Why do opera fans and ballet fans resist each other's art? Both seem to be an elaboration on music: an elucidation, an exaltation; and yet there is a mutual distrust among audiences. It seems out of date. Fresher would be to celebrate the genius of both forms, learning from one to inform the other. Both are theatre. Both are music embodied. Both can transform the viewer through excellence.
Both require an architecture of form and a vocabulary of norms to rub up against, to bend, to both subvert and confirm. Both are old traditions that are always contemporary. Both owe more to narrative and story than either wishes to admit. Both are complex webs of signification, looping and interlocking signs and tropes to reveal something new from the old and something familiar, loved or trusted from the new.
Both forms can shock. Both forms can bore. Both forms require a time and a place and a willing audience. Both forms unfold. Both forms exist in a moment of perpetual risk: at any moment the performance could tumble, and yet, almost always it does not. Both forms are metonymic stand-ins for life. The curtain rises, we risk, we dare, we try, we fail, we succeed, we try again and then without exception it ends. Opera and ballet both remind us to love more, try harder, and think better thoughts. What can we bring from opera to ballet, and what can we bring from ballet to opera? How can each benefit from the other?
8 comments:
For me, the words and the voices are a crucial element, and are what got me interested in opera in the first place. Although I find ballet to be beautiful and pretty and the shapes made by their bodies can be amazing, I don't find it as moving and emotionally hard-hitting as opera. Basically I like watching dance, but it doesn't stir me. Opera cuts right into your soul, the voices are a crucial part of that to me.
The similarities only run skin-deep -- similar social (and economic) strata, similar positions as vanguards of high-culture, similar venue, even.
But the forms are fundamentally different in the ways in which they appeal to you -- ballet enters through the eyes, opera through the ears.
They share the fetish of perfection -- but even there: opera of the voice, ballet of the body.
I find ballet has a much more modern slant compared to opera's nostalgia -- but I've not been exposed to any modern opera. To me, I find ballet's movement much more visceral than opera's complexity and richness.
Perhaps that comes more from my background in theater, because let's face it: neither the primadonna nor the diva can act their way out of a paper bag.
Wagner's term, Gesamtkunstwerk, included the visual, the theatrical, the musical, and everything that was needed to make "an all encompassing work of art" come to life for the theater goer, driven by narrative, with the singers playing the roles and singing the text that drive the story forward. Ballet lacks singers, most of the time, and therefore the narrative has to be conveyed in other ways. Putting that crucial aspect aside, i.e., narrative driven by sung text, ballet and opera do share much in common. However, for almost one hundred years now ballet has pushed in one direction that opera has only touched--dance that is as abstract as the music it is interpreting, without narrative. Some aspects of recent opera seem to be pushing in this direction, especially with dream sequences and psychological explorations that vere completely off the narrative path. Still, in terms of theater, there is more in common than not between the two genres.
Great comments so far.
A few people have asked about the painting. It's a watercolor of a dancer's leg in full extension: could we also imagine it to be Carmen's?
When I painted it, I focused on the foot, but was surprised how curved the actual leg becomes when transported through extension to balletic perfection.
To add to Andrew McClain's comment: yes the fetish of perfection drives both.
So in the pursuit of perfection, the concept of the straight line of the leg yields to the beautifully strange configuration of complementary curves: each convex slope leads to a concave valley to answer the phrase started by the first; even the parts of the leg become musical as the call-and-response of the thigh to the shin to the ankle to the foot continue the phrase. Also, amazingly, when in motion, the joins are released in a cascade that is slightly off-set to make a “straight-line” sweeping motion by delaying the rotational extension as it moves down the chain of joints. The illusion of perfection (a straight line) is caused by complete control of a perversion (complementary curves) to visually render a sweep.
How many parallels can we find in the control of the voice for opera? Undoubtedly endless examples exist. If you have insights please share.
The division was not always so clearcut. Diaghilev was a fiery promoter of innovation in both art forms, and audiences followed his vision. Ballet has become stultified, especially in the US, which does not help its cause. (It is my favorite art form, btw, which is why its current state is so sad. Drama and relevance have been sacrificed to technique.
If given the choice - I love both!
They are different in setting and play, touching different forms of emotions, and diverse in what they surface in my thinking (at least).
For about a year I have explored the opera world now, I have come to the conclusion it has lots to do with the sports I love:
Ultimate Frisbee
What is in common for all three fields:
- no referee, or "boss" holding solely the knowledge
- all team players make the whole thing happen
- improvisation sometimes really shows the greatness of the team (especially on unexpected things happening)
If you are interested to learn more about my thoughts about it have a look on http://leanthinkers.blogspot.com (the name originated from the other passion of myself: solving tough problems elegantly through engaging the right and suitable people.
Cheers from Dresden
Ralf
I love both. However, I'm very particular on what I like in both forms of art. I guess I could say that about any art form. Opera and ballet both speak to my soul through all my senses. The way the stage is set, the way the costumes interact with the entire performance, and how the music tells the tale.
My personal tastes between the two only differ on one thing. I tend to enjoy modern ballet. Where as with opera, I rarely enjoy any of the latest doc-operas which seem to be the new trend.
Great post, James. I love both Opera and Ballet but as Andrew says, they appeal to you in different ways. My vocal training makes me focus intensely on the voices, the technique, the emotion conveyed, etc. When I watch a ballet the connection is purely physical and a form of "physical catharsis" operates: the dancers liberate me from my clumsy body...
I love them both and they complement each other...
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