to my usually out-of-control self-control that I never touched one bell. Now I would. I would ring them all; life is short.

Sam and his graduate course friends were all music majors, though none of them specialized in the music that made me want to get up off the couch and dance the Locomotion. These were hard-core music majors who lived in apartments filled with sheet music; instruments only an afficionado of tweltfh-century chamber music would appreciate, much less play; and vast collections of albums from record labels I had never heard of.

Sam and I visited one of his friends on a weekend evening and, this being Mississippi, libations in brown bottles were freely to be had. Albums of various operas were placed on a turntable to be played and appreciated and- because these were hard-core music majors- heavily critiqued.

A "newbie" to the opera genre, my ear was finally caught by the ethereal voice of Renata Scotto singing and screaming her way through Suor Angelica, a Puccini grand opera which began its life as part of his Il Trittico- three short operas comprising a whole.

Renata portrayed a rich young woman who had been sent to a convent because of a past indiscretion. Angelica becomes the apothecary for the nuns, concocting all sorts of elixirs and cures from the plants growing on the premises.

And, because this is Italian grand opera and somebody needs to darken the day, a formidable aunt visits her. Angelica is asked to sign over her inheritance because she will be spending her life in the convent. Forbidden to have had contact with her indiscretion as he grew into a young child, Angelica asks her aunt for news about him. Because this is Italian grand opera, tragic news about her son is imparted, and the aunt coldly departs.

Angelica is beside herself. You guessed it: she concocts a potion from poisonous plants: she'll see him in heaven. After she imbibes, she realizes that she's committed a mortal sin, and prepares to meet her Maker while singing for forgiveness. As she dramatically expires amid prayers and petitions to the Lord, a nearby chapel door opens and her indiscretion appears to her as she breathes her last breath: she has finally seen him.

In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, amidst a group of music majors, I let the tears flow. And that began my appreciation for an art form that touches souls.

The most recent opera I experienced was the All is Calm production by Opera Orlando, presented by the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation at the historic Garden Theatre on Plant Street. It tells the tale of British and German troops facing one another across a very narrow "no man's land" in Europe during the winter of 1914-15. On Christmas Eve, the young soldiers on each side realize, through song and humanity, that they have more in common than not.

No orchestra. No shrieking, no over-the-top histrionics. Just song, and cheer, and a tiny Christmas tree. Just the core values of the Season: love, and the sharing of different traditions, foods, and memories. Less than an hour, All is Calm packs more punch than three hours of Puccini.

I had two words running through my mind as we exited: "if only." This simple production, profound on so many levels, reduced to two words:

"If only."

Tears? Yes.