Thoughts

Gerard Mortier was one of the speakers at the main sessions of the Opera America conference that was held in conjunction with the NPAC in Denver. He spoke mainly on the use of new media. Most of his thoughts revolved around broadcasts of opera, but he also made some comments that I really enjoyed on their own.

He spoke about the essence of opera and why we love it. The mystery that opera expresses is that of the spirit and the body, of hope in the face of despair and the transcending of death. In opera, they sing so beautifully when they are dying and we hope that it will be so with us when our time comes; that we too will sing beautifully. He mentioned the Orpheus legend - the singer crosses the bounds of death and brings the gods to tears. That is what opera is all about, at least to Gerard Mortier.

Of course, that leaves out the other half of opera, the comic works, but I think it is a pretty good stab at why opera is still a powerful and relevant art form. Personally, I would love to see more new works performed, but that is the subject of another post. Mortier is doing his part in that effort with his new post at City Opera, but I fear his European sense of ‘new’ means the last hundred years, not the last couple of decades.