Opera Is Opera

1189 Words5 Pages
Throughout its 400-year history, opera has often been viewed as exotic or strange. Yet, somehow, it has found its way to become loved by many people and has maintained itself in the realm of performing arts for years. Many well known composers and their operatic works such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) are infamous and still celebrated to this day. However, some people claim that opera is dying, but they may be missing a key point here, which is that opera has been ‘dying’ for such a long period of time that it may not, in fact, be dying at all. In South Asia, organizations like The Neemrana Music Foundation—a registered national nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organisation in the field of classical…show more content…
Operatic houses like the Metropolitan Opera have performed famous operas in fear of gaining a small number of people in their audience such that the cost of producing the opera becomes a loss of money. In addition, Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, claims that “75% of [the audience members] are over 65, and 30% of them are over 75” (Service and Kennedy, 2018). He believes opera is near its end because the art form is not introduced to the youth and will eventually become insignificant to future consumers. Opera is expensive and new operas aren’t produced rarely with just famous operas circulating opera houses, but that doesn’t mean that opera will ‘die’ soon. In fact, with organizations like The Neemrana Music Foundation and Giving Voice to India, opera is growing once more and hardly near its ending. These organizations introduce opera to young singers and give them opportunities to perform in operatic works. Not only do these singers form greater awareness of opera in India, but they create an environment where Indians can get to understand opera. During colonial India, opera was limited to the elite and remained untouched once India was freed because many Indians didn’t have a good understanding of the…show more content…
Its most popular works were created in different times and in different cultures, but it still has meaning in the lives of many people today. Opera can change one physically, emotionally and intellectually (Abbate and Parker, 2015). While some people believe that opera is near its end, many people value the dedication that goes into performing opera and view it as an important aspect of history. In addition, with the growing popularity of opera in India, one can envision the rise of opera there as a key indication that opera is nowhere near its death. For many American operatic houses, the fallacy that the stagnation of opera means an ending of opera can be refuted with the remarkable prosperity of opera in India. Finally, one may suggest that introducing opera to India will eventually lead to a creation of operatic works sung in hindi or other languages in the local area. Just as opera took on the influences of European culture into its being, the same will happen as India begins to accept opera as it
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