I was thinking about this at the most
recent Pittsburgh Opera performance, of Verdi's “Otello”. And
what I realized was that writing good opera – or pretty much any
opera – is a dying art, and the question was “Why?” You look
at other musical forms and yes, they evolve over time... some grow
more or less popular... technology has replaced live performance to a
depressing degree... and so on, but the forms remain alive and retain
a certain currency. And it's not as if no operas are being written;
that's not the point. They simply don't have the emotional impact –
the salience – of operas of the, let's call it, “classic”
period. And why is this? Has human nature changed that much in a
hundred years? Can plays, musicals, movies, television, the
Internet, etc. possibly have replaced opera, or rendered it obsolete?
I think to answer this we have to ask what gives opera its impact –
it's dramatic force. (And I am, of course, referring to “serious”
as opposed to comic, or light, opera – not that those forms don't
have their rightful place.) Because the stories that operas convey
are, by and large, quite simple and straightforward. There are
plots, schemes, and intrigues, but it's all quite out in the open as
far as the audience is concerned; there are surprises, setbacks, and
plot twists from time to time, but few real mysteries... and it all
gets tied up neatly in the end, unlike the modernist infatuation with
ambiguity. Heroes are heroes (there are no “antiheroes”) and
villains are villains, and... well, here's where we start to catch on
to the essence. The point is that operas are, in additional to being
great art forms, morality plays – and without the moral aspect they
would seem vapid and pointless... beautiful, but with no soul. But
to write, or compose, a morality play, you have to have a sense of
morality. And, you have to be able to assume that your audience does
as well.
As an experiment, take the basic plot
of any opera and think about how it would play as a film or TV
program. Betrayal, treason, adultery, fornication, murder? Strip it
down to its essence, and the jaded contemporary audience would be
bored to tears, simply because these things, and many other offenses
against morality (not to mention decorum), are taken for granted
these days. One hardly notices. (Well, maybe one does notice in the
case of murder, but we've even become jaded about that, at least as a
moral issue versus simply a case of particularly bad manners.
Murderers in our time are not considered evil or immoral so much as
badly brought up; all they really need is a hug.)
The almost universal reaction to the
plot line of a typical classical opera would be “What's all the
fuss about?” And if you take an opera, and remove the music, and
the sets, and the costumes, that's precisely what most “modern”
people would say. Why is adultery, for example, such a big deal –
even though it is a major theme in many operas. And the idea of a
“fallen woman”? Please. (Are there any women in our time who
aren't “fallen”? And as
to men, well... we've always been fallen, so that's not as big a
deal. Yes, opera exemplifies the double standard when it comes to
sexual morality! Stop the presses!)
“Now wait a
minute,” you might say, “people are no more immoral now than
they've ever been. It's just more out in the open.” Well, isn't
that “being out in the open” also a moral issue? Doesn't it
compound the offense when people don't care who knows, or even brag
about it? It's certainly true that the human race has had its ups
and downs in the morality department; I don't think that we live in
either the best of times or the worst of times.
There
is one difference, though, and that is the one between immorality and
amorality. Immoral behavior is what happens when people know right
from wrong, but do the wrong thing anyway – and this is what
happens, nearly always, in opera. The villains know they are
villains. They may brag about it, regret it, or be indifferent, but
they know they are violating society's standards of decency.
Amorality, on the other hand, is what happens when people literally
don't know right from wrong, either from bad upbringing or some
profound psychological flaw. Then you have what are called “moral
imbeciles” or psychopaths. (The only true psychopath in classical
opera may be Don Giovanni, but I would have to go back and have a
closer look in order to be sure.) The problem with psychopaths is
that they aren't conflicted; they never feel the pangs of conscience
because they have no conscience – or, at least, no functioning one.
They aren't rebelling because they have nothing (a Freudian would
say a Superego) to rebel against. The result, paradoxically, is that
they are boring. They may be fascinating for a while, like some
predatory beast, but since they have no depth they are much harder to
relate to (let alone sympathize with) than someone who does wrong
even though he knows it's wrong – in other words, the common lot of
humanity up until recently.
Eventually we tire
of psychopaths and relegate them to some sort of societal freak show.
People more like us are more interesting, except that there seem to
be fewer “people like us” with each passing day. And this is not
to say that psychopaths have taken over in all areas and at all
levels of society (with the possible exception of politics and
banking) – but that we have lost our grounding... our anchor. When
people are set morally adrift they may nonetheless behave in a
pseudo-moral or ethical way most of the time, out of sheer cultural
inertia, or because they retain a faint glimmer of Natural Law. But
when society in general – especially the public “face” of
society, as represented by the news and entertainment media – has a
ho-hum attitude about morality, then it will seem silly to most
people (Ayn Rand would call them “social metaphysicians”) to
protest or do things any differently. (If people can get away with
all sorts of things that would have been condemned in earlier times,
why be a chump and “cling” to outmoded standards?) And from this
perspective, any attempt, through art, to uphold traditional morality
seems “hokey” or naïve, even if the means of expressing it
are still honored and respected.
And yet – the
paradox is that we, or some of us, still attend opera performances...
and some may even agree with the moral positions conveyed. Not only
that, but there are morality plays being performed millions of times
each day in movie theaters and on the Internet (by “gamers”). So
there is a thirst for morality – for standards – and yet it has
for the most part been relegated to fantasy worlds, where things can
still be black and white without threatening some political agenda.
Applying standards to the real world is too daunting, too messy –
impossible, really.
And one might say,
but isn't opera fantasy? Hasn't it always been? Perhaps this is
true if we're talking about Wagner, but I find operas in general (I
mean the classical sort) quite down to earth – quite realistic,
actually, if somewhat simplified and boiled-down compared to the
complexities and ambivalences of “real life”. Not only that, but
the music, the sets, the costumes, the acting, and the staging all
serve to amplify the moral issues – to bring them into sharp
relief. (If a person is betrayed and sings about it, it has more
impact than any amount of talking. A long, boring complaint using
the spoken word becomes a memorable aria when sung.) It's no
accident that those daytime TV dramas are called “soap operas” --
but they have suffered from the same moral erosion as the rest of TV,
movies, etc. The bottom line is that morality is considered
“unrealistic” in our time; to be, or feel, moral (in the
vicarious sense) we have to escape reality.
So we have this
fascinating phenomenon where we are, or can be, moral and upright in
fantasy worlds but apathetic and relativistic in the real world. I
see this as a kind of despair, as if to say that the world is off its
axis and is beyond repair, so we may as well immerse ourselves in
fantasy in order to satisfy that moral hunger, but resign ourselves
to moral anarchy in the everyday world (which is rapidly shrinking as
more people spend more of their time interfacing with fantasy).
If there's any good
news in all this, it's that this moral hunger still exists for many
people, no matter how limited its scope – which indicates, to me,
that Natural Law is for real, and truly is “written on the heart”.
But how depressing that it's considered irrelevant to modern life –
even to the legal system, which has been taken over by moral
relativism.
How we long to
breathe the cold, clear air of truth, which includes a sense of right
and wrong! (Because if truth is right, then untruth must be wrong.
Right? Or is that just too logical?) And when we don't find it in
society, or among our leadership, we satisfy that urge with fantasy –
with pathetic “little liberties” that no government bureaucrat
has yet caught us at. I would propose that the health of a society
is correlated not only with moral behavior, but with the display of
morality in entertainment and recreation. The more of our waking
hours spent in morally neutral activities, the more danger we are in
of further erosion, and of accepting even lower standards and worse
“leaders” and exemplars in the future.
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