Tuesday, 9/24

What makes someone want to become an opera singer?

I mean, is it one of those things where you just wake up one morning and think to yourself, “You know, this would be a good day to learn an aria”? Is it because of a love of music and/or Italian and/or Viking horns?

Or is it because of “Gilligan’s Island”?

More on that in just a second. This was actually a topic of thought this weekend when, coming from Blackrocks Breweries' Oktoberfest, I head a tuba band doing a polka version of “March of the Tin Soldiers” from “Carmen”. (As an aside, I've heard a LOT of strange things living a block away from Blackrocks; that, however, may be one of the strangest). But because I actually knew what the tuba band was playing, (and, as another aside, you know some of the music, whether you realize it or not), I started thinking, which, as we all know, that can be a dangerous thing.

What is is that causes someone to become an opera singer?

I mean, it obviously takes a certain kind of voice and a certain kind of mentality to get up on stage and blow your lungs out (usually in Italian) for three hours. And opera singers today aren’t what they used to be, or at least they aren’t what they used to be if your only exposure to opera was Elmer Fudd singing “Kill the Wabbitt”. In fact, lots of opera singers now shuttle between opera and pop with no problem whatsoever. So whatever stereotype of opera singers exists in your head, it's different nowadays. But that doesn't necessarily explain why people wanna sing opera.

Although “Gilligan’s Island” might.

Now, the reason I know some of the music for “Carmen” (actually, the reason you know some of the music for “Carmen”) is that it was used in a very famous episode of the show. Remember when Phil Silvers, as Broadway producer Harold Hecuba, landed on the island, and the castaways put on a musical version of “Hamlet”? Well, the music they used was from “Carmen”; when they’re singing “I ask to be, or not to be”, they’re singing along to “Habanera”, while “Les Toreadors”, which opens the opera, served as the basis for “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”.

Isn’t it amazing, isn't it? Americans are familiar with two of the world’s highest pieces of culture, Shakespeare and opera, because of one of the world’s lowest pieces of culture, “Gilligan’s Island”. It’s almost like if the Sistine Chapel had been painted by Hulk Hogan.

It boggles the mind.

One more opera related note to pass along; after hearing what this blog was going to be about, Loraine asked if I was going to tell you guys how I drove her crazy the rest of the weekend by singing the “Gilligan’s Island” version of the music. I could, but me driving her crazy with stupid stuff like that kind of goes without saying, right?

Opera. Who knew it could be so much fun?

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)