It was at a Saturday performance of King Arthur that I really figured out the difference between old folks at the Met and old folks at New York City Opera.  However, before I get to that, here's a little explanation of what happened during the performance.

 

You should know that opera is a still-evolving art form, and when Henry Purcell wrote King Arthur a lot of the traditions that surround staples like La Bohème and Carmen hadn't yet come into being.  Music was largely liturgical throughout the Middle Ages and it wasn't until the very late Middle Ages that secular forms of theater emerged.  Purcell was in the middle of this large evolution, and as a result his operas are more "semi-opera," or spectacles that combine spoken dialogue with dance (or masques as they were called: i.e. masquerade), orchestral music, and song.

 

All of this is fine, except that choreographer Mark Morris decided to omit the spoken dialogue from this production of King Arthur because he didn't like it.  Seriously.  But he did keep the music because... well, he liked it.  Sounds odd, and certainly most of the audience found it that way on Saturday.  I accosted a number of people during intermission to see what they thought of the unusual production, and a typical answer went something like, "Gosh, I don't know that I understand it.  Certainly it's very different.  But thank goodness, at least the music is so pretty."  Most of these people were familiar with opera, but they weren't frequent opera-goers.  None of them seemed to regret coming even if they didn't understand what was happening onstage.

 

Despite these problems, I enjoyed the production immensely.  I couldn't figure out why until I ran into a very elderly Italian woman toward the end of the intermission -- let's call her Magda.  She was my last interview, immaculately dressed and standing by the window on the 4th ring of the house, clucking her tongue at the mess of construction in the Lincoln Center plaza.  When I asked her how the music made her feel, she responded by re-enacting one of Mark Morris' trademark dance moves from the first act.  I was stunned -- mostly at her incredible flexibility.  The move was something the dancers did when the chorus was singing "Triumph!" during the first act.  It involved arching the back and feigning an archer's position.

 

"Well, what does that mean?" I asked.

 

"Deh meeoosik ees so beooteefuhl!"

 

"But doesn't it bother you that Mark Morris removed the dialogue and one cannot understand the plot?" I asked.

 

"Whyee shood I cahrre?  Eeet makes no deeferhence.  Dis ees ohperah."

 

She also reminded me to mention in my post that the New York City Opera's Madama Butterfly would be on PBS's "Live from Lincoln Center."  At the mention of this, I immediately fell back into my old-fogey Met pose.

 

"Which recording of Butterfly do you like most?" I asked.

 

"Whoo cahrres?  Evehree taiime ees deeferhent.  Ees beooteefuhl."

 

This woman was a true human being and a true opera-lover (She is Italian, after all.)  She made me realize all over again, that it's the music which is most important in opera.  Otherwise you can go see a play, a poetry recitation, attend a lecture, or just stay home and read a book.  Why did people start putting music to words in theater?  Because music provides a direct line to the soul.  Spoken word can discuss, describe, and delineate emotions, but music goes straight to your heart.

 

So I say kudos to Mark Morris for getting rid of the words he thinks aren't important. Magda agrees with him, and so do I.  How brave of New York City Opera to have used this production as the launch of their spring season.  As modern and avant-garde as it might have been (and it was pretty "out there," with paper-airplanes flying all over the stage during the maypole dance, and at one point, a pretty realistic enactment of sex on-stage...)  It was a clever way of forcing us back to the basics of why opera is important.  It connected everyone in the theater to emotions that were central to our humanity -- through music.

Norman was right -- New York City Opera is hot.  They're hot and they're right about opera.  This is the kind of hot that you can bring home to mom.  Oh, by the way, the difference between Met Opera old-folks and New York City Opera old-folks: Magda re-enacted a dance at the age of eighty-odd.  You're not going to find anyone in the Met who'll do that.  She also isn't moaning about in the gift shop trying to find a recording she first heard in 1956.  She's ready for new singers, new stagings, new productions -- and she'll find it at the New York City Opera.  Of course, even Magda has her limits.  She wouldn't let me take a picture of her doing the "Triumph!" dance.  But I got her to show me and my friends how to do it, as you can see.

 

Next stop, Madama Butterfly!