Photo / my Flickr

Of all the challenges I faced this past autumn and winter, perhaps the biggest was trying to keep my cultural writing alive. That I let something go that meant (means) so much to me is troubling, and I’m hoping to amend that in a number of ways as 2014 unfolds.

Embracing opera in a new, far more powerful way than I have in the past, is the first step in this correction. While studying in New York, I found myself missing the Canadian Opera Company’s zesty experimental approach to an old medium, and its fulsome orchestral embrace of many beloved scores. Sure, the Met is great — but it’s not the same. It’s hard for me to have an honest emotional experience when I feel like I’m part of a capital “e” event; attending an opera at Lincoln Center sometimes always feels that way, to say nothing of the itinerant activities around performances. There’s something so big, so epic, so fraught with legend and the baggage of history, that actually sitting in the Met house proper opens up a world of doubt about whether production (and performance) choices are to move the audience, or merely impress us with illusions of artistic authenticity. (There was, refreshingly, a ton of artistry, authenticity, and heart in the Met production of Strauss’ Die frau ohne schatten last month, but that’s for another blog post. I’m still ruminating on it  — something that’s never happened in my almost thirty years of Met-going experience. Surely it must mean… something? Hmmm.)

Despite the few things the COC’s produced that haven’t work for me (both Martha Clarke’s meta-theatrical vision of Mozart’s The Magic Flute from the early 1990s and a stilted, emotionally hollow production of Elektra in 2007, come to mind), some of the best theater I’ve ever experienced — particularly in the few years — has been from a seat in the Four Seasons Centre. From Christopher Alden’s deeply unsettling vision of Rigoletto in 2011 (a favorite production, having sat through many versions of it), to his wickedly smart, sexy 2012 production of Die Fledermaus, to the jaw-dropping beauty of Peter Sellars’ Tristan und Isolde, and the disturbing magic of Atom Egoyan’s Salome, I go to the COC to be inspired and challenged, disturbed and knocked off balance. Opera is more than pretty songs; it engages heart and brain at once, that understands how thinking, feeling, and being challenged need not be mutually exclusive from being entertained. Opera has become less of a diversion than an immersion, a whole-hearted embrace of something both larger than myself, and yet entirely of myself. 
Photo / my Flickr

I grew up listening to opera; it was as much a part of my household as the music of ABBA, The Carpenters, the Bee Gees, and Queen. Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, and Freddie Mercury were the voices of my childhood. “Saturday Afternoon At The Opera” was (and remains) a tradition. Naturally, I went through the predictable teenaged phase of kicking out, rolling eyes, plugging ears, and closing heart: “turn that shit off!” I found my mother’s opera obsession embarrassing and annoying. I wanted my rock and electronic music on the stereo (loud). The many operas I’d go to as a child and fall asleep halfway through out of youth and it being a school night, I fell asleep to out of sheer disgust and outright boredom. I’d heard it all, and I was no longer interested.

But when I moved to Dublin in my early 20s, I found myself missing the opera world terribly — missing the magic of the melody, surely, but missing the drama as well. I have always loved theater; I sought it out as a kid, even running into Atom Egoyan many years ago during a production of King Lear at the Bathurst Street Theatre.  I’ve immersed myself in theater at various points throughout my life: as a writer, an actor, a behind-the-scenes person, a front-of-house person, a PR person, and now, a journalist. No matter where I’ve lived, I’ve always run to the theater, for community, familiarity, comfort, yes… but for being challenged, too.

Photo / my Flickr

And over the years, I’ve discovered the opera I enjoy most is that which provides a challenge, but always respects the music. I’ve fallen back in love, in a newer, stronger, more adult way, with the music I rejected as a youth. There’s a strange, intoxicating power when theater and music join forces; it is the best kind of sensory overload. Even when the 2010 Tim Albery-directed Aida didn’t work for me, its score — and interpretation — did. A night at the opera reminds me that theater and music is precisely the kind of holy union I want shaping and informing my 2014.

Coming away from a night at the opera, I am inspired to think more deeply not only about the art itself, but about music, science, technology, history, philosophy… even love… and the intimate connections therein. I want to get back to not only writing, but painting, cooking, drawing… to creativity, to authenticity, with head, with heart, taking small footsteps, but always moving forward.