Welcome to the opera.
After Eleanor Parker invitedmy wife Jan Cornelius and I to contribute to the Opera Birmingham blog, I was pretty excited. I've never been one to write much, but after Jan and I wrote and exchanged our own vows in November (with general director John Jones in attendance!) I was keen to make another foray into the world of English language prose. First off, apologies that this isn't coming sooner-I arrived from Europe late and left one completely hectic schedule behind and found myself smack in the middle of staging Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece, Rigoletto. This is my third experience with the piece and the intrigue for me grows. I have to say that the synopsis of the famous story reads like one of the most improbable I can think of, right down to my character Sparafucile, (spoiler alert...) who always seems to comment on the weather, is apparently the baddest assassin in Mantua, and although he is successful at selling his services to Rigoletto, he unfortunately seems unable to complete the task: even when he chooses instead to assassinate Rigoletto's teenage daughter Gilda, he falls dreadfully short. she is somehow able to sing a glorious duet with Rigoletto complete with long, floating high notes even though she's been stabbed twice in the the chest cavity. What a lack of professionalism this hired hitman displays!
Recently, I was contemplating what it is that keeps people coming back to the opera, season after season, especially when you consider the sometimes humorous minutiae of these all too well-known stories. It's odd, isn't it? That when you come to the opera, before you watch and listen, you read the synopsis, which inevitably sounds a bit trite and in effect spoils the end. Distilling the story of Rigoletto down to a paragraph or two seems unfair in that way: the idea that we expect our audience to familiarize themselves with the story before we as performers tell it. Why then do we do this whenever we go to the opera?
You may be surprised to learn that as a singer and actor on the stage during this spectacle we call operatic performance (and I mean spectacle in the best sense of the word), I am not only projecting my voice into the 2000-some seat Wright Center, I am projecting my convictions and my inner most thoughts. I have a pretty keen sense of when an audience is getting the message that I'm sending and whether that message is peaking their interest. In this way, I believe in the idea that opera is a sort of communion which we partake of as a congregation. You swallow the wafer that I place on your tongue only if you so choose, and you do so as a sign of faith. In fact, we all do this whenever we are well-entertained. We watch opera, movies, television, live theater, etc. because we believe in, wait for it- CHARACTERS. That's right, we believe in Walter White from Breaking Bad, not because we like evil, but because we see a tiny bit of ourselves in him. We believe in Jillian Darmity from HBO's Boardwalk Empire because we understand her plight. [As a side note, I think she's the one of the most interesting characters I've seen and I think she deserves an Emmy for her performance the last two seasons. In operatic style, she sleeps with her only son, then after he's killed, she kills someone else who looks like him in order to prove he's dead so that she can maintain custody of his son, and does so in a completely believable fashion. Still think operas are ridiculous?]
As a character in this weekend's performance of Rigoletto, my job is not only to be a believable Sparafucile, it's to convey something that moves you. Yes, I'm hoping you're impressed by my singing, the costumes, the orchestra, the music making, etc.; but what I really want is for you to be transported to another world. A world where "right" and "wrong" aren't so clear, where murder might seem justifiable, where class and status rule. A world very much like, well, our own! It's that funny place you go to when you're watching a truly great performance, either at home on the couch or a seat in a movie theater, or any place where you momentarily sort of just "forget" everything else and give over to the moment. So, this weekend when you're sitting down to Rigoletto, don't forget that I need you to go there. So go ahead, sit back, swallow the wafer and get ready to ascend to another world.
-I welcome your comments in the space below. Please feel free to comment and share with friends.
Benjamin LeClair
Sparafucile
Iowa farm boy. Luckily and happily married to soprano Jan Cornelius.
Living in Germany, working worldwide in opera, concert, and oratorio.
Please follow me on Twitter. My handle is singerleclair
