Wyatt Campuzano '27
Since the dawn of humanity, humans have been captivated by music: the rhythms, the sounds, the emotion. Music has been used to express the very things that make us human: a longing for connection, empathy, and community.
And for over half a millenia, humans have used music as a way to tell stories of love and heartbreak, of joy and betrayal. Whether it be the funky saxophone solos in the 80s, or the lyrical pianos in the 1800s, emotions are poured into songs as almost a way of cathartic release.
“Music has a very central role in our lives that can tell a story that can make people feel entertained and feel loved and appreciated,” Brenten Megee said. Megee has been involved in music and performance for his whole life, from singing in choirs, conducting, and performing in lead roles. Now he works as a conductor, teacher, and singer at Keystone, an opera company in York, and Center Stage Opera.
Music has changed in many ways throughout history, but the emotional themes still remain untouched. Told through lyricism, or melody, or full-blown stage productions, music still tells of the human condition.
And just as classical literature tells of universal themes and stories, so does classical music. A precursor to television, these grand performances enchanted audiences for decades, spawning a style of song that still influences modern music hundreds of years later.
“There is something about classical music that really shows emotion that modern music sometimes doesn’t show,” Megee said.
Over four centuries ago, “musicals” began to gain popularity, although, under a very different name: the opera.
But the grandeur of the past is slowly fading away from the public eye and younger audiences have fewer opportunities to experience the breathtaking art form. However, there is still a desire to promote the longevity of an art form that has already survived centuries.
Benchmarked by elaborate sets, grand costumes, dramatic plots, and stunning music, the opera has had its fair share of evolution among the years.
The opera first took off in the early 1600s. Lavish sets and extravagant displays marked this era, known as the Baroque. What started as an exclusive spectacle for the wealthy court made the transition to become more of public entertainment, and the art form became ingrained within the cultural dynamic of the time.
When the Classical era rolled around (1750-1825), the Enlightenment caused a shift away from the grand, opulent performances and to more naturalistic and melodic pieces, focusing more on expressiveness and emotion. Once again, the changing culture and society at the time was reflected back in the operas written, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni.
The Romantic era (1825-1900) took this one step further, with a much larger emphasis on emotional intensity. Operas from this time period had rich orchestrations and sweeping arias, with composers such as Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini being trailblazers of this shift to individuality and expression, and leaned heavily into dramatic feelings.
This brings us to the Modern Era, where technology has brought with it a revolution of sorts, with a great diversity of styles and forms. Composers incorporate rock, jazz and electronic elements into their work, creating a soundscape unique from past eras.
Despite its drastic transformation over the years, the opera has not lost sight of its roots. Some of the most famous operas are from the Classical and Romantic eras, and the scores are performed all over the world even today.
While there are many reasons for the lingering wonder that the music provokes, from the brilliant music to the elaborate performances, many speculate that its innate storytelling ability has kept it alive.
“I think the stories themselves are universal…there is tragedy, there’s jealousy, there’s love, there’s hate, there’s sorrow and joy,” Kathryn McCarney Foster said.
Foster has been in and around music since age 8. She was a member of The Pixies, a popular girl group in the 60s, and later went on to train classically and sing with organizations such as the Harrisburg Singers, Central Pennsylvania Oratorio Society, before running her own opera company, Center Stage Opera, in central Pennsylvania. She stages many of these traditional pieces through her company.
“It doesn’t matter what year it is or what century it is,” Foster said. “The things that people are going through and the emotion they exhibit and the things that have changed…the emotions and the stories are universal.”
Part of the appeal of opera is the story. The television of its time, the stories were romantic and flamboyant, and death is common and dramatic. Out of the top 10 most popular operas, six end in the heroine’s death. In addition, stabbing is the most commonly used method of murder for characters, amounting to almost 60% of murders.
This lines up with the melodrama and entertainment that the opera provides. Stabbing is often the most theatrical of deaths, and it allows for impressive acting and performance skills. The operas brilliantly build to a climax, delivering an emotional punch to the gut.
The emotions they draw upon are quintessential human emotions: love, sadness, betrayal, triumph. The heartache of unrequited love or the joyous high of returning to a loved one. The opera draws upon the thing that makes us human: our empathy.
“I don’t think any other art form can portray sadness and hurt more than opera, because of just the way the music’s written,” Megee said. “Opera finds a way to tell a story that actual words cannot.”
There is something about the way performance marries with music to captivate the audience. Each chord works together to create a feeling–a story. Each line is intentional, each word perfectly placed.
According to singer and music teacher Maria Pappas, “The music is so beautiful, and when they wrote music at that time, they had counterpoint and rules…this is why it’s so pleasing to the ears.”
Pappas worked her way up to the height of opera stardom, and has sung with Opera International and Delaware Valley Opera, among others. She worked with the celebrated Klara Meyers and Maria Bachauer and has appeared in Rocky Six and Nickelodeon show Hi-Jinks. She now teaches children and spreads her love of music to the next generation.
“[They had] to put some tonal shading into [the] music. [They were] painting a picture in [their] music. And it [had] to have different depths and colors.”
Composers from the Baroque and Classical periods became masters in using counterpoint, a technique where melodies or notes have different rhythms and contour, yet still harmonically blend together. There were even papers written about how to successfully write counterpoint, and composers were expected to follow those rules. This extends to fugues and canons, where there is a phrase or theme that is repeated by two voices, often staggered, to create counterpoint.
This technique is even present in modern day music. “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys is a classic example, with overlapping voices singing the title in different melodies and octaves. Choral pieces use counterpoint to add harmonies and film scores use it to heighten drama. All of this stems from classical music, the Baroque period, and popularized through opera.
And while the accompaniment and the melodies are breathtaking, people came to the opera for the singers. They were the movie stars when movies didn’t exist: Luciano Pavarotti, Maria Callas, Renee Fleming. They could enchant with their voice alone.
“You would go out and hear Renee Fleming…and she’d sing her high D’s and roll through them so beautifully.” Pappas said. “Between hearing the music and hearing the little thread popping around and floating, hearing her voice like an angel…it makes you feel a certain way…There’s a sound certain people make…and it will bring you to your knees with happiness.”
They worked tirelessly for their craft. Hours spent at a piano, working on runs, range, breath control.
“The singers who sing opera are really great…really well trained,” Foster said. “There’s a coaching of a particular kind and vocal training that’s needed in order to be able to sustain the voice in a healthy way and be able to breathe properly in order to sustain the sound in any kind of room you sing in, because opera is not miked.”
Opera is notoriously difficult and taxing on the body and voice. Opera singers must be heard over large, live orchestras, without the help of microphones or amplifiers. Singers must have proper technique so as to not develop vocal nodules and polyps.
It’s difficult, Foster said, “to not only learn the language but be able to musically be able to read [and learn] the music, vocally and technically be able to handle it, and then have the acting chops to put it across.”
Opera’s challenging nature is exactly what makes it so rewarding to both perform and witness.
Opera had become so ingrained in culture, that it spread like wildfire from Europe. But opera had a hard time finding its footing in America. While both large and small cities in Europe commonly had their own opera companies, opera wasn’t so widespread in the United States.
“When people immigrated here to the United States, opera kind of fell away for a while because people wanted to be American,” Foster said. “A lot of them wanted their children to speak English and not speak in the language that they brought with them.”
“[Opera] has been seen as a European art form that came to the United states. It did not originate here,” Foster said. “Because the populations that could have seamlessly continued the art form here were struggling to separate themselves from their life in Europe and to become American…so there was a bit of a drop off.”
“Opera didn’t come into the fore until the 1900s in a big way,” Foster said. “And then there were mostly opera houses, and unfortunately, it became the idea that only people with money could afford to go to the opera…they made it a big deal of it being a ritzy thing rather than being something that was there for the common people.”
Unlike in Europe, which has the opera “largely subsidized by the government,” American Opera houses rely on “private donations, corporate sponsorships, and ticket sales,” according to Opera Scout. This led the industry to cater towards the type of people who would have the type of expendable income they would donate to the opera house.
And for that reason, the opera industry was hit hard during COVID.
Art in general took a blow from the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic made it so people were encouraged to stay home, and thus, live arts suffered. Movie theaters, orchestras, and of course, the opera, all had to basically halt for a year or two. Americans for the Arts found that the nonprofit arts and culture organizations lost an estimated 18 billion dollars and 557 million ticketed admissions due to cancelled events.
Coronavius spread through aerosols, and therefore, singing in groups was discouraged. Broadway closed, choirs had to go virtual, and opera companies everywhere shut for safety.
“For a year and a half [Center Stage Opera] did not perform. And when we started again, the audiences were very small. It took a long while [for people] to feel safe to…come out into public.” Foster said about the opera company she founded, Center Stage Opera.
Even the bigger companies experience the same troubles. The New York Times reported that the Metropolitan Opera House (the Met) had to dip into its endowment funds, which are funds that should be saved to provide a steady stream of investment income for nonprofit organizations. They withdrew $30 million to cover operating costs and to offset the lack of ticket sales.
According to the New York Times, the Met’s ticket revenues from both in-person performances and the Live in HD cinema presentations were “down by more than $40 million compared with before the pandemic. Paid attendance in the opera house has fallen to 61 percent of capacity, down from 73 percent.”
The industry has been faced with many challenges in modern times. COVID was a big one. But there also seems to be a lack of interest from younger generations.
The industry is trying to bring in younger generations, trying to get them interested, trying to modernize. The opinions on modernization are mixed.
Pappas has a firm opinion on how large opera houses, specifically the Met, have tried to appeal to youth. “Changing the set is fine, but changing [the opera] completely to fit our modern day…ruins it. They try to lure in children and it becomes…dirty; it’s like trash…they’re not preserving the beauty of the time.” This is in response to the language used in Terence Blanchard’s Champion, a new opera performed at the Met.
“Keep it beautiful,” Pappas continues. “Wear a beautiful dress, keep the staging beautiful…[people] don’t want to see the product cheapen.”
However, if opera is to continue to be prevalent, there needs to be some sort of revitalization of the art form. “We can continue to revamp and modernize…to keep people really engaged in the opera,” said Megee.
“If you ask anybody who’s not into opera music, they’ll either say it’s too long, it’s not understandable because of the foreign language, or they don’t understand what’s happening,”
With short form content on social media becoming so widespread, attention span is decreasing. The average consumer is not going to be able to spend three hours actively engaged in an opera. And that is a shame, because the performers put in so much work to master each role.
It could also be the language barrier. Traditional operas are written in, and for, specific languages.
“The lyrics and the words are written to be simpatico with the syncopation and the rhythm of the music,” Foster said. Something is lost when lyrics in romance languages–French, Spanish, Italian– are translated into English. Both English and German have a lot of “consonants at the beginning and end of words, whereas in the romance language, you have a lot of vowels in the beginning and endings.”
To fully understand and experience the opera, most times you must witness it in the language it was originally written in. However, the average American doesn’t understand the words being spoken (or in this case, sung). Companies have tried to translate operas into english, or include subtitles and captions to make it easier to understand.
The bottom line is that, in our current age and time, opera is less important than it used to be. It has less of a cultural impact, and less people are taking the time to study and experience and enjoy the art form. But there is still hope that opera will linger on.
There are still people who are dedicated to keeping this glorious art form alive.
People like Maria Pappas who teaches her students the way she was taught, and who works to educate the next generation. People like Brenten Megee who seeks to inspire his coworkers and his choirs and everywhere he goes. People like Kathy Foster, who started her own opera company, and who’s bringing this stunning tradition to smaller communities and giving singers an opportunity to shine.
“I think [opera] will exist, I think it should survive, and I think people should get out of their comfort zone…and go watch an opera,” Megee said.
“Why is opera so important? Because it tells stories of humanity. It tells stories of love, it shows the drama and the love and the hate and all the emotions that struggle in our world. It gets us out into the world and it helps us learn.”