In recent years, in New York alone, I’ve attended performances staged in a former bus depot in an industrial part of Brooklyn, listened to members of an opera collective perform in subway stations, attended live broadcasts in movie theaters, and watched an outdoor screening of Verdi’s La traviata at Lincoln Center Plaza, a performance that held a huge and diverse crowd spellbound. Opera in the bathroom? This site-specific venture perhaps took the idea of singing in the shower a bit too far, but it demonstrated how the art form is evolving in the twenty-first century: opera today is both surprising and thriving. Read ExcerptĪ S I SCANNED THE OPERA NEWS ALERTS IN MY INBOX recently an unusual headline caught my eye: “Chamber Pot Opera’s Queen Victoria Building Venue an Inconvenience for Some.” The article, from the June 4, 2017, Sydney Morning Herald, discussed the “unusual challenges” of staging opera in a public restroom.
A Mad Love is an essential book for anyone who wants to appreciate this living, evolving art form in all its richness. Today, opera is everywhere, from the historic houses of major opera companies to movie theaters and public parks to offbeat performance spaces and our earbuds. Musician and critic Vivien Schweitzer acquaints readers with the genre’s most important composers and some of its most influential performers, recounts its long-standing debates, and explains its essential terminology. A Mad Love offers a spirited and indispensable tour of opera’s eclectic past and present, beginning with Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in 1607, generally considered the first successful opera, through classics like Carmen and La Boheme, and spanning to Brokeback Mountain and The Death of Klinghoffer in recent years. There are few art forms as visceral and emotional as opera - and few that are as daunting for newcomers. A lively introduction to opera, from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century
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