A Guide to BLO's "Bluebeard's Castle | Four Songs"

A GUIDE TO

BOSTONLYRICOPERA

Dear Opera Curious and Opera-Lovers alike,

March 2023

Boston Lyric Opera is pleased to welcome you to the Flynn Cruseport as we present Béla Bartók’s psychodrama Bluebeard’s Castle paired with Alma Mahler’s Four Songs in this immersive theatrical experience that will transport you into the world of Judith as she uncovers the horrors of her bridegroom, Bluebeard. This evening of opera will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Opera is an art form that can contain big emotions. The experience of seeing and hearing live, professional opera is one-of-a-kind and we encourage you to explore the world of the opera outside the theater as well. We are proud to offer this Guide to support your engagement with this opera. Please note that this Guide describes plot details. Our intent is to provide support in historical as well as contemporary context, along with tools to thoughtfully reflect on the opera before or after you attend.

Boston Lyric Opera inspires, entertains, and connects communities through compelling performances, programs, and gatherings. Our vision is to create operatic moments that enrich everyday life. As we continue to develop additional Guides, we want your feedback. Please tell us about how you use this guide and how it can best serve your educational needs by emailing education@blo.org

If you’re interested in engaging with us further and learning about additional opera education opportunities with Boston Lyric Opera, please visit blo.org/education to discover our programs and initiatives.

See you at the opera!

Sincerely,

Rebecca Ann S. Kirk, M.Ed. Director of Community and Learning

BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE

FOUR SONGS

STUDY GUIDE SYNOPSIS

By Allison Chu

From the darkness of the woods, Judith emerges, singing of beauty and light. She meets Bluebeard, who has summoned her to his castle. She has come to live with him, leaving her family and home behind. Judith marvels at the castle’s darkness and gloom. Despite her fear, she proclaims her love for Bluebeard, hoping that her declaration will encourage him to allow light into his lair. As Bluebeard leads her deeper into the castle, she demands that the doors to seven rooms be opened to let in the sunshine. Bluebeard refuses, requesting that Judith love him without question. However, Judith is persistent, and eventually he relents.

At the first door, Judith discovers shackles, daggers, and weapons – instruments of a torture chamber. She notices that the walls are bloodstained but is not deterred from her desire to open all the doors. Bluebeard asks her if she is frightened, and she responds by requesting the keys to the other doors. The second reveals the armory, with piles of cruel arms and armor. As Judith opens the third door, she is delighted by the sight of gold and riches; it is the treasure chamber. The fourth door leads Judith to the garden, filled with flowers. However, her joy is interrupted when she realizes that the treasure and the flowers are stained with blood. The fifth door allows Bluebeard to show his kingdom to Judith. Bluebeard asks for Judith to embrace him, but she makes no move; there are two more doors still to open.

CHARACTERS

The sixth door opens to a lake of tears, and Judith begins to understand Bluebeard’s secret. She stands before Bluebeard, asking about his past loves, but he merely repeats his request for her to love him without question. At the final door, Judith reveals his secret: the door hides Bluebeard’s former wives, now made immortal. There are three wives, one for dawn, noon, and dusk; it is their blood that stained the castle and their tears that filled the lake. Judith is meant to be the wife of the night, and Bluebeard begins adorning her with jewelry. Horrified, she begs Bluebeard to stop, but she surrenders under the weight and takes her place among the other wives.

Allison Chu is a Ph.D. candidate in Music History at Yale University. Her research focuses on the intersection of identity and opera in the twenty-first century.

Judith, mezzo-soprano Bluebeard’s new wife

Bluebeard, bass-baritone the master of the castle

A preliminary sketch for Judith’s costume by costume designer, Trevor Bowen. Photo Courtesy of Trevor Bowen.

A preliminary sketch for Bluebeard’s costume by costume designer, Trevor Bowen. Photo Courtesy of Trevor Bowen..

—AN UNLIKELY PAIRING

In March of 1881, Béla Viktor János

Bartók was born into a noble family, in what is now Romania, but then was the Kingdom of Hungary, part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. A year and a half earlier, in August of 1879, in that same empire, but in Vienna, Alma Maria Schindler was born to a famous painter. Both showed an early talent and interest in music and became composers surrounded by their contemporaries; each suffered the loss of their father while they were still a child; both lived through two World Wars and a pandemic, and both emigrated to the United States from Lisbon arriving the same month, October 1940. And yet, the two may have never actually crossed paths.

Béla Bartók earned admission to the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, after learning piano from his mother and performing his first composition when he was eleven. He was inspired by the music of Liszt, Strauss, Brahams, and Debussy. In school, Zoltán Kodály became his dear friend and collaborator.

Kodály is known today for his music education technique. Together Bartók and Kodály worked as ethnomusicologists studying the various folk music

traditions across the Austria-Hungarian Empire. They even used the early invention of Thomas Edison’s phonograph to collect recordings of Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Bulgarian and even Turkish folk music traditions to later transcribe and classify.

Alma Schindler, meanwhile, was educated mostly at home through self-study and mentors. She focused her study on music and was very proficient at the piano. She began composing at age nine. At 17, she was introduced to Gustav Klimt through her stepfather, also a painter, and the two had a brief liaison, yet remained life-long friends. Soon after, she fell in love with her composition teacher Alexander von Zemlinsky, an affair she kept secret. Alma met Gustav Mahler, who was 19 years her senior, at a salon in Vienna and began a relationship with him. The two were even engaged before she broke it off with Zemlinsky. At Gustav Mahler’s request, Alma gave up composing when they married in 1902 to focus on being a wife and mother. In the 14 years of her life as an active composer, she wrote over 50 pieces, although only 17 of them have survived to this day. Gustav later did encourage Alma to return to her compositions and even edited some for publication, yet in 1911, Gustav Mahler fell ill and soon died.

Bartók married Márta Ziegler in 1909, she twelve years his junior. They had one son together, born the following year. In 1911, Bartók wrote his only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle, for a contest. He dedicated the work to his wife Márta. He did not win the contest, and the opera was reworked and

Alma Mahler (1909). Public Domain.

Béla Bartók (1927), Wikimedia Commons.

The Kodály Method of teaching music to children includes hand signs for each note on the scale. Creative Commons.

Zoltán Kodály’s Hungarian Folk Music No. 1 with Mária Basilides, contralto accompanied by Béla Bartók on piano. 1928.

premiered in 1918 at the Royal Hungarian Opera House after a ballet Bartók wrote was a success. Béla Balázs wrote and published the libretto—based on a French fairytale—as a serial playscript in 1910 with Kodály in mind to compose the opera, but he dedicated it to both Kodály and Bartók. The opera was banned soon after its premiere as Balázs was exiled to Vienna due to his Jewish heritage. Bartók divorced Márta in 1923 to marry his piano student, Ditta Pásztory. Together they had a son.

to France in 1938. By 1940, France was no longer safe, and the couple emigrated to New York City from Lisbon in October. Béla Bartók, a staunch anti-fascist, and his wife also emigrated in October of 1940 to New York City from Lisbon. While Bartók stayed on the East Coast, Mahler-Werfel settled in Los Angeles, joining other artists who’d fled Europe, including Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. She later moved to New York City, after the death of her husband, where she lived until her death in 1964. Bartók passed in 1945 from leukemia.

Did You Know?

Alma Mahler’s life has inspired many fictional retellings including a play, a few films, a mini-series, a song by American satirist Tom Lehrer, and a novel by Mary Sharratt entitled Esctasy (2019).

Alma Mahler began an affair with architect Walter Gropius while still married to Gustav Mahler. After Gustav Mahler died in 1911, she fell passionately for artist Oskar Kokoschka. Both Kokoschka and Gropius fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army in The Great War, and Alma ultimately chose and married Walter Gropius in 1915 in Berlin. Yet, as the war kept Gropius away, Alma began an affair with poet Franz Werfel in 1917, and finally divorced Gropius in 1920. Alma and Franz Werfel were married in 1929, and together until his death in 1945.

Due to the passing of fascist, Anti-Jewish laws in Hungry, Alma Mahler-Werfel and Franz Werfel, a Jewish man, fled

Both Bartók and Alma Mahler’s music were more widely acclaimed and performed after their lives ended. Though Bartók had a career trajectory more typical of his counterparts, he was known more while living for his ethnomusicology work. Alma lived as a muse to many male artists, sidelining her own work as a composer in service of their creations, and still her work has lived on, too, an artist in her own right.

Reflect:

Given the parallel lives of these two composers, how do you think their music will sound performed in the same evening?

Will there be similarities?

What do you expect will sound different?

Court ball in Vienna. 1900. by Wilhelm Gause. Historical Museum of the City of Vienna. Public Domain

“The Tempest/Bride of the Wind”, oil on canvas painting by Oskar Kokoschka, a self-portrait expressing his unrequited love for Alma Mahler, 1913. The Artchive. Public Domain.

MODERNIST MUSES & CULTURAL EXPRESSIONISM: A CENTURY OF GLOBAL EVOLUTION

and greatly influencing all the artists that followed. Many of the artist contemporaries of La Belle Époque were colleagues and even close friends, cultivating creative collaboration, innovations, and influencing each other’s work.

The world, and Vienna in particular, was also recovering from the economic crash of 1873, and tending toward nostalgic conservatism. In the twenty years to the turn of the century, Vienna saw a creative reinvention as artists pushed against old ways to forge new depictions of life. Expressionism came to describe this artistic movement, which was defined by an individual’s subjective perspective. Soon Vienna was heralded as a cultural center with painters, poets, composers, philosophers, fashion designers, architects, and writers convening in salons, and producing new works that were influenced by one another. Alma and Bartók both were influenced by what preceded them, as well as helped shape and were shaped by the movements that emerged during their lifetimes.

Alma Mahler and Béla Bartók lived through

their

Their early lives were influenced by trends and styles that tended toward nostalgia for past grandeur, the end of the time period known in Europe as La Belle Époque. This period, 1871-1914, was full of optimism, economic prosperity, and scientific innovations, and considered Paris as it’s center. La Belle Époque is characterized by the prolific artistic expression that flourished throughout Europe. Many works of music, theater, dance, literature, visual arts, and poetry created during this time are considered masterpieces, becoming staples in the classical canon,

years of immense change for the world, and

work was very much influenced by it.

Opera House in Vienna. 1900. Creativity Commons.

Alma Mahler holding a portrait of her late husband Gustav Mahler. 1950. Public Domain.

Expressionism

lived within a larger movement happening across the world known as Modernism, which encompassed new cultural ideas that were emerging with increased technology, urbanization, and globalization. Among many of the movements and initiatives within the Modernist period, it also encompasses some of the earliest work that artists, activists, philosophers, and writers were doing to begin to decolonize parts of Africa and Asia that were colonized by Western Europe.

Alma Mahler was at the center of this all her life, as a smart, charismatic beauty, whose father was a famous painter. She met Gustav Klimt as a teen, beginning her first of many love affairs with artists. She later had a passionate affair with young Expressionist painter, Oskar Kokoschka, who was one of the prominent contemporary Viennese artists of the time.

Alma was tutored in composition by Alexander Zemlinsky, with whom she also had a romantic relationship. Since most of Alma’s compositions were written before she married Gustav Mahler, she was most likely influenced by his contemporaries, in particular Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, and Richard Strauss—composers who also greatly influenced Béla Bartók. Alma also admired Richard Wagner’s work, his operas in particular. And of course, since Gustav Mahler helped Alma publish some of her compositions, he too influenced her work. Four Songs was published in 1915 even as the first two were written in 1901, when Alma was 22, and the second two songs a decade later. Her compositional style, though unique to her, is also a product of her time, fitting within the compositional landscape of her contemporaries, with similarities to Strauss’ later work and Schoenberg’s earlycareer compositions.

Bartók’s piano teacher was a former student of Franz Liszt

(who was friends with Richard Wagner, Frédéric Chopin, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Edvard Grieg, among others).

In school, Bartók became close friends and colleagues with Zoltán Kodály who introduced Bartók to the music of Claude Debussy. Kodály nurtured and grew Bartók’s early passion for and fascination with folk music traditions. Together as ethnomusicologists, much of their career included traveling to small communities across the AustriaHungarian Empire to listen to, transcribe, and later even record folk music from different areas of the countryside. Bartók’s composition style bridges late Romantic and

Musik I an Art Nouveau style painting in oil by Gustav Klimt. 1895. Public Domain.

Béla Bartók collects field recordings of folk songs from Czech villagers. Public Domain.

emerging Expressionist characteristics with elements of Central European folk music traditions and techniques, including the use of the pentatonic scale and syncopated dance rhythms.

As Expressionism emerged in Germany at the turn of the 20th century, and spread across the Austria-Hungarian Empire, visual artists including Oskar Kokoschka turned inward to subjectivity and the subconscious, creating distorted images with colors and brush strokes that represented emotions rather than a realistic depiction of the world around them. The movement stemmed from widespread anxieties, spurred by increased urbanization and The Great War. Artists, composers, choreographers, film-makers, and poets alike were also influenced by the emerging psychological work of Sigmund Freud’s investigation into the mind’s subconscious.

Alexander Zemlinsky and Gustav Mahler were also acquainted with Arnold Schoenberg who founded the Second Viennese School; a group of composers who were innovating the art of composition expanding it from the late-Romanticism style and pushing boundaries to explore atonality. Their compositional techniques and style — characterized by dissonance, extreme dynamics, and deconstructed melody — helped to define the Expressionist movement. Alma Mahler and Schoenberg maintained a friendship for the rest of their lives, even after they both emigrated to the United States.

When Bartók wrote his opera, Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911, he was beginning to lean into some of the dissonance that

defined the Expressionist work of his contemporaries. In particular, he used the interval of a minor second as a reoccurring motif, known as the blood motif, to evoke an unsettled disquiet, foreboding, or deep sadness. In his career, Bartók’s compositions tended to stay rooted in the folk traditions he studied, even as he married these techniques with emerging ones to create new work.

Bartók was deeply heartbroken by what the war had done to his homeland and the surrounding regions where he’d conducted much of his ethnomusicological research. His work, while not atonal, did experiment with relative tonality using some of the same twelve-tone parameters that

Bauhaus in Boston

designed and built his family home in Lincoln, can still tour it today! May other buildings in

Expressionist artist Wassily Kandinsky’s 1926 portrait, Three Sounds, Public Domain

This 1912 portrait of Alma Mahler was painted by Oskar Kokoschka, Public Domain

Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School invented, creating an atonal mathematically derived technique called Serialism.

Alma Mahler’s second husband, architect Walter Gropius, founded a visual art, design, and architecture movement within Modernism influenced by Expressionism called Bauhaus that also became an art school. Bauhaus was defined by the principal of unifying artistic vision, incorporating bringing all the arts together with an eye toward function as opposed to decoration. Faculty included artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.

By the time both Alma Mahler and Béla Bartók emigrated to the United States to escape World War II, their work as composers were not what primarily defined them. Bartók’s work as pianist, educator, and ethnomusicologist predominated, even as, two years before he died, he was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to write Concerto for Orchestra for the Boston Symphony Orchestra—the piece that he is perhaps most well-known for today—which premiered in December 1944.

Alma and her third husband, poet Franz Werfel, settled in Los Angeles, California, and hosted salons that gathered other expatriate artists including Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and writer Thomas Mann. After her husband died, Alma moved to New York City where she became friends with Leonard Bernstein. She died in 1964, just as the next cultural revolution was blooming bringing rock and roll, blues, jazz, pop art, minimalism and much more in the explosion of diverse perspectives and ideas.

Discuss:

Alma Mahler, in particular, lived through immense upheaval and change over her 84 years, yet was centered in a world of artists, creators, and innovators.

Do you think that you are living in a similar period of relatively rapid social change?

Why or why not?

What might the world be like when you are in your 80s?

Boston

Walter Gropius moved to Boston to teach at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1937. He Lincoln, MA in 1938 that embodied the Bauhaus ideology of simplicity, economy, and aesthetic beauty—you the area including some MIT buildings were built and designed using this Bauhaus style and philosophy.

BLUEBEARD’S HAUNTING ORIGINS AND LITERARY LEGACY

Charles Perrault is credited as the first to write the story down and publish it in his 1697 collection of fairytales, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé (Stories or Tales from Past Times, with Morals) or Contes de ma mere L’Oye, also known in English as Tales of Mother Goose. Other fairytales included in Perrault’s original collection are Cendrillon, Le Chat Botte, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, and La belle au bois dormant, or, as they’re more commonly referred to as, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty.

Perrault’s version of La Barbe bleue likely originated in the historic province of France, Brittany, and has some infamous muses. Historians gather that Bluebeard as a character was likely inspired by two controversial figures in French history – the 15th century French marshal, Gille de Rais, and 6th century Breton ruler, Conomor the Cursed. Both men had a sordid past, which contributed to the mythologizing of their lives.

Not much is known about Conomor, a medieval king of

Brittany, and much of his life is veiled in legend. One such legend is about his fourth wife, Trephine. Trephine, after agreeing to marry Conomor to prevent him from invading her family’s land, discovers a secret room in Conomor’s home. Inside, Trephine discovers the remains of Conomor’s previous wives, and after a prayer, the wives present themselves as ghosts to Trephine and warn her that if she gets pregnant, Conomor will kill her and her child. Trephine does get pregnant and runs away and is able to give birth away from Conomor. Unfortunately, Conomor finds where she’s hidden and, upon the discovery, beheads Trephine. A saint revives Trephine, and she survives until she later dies of natural causes. After Trephine’s second death, Conomor finds their son and murders him to escape a prophecy predicting that Conomor is to die at the hand of his own son.

Bluebeard’s other source of inspiration, Gille de Rais, was known for his military success. Rais even fought alongside Joan of Arc as part of her guard. Despite being a landowner who married rich, Rais led a lavish life and spent most

The story of Bluebeard began as a French oral folktale, but variations of the tale exist across cultures.

Portrait of Bluebeard author, Charles Perrault. Wikimedia Commons

A Woodcut of Perrault’s Bluebeard illustrated Gustave Doré in 1862. Wikimedia Commons.

of his wealth on home décor and paying for his large amounts of servants, heralds, and priests. In 1435, to protect what wealth they had left, Rais’s extended family urged the king to issue a decree to prevent Rais from selling and mortgaging his land. Rais, in search of a new path towards money and power, became deeply interested in alchemy and Satanism. He was later accused of abducting, torturing, and murdering 140 children.

Since its inception, Bluebeard has been adapted and alluded to several times in literature and other media. Notable authors who pull inspiration from the story include Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Beatrix Potter, Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Helen Oyeyemi. In Jane Eyre, for example, Charlotte Brontë references Bluebeard through the character, Edward Rochester. Rochester, like Bluebeard, keeps a dark secret from his past locked in a room in his home.

Discuss:

What are other fairytales adaptations you know of?

How do those adaptations differ from the original?

illustrated by Commons.

Statue of St. Trephine. Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait of Gilles de Rais by Éloi Firmin Féron. Wikimedia Commons.

WHAT IS IMMERSIVE THEATER?

Immersive theatre is a style of theatre that seeks to engage the audience as more than just a spectator. Stemming from performance art, immersive theatre attempts to create a more active audience. This can be achieved in a variety of ways and tends to be performance specific. Some immersive work plays with the audience’s sensory experience, adding in elements of temperature, smell, or taste. Sometimes a performance will take place in a non-traditional theatrical setting, such as a nightclub, outdoor space, warehouse, etc. Productions in these nontraditional settings are also referred to as “site-specific” performances. Sometimes immersive theatre experiences break the fourth wall or have interactive elements between performers and audiences, intentionally blurring the lines in the relationship between the two groups.

The most notable immersive play is Punchdrunk theatre’s Sleep No More. Sleep No More first premiered in 2011 and is a re-telling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Audience members don neutral white masks and wander at their own pace, over the course of three hours, through a converted warehouse-turned-fictional hotel. They happen upon and witness the characters interacting and playing out scenes in and among different elaborately designed rooms. Each room and floor of the “hotel” has a different sensory output, including strobe lights, fog/haze, recorded music, thunderclaps, and lasers.

Another notable example of immersive theatre is Diane Paulus’s The Donkey Show.

The Donkey Show premiered off-Broadway in 1999 and ran from 2009 to 2019 at

A.R. T’s now-closed Oberon club. The Donkey Show was an interactive re-telling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in a disco-cabaret where audience members could dance with and talk to actors in-character.

Reflect:

What story do you think would be told well in an immersive theatrical setting?

How would you design it?

Dancers from The Donkey Show. Photo by NikiSublime, Creative Commons.

A prop letter from Punkdrunk’s production of Sleep

INTO THE WORLD OF POWER AND FAIRYTALE

Did You Know?

BLO’s production of Bluebeard’s Castle|Four Songs creates a world that evokes the unsettling psychological situation of a woman recognizing that she may be in danger, and a man hiding truths about his past. To do this, the opera invites audiences into an unexpected setting: the Flynn Cruiseport Terminal overlooking Boston Harbor. In this installation style of theatrical presentation (also sometimes referred to as immersive theatre), the creative team not only stages the dramatic content of the opera itself, but also structures every detail of how the audience navigates and experiences the space.

Anne Bogart first worked with BLO directing the 2019 production of the opera The Handmaid’s Tale, which was also an installation production in Harvard University’s basketball arena. In Atwood’s book, this very location was known as The Red Center.

The experience begins as soon as audiences arrive at the building. A sequence of designed spaces lets attendees discover characters and observe intriguing multi-sensory situations before the official performance begins. With no “fourth wall,” stage curtain, or proscenium arch separating the audience from the action, the design invites audiences to see themselves as participants in the world of the opera.

Stage director Anne Bogart’s work often features performer ensembles who inhabit spaces in intriguing, nonrealistic, and revelatory ways. Bogart, with collaborator Tina Landau, is widely known for codifying a movementbased technique called Viewpoints into a compositional methodology for directing and devising theater. Instead of dwelling on the characters’ internal emotional states,

A digital rendering of the set by set designer, Sara Brown. Photo Courtesy of Sara Brown.

BLO and Anne Bogart’s 2019 installation for The Handmaid’s Tale.

Photo by Liza Voll.

Viewpoints invites performers to cultivate external awareness and create scenes on their feet, physically exploring compositional choices about Space (shape, gesture, architecture, spatial relationship, topography) and Time (tempo, duration, kinesthetic response, repetition).

Seduction and power are important themes in the show, and Intimacy Director Angie Jepson worked with the cast to craft moments that explore the carnal dimensions of Judith and Bluebeard’s relationship, as

Safety First!

The role of an Intimacy Director in opera, theater, and film is still relatively new, and becoming much more common as performers advocate for safe working conditions when intimate scenes are being portrayed. This role, similar to a Fight Choreographer, is trained to make these moments seem realistic, while also keeping the performers physically and emotionally safe in the process.

well as the violence their story suggests.

In addition to the two main characters, BLO’s production introduces an ensemble of non-singing performers. These women, who embody Bluebeard’s former wives—implied but not seen in the original opera—are visible to the audience throughout the show. Guided by Movement Director Victoria L. Awkward, their stylized physicality creates a haunting atmosphere, evoking both ghostly apparitions and the psychological dissonance of repressed truths.

Gender rules, norms, and behaviors strongly inform BLO’s design and interpretation. The choice to pair two pieces—one by a male composer, one by a female— creates a tension around perspective: Which character,

the man or woman, holds the authority to speak and name what is really going on? This theme permeates the contrasting scenic designs in different spaces—there is a noticeable difference in atmosphere between the lobby “salon” space and inside the house where the stage is.

The creative team also drew inspiration from composer Alma Mahler’s personal history and her bon vivant lifestyle in Vienna, where she had very public relationships with prominent artists and writers. Dramaturgical research into her biography informed the artists’ interpretations of Judith, the protagonist in Bluebeard’s Castle. Mahler’s story also suggested novel approaches to the show’s finale. Is Judith doomed to accept her fate, or can she and the other women reclaim their voices?

BLO has a history of unique immersive installations of classic work, including 2019 production of Pagliacci, where an ice-skating rink was transformed into a carnival. Photo by Liza Voll BLO has a history of unique immersive installations of classic work, including

production of Pagliacci , where an ice-skating rink was transformed into

carnival.

Photo by Liza Voll.

GENERAL QUESTIONS TO GUIDE YOUR LISTENING

• What instruments do you hear?

• How fast is the music? Are there sudden changes in speed? Is the rhythm steady or unsteady?

• Key/Mode: Is it major or minor? (Does it sound bright, happy, sad, urgent, dangerous?)

• Dynamics/Volume: Is the music loud or soft? Are there sudden changes in volume (either in the voice or orchestra)?

• What is the shape of the melodic line? Does the voice move smoothly or does it make frequent or erratic jumps? Do the vocal lines move noticeably downward or upward?

• Does the type of voice singing (baritone, soprano, tenor, mezzo, etc.) have an effect on you as a listener?

• Do the melodies end as you would expect or do they surprise you?

• How does the music make you feel? What effect do the above factors have on you as a listener?

• What is the orchestra doing in contrast to the voice? How do they interact?

• What kinds of images, settings, or emotions come to mind? Does it remind you of anything you have experienced in your own life?

• Do particularly emphatic notes (low, high, held, etc.) correspond to dramatic moments?

• What type of character fits this music? Romantic? Comic? Serious? Etc.

LISTEN UP!

The first two of Alma Mahler’s Four Songs were written in 1901, while the second two were written in 1911, a decade later. What differences do you hear between the second and the third songs in the cycle?

Lieder: No. 2 Waldseligkeit (Forest Bliss)

https://open.spotify.com/track/4bjdWI5hVLvAn0kFpdxyaF?si=1jujs6HgTEe5DUyIHLB7wQ

Lieder: No. 3 Ansturm (Onslaught)

https://open.spotify.com/track/4s5O10MNCnvH6a5ntheFQg?si=14tK7OppQ42RyyoPwyzbbw

What other composers’ work does Four Songs remind you of? Do you think Alma Mahler was influenced by her contemporaries’ work, or merely by the same predecessors as her contemporaries?

Lieder: No 1 Licht in der Nacht (Light in the night)

https://open.spotify.com/track/6UQqaZawYftc6yVsXV5GH2?si=onlumexiT6yufA3PDu9PMQ

Béla Bartók uses a dissonant minor second as a reoccurring motif, known as the blood motif, to evoke an unsettled disquiet, foreboding, and deep sadness. Sometimes it’s at a fast tempo while other times it is slow. Listen to these different selections and see if you can hear when this motif emerges.

Bluebeard’s Castle: II. First Door

https://open.spotify.com/track/5g2s8kSoWeLR4HgYzi122k?si=y5kbO8fQRSy505K992TRIg

Bluebeard’s Castle: V. Third Door

https://open.spotify.com/track/50AQIP5hq0Px0nlfrJ4ahN?si=4ZLtdIC5SuSfwdOP_qbZHA

RESOURCES

Other Study Guides

https://issuu.com/canadianopera/docs/bluebeards_castle_erwartung_coc_stu

Videos

Blubeard’s Castle Opera Score & Recording

https://youtu.be/bHRdmXX5hNw

Four Songs Score & Recording

https://youtu.be/t_SOI90-35g

RESOURCES CONTINUED

Websites

A Comparison Of Expressionism And Serialism – ForThePeopleCollective.org. (2022, September 26). For the People Artists Collective. https://www.forthepeoplecollective.org/a-comparison-of-expressionism-and-serialism/

ALMA : History. (2012). Www.alma-Mahler.at. https://www.alma-mahler.at/engl/almas_life/almas_life.html

American Repertory Theater. (2023). The Donkey Show. Americanrepertorytheater.org; American Repertory Theater. https://americanrepertorytheater.org/shows-events/the-donkey-show/

Brown, S. (2011). Theater Review: The Freakily Immersive Experience of Sleep No More - Theater - Vulture. Vulture; Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2011/04/theater_review_the_freakily_im.html

Connolly, S. (2010, December 2). The Alma Problem. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/dec/02/alma-schindler-problem-gustav-mahler

Duggan, B. (2011, May 23). How Vienna in 1900 Gave Birth to Modern Style and Identity. Big Think. https://bigthink.com/guest-thinkers/how-vienna-in-1900-gave-birth-to-modern-style-and-identity/

Follet, D. W. (2004, October 1). Redeeming Alma: The Songs of Alma Mahler - College Music Symposium. College Music Symposium.

https://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2210:redeeming-alma-the-songs-of-alma-mahler

Ivry, B. (2013, January 12). Turn-of-Century Vienna Artists Deserve Second Look. The Forward. https://forward.com/culture/168946/turn-of-century-vienna-artists-deserve-second-look/

Louisa O’Connell, N. (2023, February 2). Driving to Siegfried in Tears | Boston Lyric Opera. Blo.org; Boston Lyric Opera. https://blo.org/driving-to-siegfried-in-tears/

Peartree, C. (2019, November 13). A Double Cautionary Tale: Bela Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle. Medium. https://medium.com/@cpeartre/a-double-cautionary-tale-bela-bartoks-bluebeard-s-castle-5e152d34b0bd

Peters, L. (2017, October 20). 6 Gruesome Origins Of Fairy Tales That Will Ruin Your Childhood Forever. Bustle. https://www.bustle.com/p/6-gruesome-origins-of-fairy-tales-that-will-ruin-your-childhood-forever-2467542

Reedy, R. S. (2023, February 14). Anne Bogart Immerses Audiences in the Contrast of Female and Male | Boston Lyric Opera. Blo.org; Boston Lyric Opera. https://blo.org/anne-bogart-immerses-audiences-in-the-contrast-of-female-and-male/

The British Library. (n.d.). The History of Blue Beard. The British Library. Retrieved January 23, 2023 https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-history-of-blue-beard

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THE HISTORY OF OPERA

People have been telling stories through music for millennia throughout the world. Opera is an art form with roots in Western Europe that is over 400 years old. Here is a brief timeline of its lineage.

1730-1820

RENAISSANCE

1573 The Florentine Camerata was founded in Italy, devoted to reviving ancient Greek musical traditions, including sung drama.

1598 Jacopo Peri, a member of the Camerata, composed the world’s first opera – Dafne, reviving the classic myth.

1607 Claudio Monteverdi i, (1567-1643) wrote the first opera to become popular, Orfeo, making him as the premier opera composer of his day and bridging the gap between Renaissance and Baroque music. His works are still performed today.

Toccata from L’Orfeo. Claudio Monteverdi Favola in musica. Reprint of the First Edition of the Score, Venice 1609 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

1637 The first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, was built in Venice, Italy.

BAROQUE (1600-1750)

1673 Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) an Italianborn composer, brought opera to the French court, creating a unique style, tragédie en musique, that better suited the French language. Blurring the lines between recitative and aria, he created fast-paced dramas to suit the tastes of French aristocrats.

1712 George Frederic Handel

1689 Henry Purcell’s 1659-1695) simple and elegant chamber opera, Dido and Aeneas, premiered at Josias Priest’s boarding school for girls in London.

(1685-1759), a German-born composer, moved to London, where he found immense success writing intricate and highly ornamented Italian opera seria (serious opera). Ornamentation refers to stylized, fast-moving notes, usually improvised by the singer to make a musical line more interesting and to showcase their vocal talent.

Dido and Aeneas, 1747 Pompeo Batoni [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

CLASSICAL (1730-1820)

1805 Ludwig van Beethoven

(1770-1827) although a prolific composer, wrote only one opera, Fidelio. The extremes of musical expression in Beethoven’s music pushed the boundaries in the late Classical period and inspired generations of Romantic composers.

1750s A reform movement, led by Christoph Gluck (1714-1787), rejected the flashy ornamented style of the Baroque in favor of simple, refined music to enhance the drama. simplicity refined to enhance the drama.

1816

Gioacchino Rossini

1767

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote his first opera at age 11, beginning his 25-year opera career. Mozart mastered, then innovated in several operatic forms. He wrote opera serias, including La Clemenza di Tito, and opera buffas (comedic operas) like Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). He then combined the two genres in Don Giovanni, calling it dramma giocoso (comedic drama). Mozart also innovated the Singspiel (German sung play), featuring a spoken dialogue, as in Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).

1792-1868) composed Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), becoming the most prodigious opera composer in Italy by age 24. He wrote 39 operas in 20 years. A new compositional style created by Rossini and his contemporaries, including Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini, would, a century later, be referred to as bel canto (beautiful singing). Bel canto compositions were inspired by the nuanced vocal capabilities of the human voice and its expressive potential. Composers employed strategic use of register, the push and pull of tempo (rubato), extremely smooth and connected phrases (legato), and vocal glides (portamento).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Posthumous painting by Barbara Krafft in 1819 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Magic Flute Playbill for the premiere, 30 September 1791[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

1853 Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) completed La Traviata, a story of love, loss, and the struggle of average people, in the increasingly popular realistic style of verismo. Verdi enjoyed immense acclaim during his lifetime, while expanding opera to include larger orchestras, extravagant sets and costumes, and more highly trained voices.

ROMANTIC (1790-1910)

The Golden Age of Opera

1842 Inspired by the risqué popular entertainment of French vaudeville, Hervé created the first operetta, a short comedic musical drama with spoken dialogue. Responding to popular trends, this new form stood in contrast to the increasingly serious and dramatic works at the grand Parisian opera house. Opéra comique as a genre was often not comic, rather realistic or humanistic. Grand Opera, on the contrary, was exaggerated and melodramatic.

1865 Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) Tristan und Isolde was the beginning of musical Modernism, pushing the use of traditional harmony to its extreme. His massively ambitious, lengthy operas, often based in German folklore, sought to synthesize music, theater, poetry, and visuals in what he called a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). The most famous of these was an epic four-opera drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen, which took him 26 years to write and was completed in 1874.

1871 Influenced by French operetta, English librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) began their 25-year partnership, which produced 14 comic operettas including The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. Their works inspired the genre of American musical theater.

Giuseppe Verdi, by Giovanni Boldini, 1886 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Richard Wagner Photo taken 1871 in Munich via Wikimedia Commons

ROMANTIC (1790-1910)

1874

Johann Strauss II, (1825-1899)

influenced largely by his father, with whom he shared a name and talent, composed Die Fledermaus, popularizing Viennese musical traditions, namely the waltz, and shaping operetta

1896

Giacomo Puccini’s II, (1858-1924) La Bohème captivated audiences with its intensely beautiful music, realism, and raw emotion. Puccini enjoyed huge acclaim during his lifetime for his works.

1911 Scott Joplin, (1868-1917) “The King of Ragtime,” wrote his only opera, Treemonisha, which was not performed until 1972. The work combined the European lateRomantic operatic style with African American folk songs, spirituals, and dances. The libretto, also by Joplin, was written at a time when literacy among African Americans in the southern United States was rare.

1927 American musical theater, commonly referred to as Broadway, was taken more seriously after Jerome Kern’s (1885-1945) Show Boat, words by Oscar Hammerstein, tackled issues of racial segregation and the ban on interracial marriage in Mississippi.

1922

Alan Berg, (1885-1935) composed the first completely atonal opera, Wozzeck, dealing with uncomfortable themes of militarism and social exploitation. Wozzeck is in the style of 12-tone music or Serialism. This new compositional style, developed in Vienna by composer Arnold Schoenberg (18741951), placed equal importance on each of the 12 pitches in a scale, removing the sense of the music being in a particular key.

Mikado Theatre poster, Edinburgh, 1885 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A scene from a 19th-century version of the play The Barber of Seville by Pierre Beaumarchais. Its origins in the commedia dell’arte are shown in this picture which portrays Figaro dressed in the costume and mask of Harlequin. 1884 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Porgy and Bess by the New York Harlem Theatre 2009

Scott Joplin

1945 British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) gained international recognition with his opera Peter Grimes. Britten, along with Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), was one of the first British opera composers to gain fame in nearly 300 years.

20TH CENTURY

1935 American composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), who was influenced by African American music and culture, debuted his opera, Porgy and Bess, in Boston, MA with an all African American cast of classically trained singers. His contemporary, William Grant Still (1895-1978), a master of European grand opera, fused that with the African American experience and mythology. His first opera, Blue Steel premiered in 1934, one year before Porgy and Bess.

1987

John Adams (b. 1947) composed one of the great minimalist operas, Nixon in China, the story of Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Musical Minimalism strips music down to its essential elements, usually featuring a great deal of repetition with slight variations.

1986

Today

1957

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), known for synthesizing musical genres, brought together the best of American musical theater, opera, and ballet in West Side Story—a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet in a contemporary setting.

Anthony Davis (b. 1951) premiered his first of many operas, X, The Life and Time of Malcom X which reclaims stories of Black historical figures within the theater space. He incorporated both the orchestral and vocal techniques of jazz and classical European opera in his score for a distinctly American sound, and a fully realized vision of how jazz and opera are in conversation within a work.

Still a vibrant evolving art form, opera attracts contemporary composers such, Philip Glass (b. 1937), Jake Heggie (b. 1961), Terence Blanchard (b. 1962), Ellen Reid (b. 1983) and many others. Composers continue to be influenced by present and historical musical forms in creating new operas that explore current issues or reimagine ancient tales.

Terence Blanchard Six-time Grammy award-winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard Creativity Commons

William Grant Still.

Photograph of William Grant Still taken by Carl Van Vechten Creativity Commons

Leonard Bernstein

Ellen Reid. Pulitzer Prize winning contemporary composer, Ellen Reid. Photo courtesy of Ellen Reid

THE SCIENCE AND ART OF OPERA

WHY DO OPERA SINGERS SOUND LIKE THAT?

Opera is unique among forms of singing in that singers are trained to be able to sing without amplification, in large theaters, over an entire orchestra, and still be heard and understood! This is what sets the art form of opera apart from similar forms such as musical theater. To become a professional opera singer, it takes years of intense physical training and constant practice—not unlike that of a ballet dancer—to stay in shape. Additionally, while ballet dancers can dance through pain and illness, poor health, especially respiratory issues and even allergies, can be severely debilitating for a professional opera singer. Let’s peak into some of the science of this art form.

So Young Park as Queen of the Night

Photo: Eric Antoniou

How the Voice Works

Singing requires different parts of the body to work together: the lungs, the vocal cords, the vocal tract, and the articulators (lips, teeth, and tongue). The lungs create a flow of air over the vocal cords, which vibrate. That vibration is amplified by the vocal tract and broken up into words by consonants produced by the articulators.

BREATH:

Any good singer will tell you that good breath support is essential to produce quality sound. Breath is like the gas that goes into your car. Without it, nothing runs. In order to sing long phrases of music with clarity and volume, opera singers access their full lung capacity by keeping their torso elongated and releasing the lower abdomen and diaphragm muscles, which allows air to enter into the lower lobes of the lungs. This is why we associate a certain posture with opera singers. In the past, many operas were staged with singers standing in one place to deliver an entire aria or scene, with minimal activity. Modern productions, however, often demand a much greater range of movement and agility onstage, requiring performers to be physically fit, and disproving the stereotype of the “park and bark.”

VIBRATION:

If you run your fingers along your throat, you will feel a little lump just underneath your chin. That is your “Adam’s Apple,” and right behind it, housed in the larynx (voice-box), are your vocal cords. When air from the lungs crosses over the vocal cords it creates an area of low pressure (Google The Bernoulli Effect), which brings the cords together and makes them vibrate. This vibration produces a buzz. The vocal chords can be lengthened or shortened by muscles in the larynx, or by increasing the speed of air flow. This change in the length and thickness of the vocal cords is what allows singers to create different pitches. Higher pitches require long, thin cords, while low pitches require short, thick ones. Professional singers take great pains to protect the delicate anatomy of their vocal cords with hydration and rest, as the tiniest scarring or inflammation can have noticeable effects on the quality of sound produced.

RESONANCE: ARTICULATION:

Without the resonating chambers in the head, the buzzing of the vocal cords would sound very unpleasant. The vocal tract, a term encompassing the mouth cavity, and the back of the throat, down to the larynx, shapes the buzzing of the vocal cords like a sculptor shapes clay. Shape your mouth in an ee vowel (as in eat), then sharply inhale a few times. The cool sensation you feel at the top and back of your mouth is your soft palate. The soft palate can raise or lower to change the shape of the vocal tract. Opera singers always strive to sing with a raised soft palate, which allows for the greatest amplification of the sound produced by the vocal cords. Different vowel sounds are produced by raising or lowering the tongue. Say the vowels: ee, eh, ah, oh, oo and notice how each vowel requires a slightly lower tongue placement. This area of vocal training is particularly difficult because none of the anatomy is visible from the outside!

The lips, teeth, and tongue are all used to create consonant sounds, which separate words into syllables and make language intelligible. Consonants must be clear and audible for the singer to be understood. Because opera singers do not sing with amplification, their articulation must be particularly good. The challenge lies in producing crisp, rapid consonants without interrupting the connection of the vowels (through the controlled exhale of breath) within the musical phrase.

Perfecting every element of this complex singing system requires years of training and is essential for the demands of the art form. An opera singer must be capable of singing for hours at a time, over the top of an orchestra, in large opera houses, while acting and delivering an artistic interpretation of the music. It is complete and total engagement of mental, physical, and emotional control and expression. Therefore, think of opera singers as the Olympic athletes of the stage, sit back, and marvel at what the human body is capable of!

Different Voice Types

Opera singers are cast into roles based on their tessitura (the range of notes they can sing comfortably). There are many descriptors that accompany the basic voice types, but here are some of the most common ones:

Bass:

The lowest voice, basses often fall into two main categories: basso buffo, which is a comic character who often sings in lower laughing-like tones, and basso profundo, which is as low as the human voice can sing! Doctor Bartolo is an example of a bass role in The Barber of Seville by Rossini.

Baritone:

A middle-range lower voice, baritones can range from sweet and mild in tone, to darker dramatic and full tones. A famous baritone role is Rigoletto in Verdi’s Rigoletto. Baritones who are most comfortable in a slightly lower range are known as Bass-Baritones, a hybrid of the two lowest voice types.

Tenor:

The highest of the lower range voices; tenors often sing the role of the hero. One of the most famous tenor roles is Roméo Gounod’s Roméo et Juliet. Occasionally men have cultivated very high voices singing in range similar to a mezzo-soprano but using their falsetto. Called the Countertenor, this voice type is often found in Baroque music. Countertenors replaced castrati in the heroic lead roles of baroque opera after the practice of castration was deemed unethical.

Bass

Baritone

Contralto

MezzoSoprano

Soprano Tenor

One Roméo in men in a using this music. heroic practice

Each of the voice types (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass) also tends to be sub-characterized by whether it is more Lyric or Dramatic in tone. Lyric singers tend toward smooth lines in their music, sensitively expressed interpretation, and flexible agility. Dramatic singers have qualities that are attributed to darker, fuller, richer note qualities expressed powerfully and robustly with strong emotion. While its easiest to understand operatic voice types through these designations and descriptions, one of the most exciting things about listening to a singer perform is that each individual’s voice is essentially unique, thus each singer will interpret a role in an opera in a slightly different way.

Contralto:

The lowest of the higher treble voices have an even lower range that overlaps with the highest tenor’s range.. This voice type is more rare and they often play male characters, referred to in opera as trouser roles.

Mezzo-Soprano:

Somewhat equivalent to an alto role in a chorus, mezzo-sopranos (mezzo translated as “middle”) are known for their full and expressive qualities. While they don’t sing frequencies quite as high as sopranos, their ranges do overlap, and it is a “darker” tone that sets them apart. One of the most famous mezzosoprano lead roles is Carmen in Bizet’s Carmen.

Soprano:

The highest voice; some sopranos are designated as coloratura as they specialize in being able to sing very fastmoving notes that are very high in frequency and light in tone, often referred to as “color notes.” One of the most famous coloratura roles is The Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

The Physics of Opera Singers

What is it about opera singers that allows them to be heard above the orchestra? It’s not that they simply singing louder. The qualities of sound have to do with the relationship between the frequency (pitch) of a sound, represented in a unit of measurement called hertz, and its amplitude, measured in decibels, which the ear perceives as loudness. Only artificially produced sounds, however, create a pure frequency and amplitude (these are the only kind that can break glass). The sound produced by a violin, a drum, a voice, or even smacking your hand on a table, produces a fundamental frequency as well as secondary, tertiary, etc. frequencies known as overtones, or as musicians call them, harmonics

For instance, the orchestra tunes to a concert “A” pitch before a performance. Concert “A” has a frequency of about 440 hertz, but that is not the only pitch you will hear. Progressively softer pitches above that fundamental pitch are produced in multiples of 440 at 880hz, 1320hz, 1760hz, etc. Each different instrument in the orchestra, because of its shape, construction, and mode in which it produces sound, produces different harmonics. This is what makes a violin, for example, have a different color (or timbre ) from a trumpet. Generally, the harmonics of the instruments in the orchestra fade around 2500hz. Overtones produced by a human voice—whether speaking, yelling, or singing— are referred to as formants

As the demands of opera stars increased, vocal teachers discovered that by manipulating the empty space within the vocal tract, they could emphasize higher frequencies within the overtone series—frequencies above 2500hz. This technique allowed singers to perform without hurting their vocal cords, as they are not actually singing at a higher fundamental decibel level than the orchestra. Swedish voice scientist, Johann Sundberg, observed this phenomenon when he recorded the world-famous tenor Jussi Bjoerling in 1970. His research showed multiple peaks in decibel level, with the strongest frequency (overtone) falling between 2500 and 3000 hertz. This frequency, known as the singer’s formant , is the “sweet spot” for singers so that we hear their voices soaring over the orchestra into the opera house night after night.

Prof. Tecumseh Fitch, evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Vienna, explains the difference between a fundamental frequency and formant frequency in the human voice. For an opera singer, the lower two formants (peaks on a graph) determine the specific vowel sound. The third formant and above add overtones that are specific to each particular singers’ voice, like a fingerprint. When two people sing the same note simultaneously, the high overtones allow your ear to distinguish two voices

A Resonant Place

The final piece of the puzzle in creating the perfect operatic sound is the opera house or theater itself. Designing the perfect acoustical space can be an almost impossible task, one which requires tremendous knowledge of science, engineering, and architecture, as well as an artistic sensibility. The goal of the acoustician is to make sure that everyone in the audience can clearly understand the music being produced onstage, no matter where they are sitting. A perfectly designed opera house or concert hall (for non-amplified sound) functions almost like gigantic musical instrument.

Reverberation is one key aspect in making a singer’s words intelligible or an orchestra’s melodies clear. Imagine the sound your voice would make in the shower or a cave. The echo you hear is reverberation caused by the large, hard, smooth surfaces. Too much reverberation (bouncing sound waves) can make words difficult to understand. Resonant vowel sounds overlap as they bounce off of hard surfaces and cover up quieter consonant sounds. In these environments, sound carries a long way but becomes unclear or, as it is sometimes called, wet as if the sound were underwater. Acousticians can mitigate these effects by covering smooth surfaces with textured materials like fabric, perforated metal, or diffusers, which absorb and disperse sound. These tools, however, must be used carefully, as too much absorption can make a space dry – meaning the sound

onstage will not carry at all and the performers may have trouble even hearing themselves as they perform. Imagine singing into a pillow or under a blanket.

The shape of the room itself also contributes to the way the audience perceives the music. Most large performance spaces are shaped like a bell –small where the stage is and growing larger and more spread out in every dimension as one moves farther away. This shape helps to create a clear path for the sound to every seat. In designing concert halls or opera houses, big decisions must be made about the construction of the building based on acoustical needs. Even with the best planning, the perfect acoustic is not guaranteed, but professionals are constantly learning and adapting new scientific knowledge to enhance the audience’s experience.

Boston Symphony Hall, opened in 1900, with acoustical design by Harvard physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, was the first concert hall to be designed with scientific acoustic principles in mind. Each seat was mathematically designed and placed for maximum acoustical perfection.

Boston Opera House, Photo by John Wolf

Notes to Prepare for the Opera

You will see a full dress rehearsal – an insider’s look into the final moments of preparation before an opera premieres. The singers will be in full costume and makeup, the opera will be fully staged, and an orchestra will accompany the singers, who may choose to “mark,” or not sing in full voice, to save their voices for the performances. A final dress rehearsal is often a complete run-through, but there is a chance the director or conductor will ask to repeat a scene or section of music. This is the last opportunity the performers have to rehearse with the orchestra before opening night, and they therefore need this valuable time to work.

The following will help you better enjoy your experience of a night at the opera:

• Arrive on time! Latecomers will be seated only at suitable breaks in the performance and often not until intermission.

• Dress in what you are comfortable in so that you may enjoy the performance. For some, that may mean dressing up in a suit or gown, for others, jeans and a t-shirt is fine. Generally “dressy-casual” is what people wear. Live theater is usually a little more formal than a movie theater.

• At the very beginning of the opera, the concertmaster of the orchestra will ask the oboist to play the note “A.” You will hear all the other musicians in the orchestra tune their instruments to match the oboe’s “A.”

• After all the instruments are tuned, the conductor will arrive. You can applaud to welcome them!

• Feel free to applaud or shout Bravo at the end of an aria or chorus piece if you really liked it. The end of a piece can be identified by a pause in the music. Singers love an appreciative audience!

• It’s OK to laugh when something is funny or gasp at something shocking!

• When translating songs, and poetry in particular, much can be lost due to a change in rhythm, inflection and rhyme of words. For this reason, opera is usually performed in its original language. In order to help audiences enjoy the music and follow every twist and turn of the plot, English supertitles are projected. Even when the opera is in English, there are still supertitles.

• Listen for subtleties in the music. The tempo, volume, and complexity of the music and singing depict the feelings or actions of the characters. Also, notice repeated words or phrases; they are usually significant.

• The singers, orchestra, dancers, and stage crew are all hard at work to create an amazing performance for you! Here’s how you can help them: Lit screens are very distracting to the singers, so please keep your phone out of sight and off until the house lights come up. Due to how distracting electronics can be for performers, taking photos or making audio or video recordings is strictly forbidden.

• The theatre is a shared space, so please be courteous to your neighbors!

? Please do not take off your shoes or put your feet on the seat in front of you.

? Respect your fellow opera lovers by not leaning forward in your seat so as to block the person’s view behind you

? Do not chew gum, eat, or drink, while the rehearsal is in session. Not only can it pull focus from the performance, but many live theaters do not allow food and drink inside the theater..

? If you must visit the restroom during the performance, please exit quickly and quietly.

• Sit back, relax and let the action on stage pull you in. As an audience member, you are essential to the art form of opera—without you, there is no show!

Have Fun and Enjoy the Opera!