La Boheme

Umm . . . Spoiler?While I'll been here, I've been thinking a lot about music.  I'm not a musician - I love to sing but I'm not particularly good at it, and I know next to nothing about music.  Whie over time I've developped the ability to objectively evaluate and examine the attributes of a piece of literature or a film, and am slowly developping a vocabulary around the visual art, music remains a mystery to me.  For all my favorite books or films, I can explain at length technical aspects of the work that elevate it above other similar attempts (nd acknowledge moments of Icarus-like failure, when hir astounding ambitions evade the artist's grasp).  But while I do like often enjoy songs that others whose tastes are more mature and educated than mine (friends and/or critics) also appreciate, there are a lot of songs I like that I know are objectively terrible.  Even for the songs that are widely beloved, my ability to analyze them is limited to the lyrics (which is why, I think, I typically struggle to enjoy classical as a genre) and general subjective statements like "her voice just doesn't sound good there."

I've been thinking about this a lot I think because one, I've found music to be the best salve for homesickness, which has often left me pndering why certain songs just signify home to me, and two, I've started going to the opera, which has undoubtedly been the greatest gift Paris has given me.  I'd never seen or heard an opera before coming here, and having taken the opportunity to see several in close proximity to each other has majorly altered my conception of music.  The layers of expression in an opera, (the written text, the acting out of that text, the written score, the live performance of that score by both the orchestra and the singers working in harmony, the incredible costumes and set pieces, and the intellectual challenge of the director to render accessible this incredibly stylized art form,) this enormous effort from all of these people coming together across time to produce this, it's truly awe-inspiring.  To attempt to "sell" his music to the audience, not as a writtn and pre-conceived work, nor even as a choreographed "number" (as Broadway typicaly trades in) but as a spontaneous expression of emotion from the character, requires an almost unbelievable suspension of disbelief from the audience, and yet I have witnessed occasions where, for me atleast, they pulled it off, and I'm still trying to figure out why.

The opera that has been the most successful for me was far-and-away La Boheme, Puccini's seminal classic which I have recently learned is also performed in New York (meaning I can go see it there too!!) As a depiction of Paris, Puccini manages to both evoke a very specific period of history and also give a general sense of the culture and feel of the city.  Having seen the city now at Christmas time, I think the opening scene of Act II where several choruses sing around and among each other while shopping in the cold captures the city in a way Larson's equivalent scene in RENT tries to do but just doesn't quite manage.  The scene that follows in the cafe, if done as well as it was done here, so perfectly mimicks the hustle of paris cafes in the winter when everyone comes in seeking shelter from the cold as much as anything and thus wait to order, go through cup after cup of coffee, and never ask for the check, using the strong sense of Parisian hospitality as an excuse to keep warm.  The characters themselves, it seems to me, are exactly the way Parisians want to see themselves depicted: smart and idealistic, passionate, resourceful, creative, and fun - constantly ready to adapt to any situation to get the most out of life.  But of course, the last scene is the most incredible.  A professor here, showing those who were going clips of a broadcasted version in preparation from the live event, said "Did you get a lump in your throat?"  (I did.)  "That's the cello.  It's a great manipulator; it's the instrument with the closest tone to the human voice.  Composers love to pull it out just for moments like this."

I was completely astounded.  Can you believe that humans can listen to a piece of music, and the tones in it that mimick a human voice will actuall cause an emotional reaction?  And, on top of that, some people were able to figure that out and harnass that power in great art?  Thinking about that, I asked a friend of mine, an actress who plays music as a hobby, what art form she found the most emotinally impactful.  She answered music right away.  I said I thought I agreed, but that I felt awkward saying so; my mode of expression, the one I depend on and through which I hope to influence others, is writing.  But I have to admit, even though as a writer I think I'm more attuned to the written word than most, I am not frequently profoundly moved by a book.  I have never wept over a piece of visual art, very rarely over live theater, and only occasionally over a film.  But there are some songs which, no matter how many times I hear them, I tear up.  My friend pointed out that the progression of musichas been toward an increasingly individual experience, going from public concerts to the radio, to records where most families only ad one record player that was shared, to CD's by which point parents and kids could have their own, to Walkmans and eventually Ipods, where the music of your choice can play alongside you all day, through all your highs and lows, in your head sundtracking your every thought and emotion.  No other medium is as accessible and personal, she said.  And thinking about it, I think I agree with her; I think one of the most significant questions to our generation is what music do you like?  (Anyone besides me willing to 'fess to having dismissed someone as a friend-option because of an abiding love of, for example, pop-country?)  You would think, though, that acting wuld be stronger since you're seeing a fellow human being, right in front of you, undergo an experience.  But somehow I think knowing it's fake allows us to disassociate, whereas some part of us still believes in the singer-songwriter tradition and sees singing a song you wrote for someone else as the most pure expression of inner feeling.  That's definitely how I felt watching the end of La Boheme; whether it's beautiful or terrifying or a bit of both that the human voice has the power to affect us that way, outside of any sort of logic or reason, is something I think we each decide for ourselves.

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