The NYTimes has provided me with an interesting article about the divisions of opera and musicals. Now opera isn't something I've ever really though about much, apart from that classic image of a woman singing such a shrill note that all the glass in a five kilometre vicinity shatters that pops into my brain, so there's not a lot I know about opera. At all. And I should probably go look up what it is to better understand the article, but I am only human and a rather lazy and preoccupied one at that, so I present you with my slightly confused take on the article.
According to the article opera and musicals are very similar already, which can be the source of the problem when attempting to combine the two. Neither of them can be considered 'above' the other though, both are pleasing in their own right and can be spectacular. Operas, though, tell their story entirely through music, whereas musicals rely heavily on spoken dialogue, so it may seem a simple, natural thing to throw the two genres together. In practice, though, only the most ridiculously inflated, melodramatic elements are incorporated, ignoring the fact that opera is a "richly varied and narrative genre of musical drama". The differences between the two, though slight, are very crucial and disastrous when ignored.
Here a link is provided to another article which clarifies some what the differences precisely are. It explains that while musicals do indeed weigh with lots of song that is an intrinsic part of the story, they do require spoken dialogue to further it, which is what separates it from opera, if I'm reading this correctly. Words, in musicals, "hold the upper edge." It can be argued, though, that the words are just as important as in musicals and many translations of famous operas were performed. Operatic songs can be and are enjoyed by people who do not understand the language, though, as opera is more about the beauty of the sung language, and can be just enjoyed rather than becoming invested in the plot. In opera, the singer can be poor at putting the words across so long as your voice is magnificent and no one will mind much, whereas in musicals those with merely mediocre voices can excel with great diction and emotion and what have you.
There's a lot more in the articles that goes on about specific musical-opera hybrids that have failed and precisely why and how and what the creators and directors and song writer's should have done to rectify their disastrous attempts, but it's a bit much to get into and having no basis for understanding these random hybrids, having not seen them, I don't really understand what... is being said, kind of.
My analysis is that I really know nothing about opera, and while this seemed like a good idea at the time there was a lot of talk about different opera-musical crosses and their creators that confused me, so I tried to just pick out the manageable parts that didn't make my eyes cross. Please pardon my naivety and fallacy, but I am completely out of my depth. It didn't really occur to me to think about opera during this entire venture, though, so it was unexpected, entirely.
It's interesting, since I normally think of opera as being a very serious sort of entertainment form, with its grandiose voices and performance halls type of thing, and musicals more of a wide ranging sort, with slapstick humour to darker types. In the beginning of the article, though, it talks about how there has been folk opera, jazz opera, all these kinds I've certainly never heard about, and I doubt anyone I know either has, whereas musicals are a more approachable type of theatre. The writers of these two articles were pretty quick to dismiss the combination of the two, but I think a successful combination would be interesting in that it could bring opera to a larger audience, so the everyday man wouldn't mind it like musicals.
And ahhh that's off topic, I believe.
Reading this article was excellent in that it helped to identify what a musical is and how it is different from other styles of theatre entertainment. (Note to self: next time just ask younger sister. She just accurately explained the difference between operas and musicals in four seconds.) It is a borderline between operas and regular(?) theatre. And while I could surely delve into that further, I believe that about it. Summarized right there. Welp.
Tommassini, A. (2011, July 07). Opera? musical? please respect the difference. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/theater/musical-or-opera-the-fine-line-that-divides-them.html?pagewanted=all
Tommasini, A. (2000, January 24). Critic's notebook; 'once in love with carmen'? nope. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/24/theater/critic-s-notebook-once-in-love-with-carmen-nope.html
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