On the evening of the 4Cosi Fan Tutte was quite a comedy, and it was very interesting to see a different art form rather than musical theater. I realized I respected opera much more! I wondered why did this art form seem so lost in our culture today and why was it so respected back in the day?
It seems only yesterday that we lost Luciano Pavarotti, who many would say was the greatest tenor ever lived. Which brings back my thought of how has opera changed our society. One, it is more welcoming to the working class now and a bit cheaper than a Broadway show. I sat in a box seat for 25 dollars! It was incredible to know that I must have sat where once the counts and countesses of Europe use to sit. I felt as if I were in The Age of Innocence and Newland Archer was sitting right across from me with May Welland.
As I was sitting there I couldn’t help but feel so happy to be there and to belong in a moment in time with this crowd of people and with epic music. I realized in that moment that something in me changed; not because I’m the biggest fan of operas or because I was there for the first time, but I realized that I have been working so hard on trying to be an actor, that I have forgotten the fundamentals of theatre and operatic theatre – which is having fun! I go to school, work and sometimes work on a show, and it seems to be draining me because that knowledge having fun was gone.
When I first started, I had incredible experiences that I can vividly remember. Lately, it all seems so technical and impossible to do. It is an art form that you must study and learn from it, never just do. Certain actors are amazing at just doing it, but maybe because they are just having fun. We can even see it in film today. The actors, most of them which can’t act, are just doing it because of the lifestyle, yet you can tell the ones who are having fun and the ones that aren’t.
I’d like to think of film in three different scenarios: Pre-Marilyn Monroe Era, The Marilyn Monroe Era and Post Marilyn Monroe era. Before Marilyn Monroe, the film industry strove with the star systems and people were just having an exciting time producing films. Marilyn Era, people were realizing how complicated a start system was and stopped it with Marilyn Monroe being the last one. She was a complicated person to work with in her last years and the industry completely changed once she died. She was almost the reason for why everyone in industry started to realize this is a business and in a business you have to be serious and what not. Now, Post Marilyn Monroe, we don’t have a start system and everything is so technical that asking for a favor seems like a curse.
The one thing anyone should take away from anything in the arts is the enjoyment of it. We all forget to enjoy the life we live in and we forget to have faith in the work we are doing. It’s time to bring on the fun and enjoy the moments that we can create. Then again, how well can we produce a journey so epic over and over again, if we only could see a gray cloud looming above? Live. Laugh. Create joy within.
