There’s a wonderful opera fan out there who corralled several other ardent fans into starting their very own on-line magazine about opera, called Opera21.  It’s a brilliant venture, where they find a theme each month, solicit articles by their own readers, and put it out into the cybersphere for discussion, growth and discovery.  Absolutely my cup of tea!  The following is a letter I wrote to their editor for the February 2013 edition, and just wanted to share it with you here, as well.

Dear Opera21,

Congratulations on the launch of this exciting on-line magazine where each of you can delve deeper and deeper into your passions for opera and music!  It’s wonderful for me to have the confirmation of my passion about opera through your eyes, because each of you are ignited by the same emotional journeys, breathtaking musical moments and awe-inspiring productions that I am, and you are eagerly seeking a way to learn more.  Trust me, as long as you’re game, the journey of discovery never ends! Enjoy it!

I predict your operatic journey may sometimes be a love/hate relationship – for where there are big passions, there can be enormous disappointments.  Whether you are an aspiring singer who faces a deluge of rejections (oh, they’ll be there – just keep breathing!), or a fan who suffers through a cast that isn’t to your liking (or, God forbid, isn’t the same singer you first saw when you fell in love with a particular opera back in 2009…!), the disappointments will most definitely be there.

But so will the euphoric moments, and those blessed moments of tears and laughter or overwhelming profundity – or you’ll receive that first contract, or be accepted into the ensemble and begin relationships with friends who will be with you for life.  The highs and the lows will both feed you in completely different ways and ultimately bring more depth and joy into your life.

But may I offer one word of caution, or request one small favor?  Please don’t become a snob.  Please just resist that urge should it rear its ugly head. It’s not cool, definitely not attractive, and terribly, terribly boring. No matter how much you know, or how much you see and hear, and no matter how strong your opinions are, please don’t flirt with that imperial “level of knowing” where you stop listening, stop feeling, and stop learning.  By all means, be critical if you like, but please consider offering your opinions with grace and elegance. In other words, “Stay classy.”  Trust me, it will enhance your operatic experience by miles.

Throughout those inevitable highs and lows, please fight to keep the faith, and please do your part to keep the dialogue open and moving forward, so that you (yes, YOU) can be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.  I want YOU to help figure out where opera goes in YOUR Century.  Get creative, spread the word, think outside the box, be open enough so that the newcomers who will come and look to you for guidance will feel welcome, and please keep listening with those curious, eager ears so that the next generations of singers won’t feel that they have to compete with a “DiDonato” or a “Florez”.  (Not that there is anything wrong with either of those two!)

Finally, at last its my turn to stand up and applaud each of YOU, and yell BRAVI for your efforts and for your enthusiasm!  You are my argument against “Opera is a dying art form”, so get loud, get strong, and yes, stay classy!

CHEERS!

Joyce

From Mary’s last letter to her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England:

“Accuse me not of presumption if, leaving this world and preparing myself for a better, I remind you will one day to give account of your charge, in like manner as those who preceded you in it, and that my blood and the misery of my country will be remembered, wherefor from the earliest dawn of your comprehension we ought to dispose our minds to make things temporal yield to those of eternity.

Your sister and cousin wrongfully a prisoner,

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You’ll forgive me if I am a bit trepidatious on this 1st day of January, for in our Western civilization, the welcoming in of the New Year inevitably involves saying “Goodbye” to the previous year. I know many people who have been clawing their way across the finish line after a most grueling 2012, a year which could not have come to a close a second too soon for them, and in their honor I celebrate the arrival of the change of calendar. Read more …

Words like “lucky”, “fortunate” or “blessed”, although often uttered by myself, tend to make me quite nervous.  I suppose I worry that it creates a hierarchy of sorts, or sets me apart in some cloying way. But yet I keep returning to them religiously in a way I’m sure borders on the tiresome.  I closed the first leg of the “Drama Queens” tour this week, and I find myself trying still to digest exactly what transpired, and those three words refuse to give up lodging in my thoughts. Read more …

Standing on the stage in Bremen, Germany last week for the second stop of my Drama Queens Tour, I had just finished a nearly two-hour marathon of singing about jealousy, revenge, seduction, lust, despair and marching-off-to-sacrifice-myself-to-appease-those-angry-gods (you know how pesky they can be!). The generous audience was stamping its feet football-style, kindly demanding an encore. There I stood, possessing only a few polite sentences of German in my limited vocabulary, begging their indulgence while I spoke in English, because “the only German I really know are the important words, like bratwurst and brot.”

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It was a bold stroke for Bellini and his librettist to title their new opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi rather than go with the more popular blockbuster title, surely ensuring a sold out house: Romeo and Juliet. (They chose to mine more common Italian sources for the story rather than defer to that ol’ Englishman’s tale.)  However, it gives the perfect preview to what lay in store for the listener, for this is not, in reality, a love story.  This is a story of impossibility, of duty and fate, of desperation and futility. You will not find light breaking through yonder windows, nor a pining to transform oneself into gloves upon cheeks, for when we meet the two young lovers all the juicy parts have transpired already. We’re simply left with the mess. But oh what operatic bliss this mess doth be! Read more …