6 minute read
OPERA
By Stacie Steinke
A grand musical and performance arts genre.
What better medium to express the human story than the human voice? It’s THE original instrument to communicate thoughts and emotions. As an art form, Opera has used the human voice as its primary instrument and other musical instruments to support it since 1600. Now, with the aid of studies in voice perception, we know how the sound of the human voice has a unique way of capturing our emotional attention to its core through its colors and subtleties - something early humans and opera lovers recognized all along. A study shared in 2012 article in Evolution and Human Behavior entitled “Instant Messages vs. Speech: Hormones and Why We Still Need to Hear Each Other” found that merely hearing the voice of our loved ones versus a text conversation reduces our blood cortisol levels, which are a marker of stress, and heightens the release of oxytocin, the feel-good hormone associated with bonding. Researchers found it’s likely the prosodic auditory cues (tone) that produce the positive feel-good hormonal effects, (The Power of Connection Through Voice, Andrea Luoma, Forbes Coaches Council, 2020)
If that’s what happens with a phone call, imagine the positive effects of spending an evening at the opera! Opera performers capitalize on this. They practice and refine techniques that give them the ability to “characterize” their vocal tone. They learn to modify their voice to effect its acoustic properties to intensify volume, widen pitch range, and bring agility and sustainability. Then, they employ these properties or skills to create vocal colors that communicate the character’s emotions, economic class, dialect, age, size and attractiveness through the acoustical cues of the voice. “The music of opera embraces the full sound and intensity of an orchestra and the singing stretches the limits of the human voice,” says Dewey Davis-Thompson, opera lover and librettist in St. Petersburg. Vibrato (the naturally occurring wavering of the sung voice) and coloratura (rapid movement over a range of pitches), common in opera, provide layers of "extra" aural sensations rarely experienced in most theatrical productions.
Operas are often sung in the language of the composer, typically Italian or German. Opera companies project the English translations on a screen over the actors. Opera can also be experienced without needing specific meaning for words. “The music and voices can wash over you just as they are, foreign and disconnected from language, yet still ripe with intent and emotion,” says Davis-Thompson.
In Tampa Bay, opera students, teachers, performers and companies engage in this art form in new and exciting as well as more traditional ways.
Opera Tampa
Opera Tampa’s elaborate, full-scale productions feature world-class conductors, including Florida Symphony Orchestra’s Michael Francis, vocalists from around the US and locally, and award-winning designers who collaborate to produce and present the highest caliber of grand opera, complete with all the spectacle and grandeur that makes opera “the queen of the performing arts.” This season Opera Tampa is mounting (3) productions in Morsani Hall at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. These traditional “war-horses,” Verdi’s La Traviata, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel offer something for performing arts lovers of all stripes: love, death, tragedy, comedy, dance, kids and sweets! Learn more about their season at strazcenter.org
St. Petersburg Opera
Since Mark Sforzini founded The St. Pete Opera in 2007, the company has focused its vision on sharing quality musicianship that enhances the cultural life of Tampa Bay and provides opportunities for professional singers, orchestral players, dancers, directors, choreographers, and designers both locally and abroad. Maestro Sforzini is devoted to the mission to make opera accessible and enjoyable for all. Collaboration with key artistic organizations and free concerts throughout the community allow people of all ages and from all walks of life to experience and learn that they love opera. St. Pete Opera is mounting 2 full-scale productions this season at the Palladium in Downtown St. Pete - Puccini’s Turandot, and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermor - as well as Opera Scenes, Broadway Cabaret and Mornings with the Maestro talks about opera.
Dee Perconti, an expressive mixed media collage artist and St. Petersburg resident is a huge fan of St. Pete Opera. She says, "I am an expressive artist so what speaks to me is the power and beauty of the performers. The singers, dancers and musicians are carefully selected from national auditions. They are young, vibrant and sexy. The costumes are gorgeous, and the music hits me in the gut. I am a wreck every time I hear “Nessun Dorma” [the wellknown tenor aria in Turandot.] And besides that, Maestro Mark Sforzini is a creative genius. I didn't grow up with Opera, so I was delighted to learn that I didn't need to speak German or Italian. English translations are on a big screen above the stage in the Palladium where SPO performs. And the program has a synopsis of the plot act by act."
Learn more about their season @ stpeteopera.org
St. Pete Opera is where Davis-Thompson got hooked on the medium. Even though he was a very experienced thespian and lyricist/ playwright, he was trepidatious when Maestro Sforzini asked him to be a supernumerary, or nonspeaking extra, in an opera many years ago. The overt drama, musical beauty and willingness to explore difficult subject matter made opera a very attractive medium to him. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before I began to write my own short operas, [operettas]” says Davis-Thompson. His work, “The Triumph of Spring,” had its world premiere for audiences in St. Petersburg - first at the St. Pete Opera Guild luncheon then at freeFall Theatre as part of a larger variety show, “Pirates & Angels,” which he produces.
This short operetta explores one of the most controversial and heinous practices of early opera - castration - alongside modern definitions of gender. Due to social norms of the 17th C, women were not allowed to perform on stage. Young boys of vocal promise were subjugated to castration to preserve their soprano, pre-puberty voices indefinitely, and provide acoustically strong high pitches for the art form. Moving into the 19thC, this practice started to fall out of favor, and women then appeared in some of the more gender-fluid roles (i e. Cherubino, the young male page, in ‘The Marriage of Figaro’).
These "pants roles," instituted a further development of gender swapping. In our post-modern era, with elective gender adjustment and medical alteration becoming more common, Davis-Thompson says, “I began to muse about the possibility of a new castrato singer. And then the muse began to work on me, pushing me to write lyrics and seek out composer Chris Romeo, the star tenor of St. Pete Opera Company, to complete this short work.” The story of “The Triumph of Spring” brings full circle the use of the voice as THE instrument to tell the human story. It is the most flexible and emotionally driven instrument, and housed in the human form that struggles and groans to respond to individual and social change. •
