Member-only story
Soprano Beverly Sills Called It “Controlled Screaming” but I LOVED Seeing My First Live Opera Performance
Navigating through the goblins, ghouls, ninjas and pumpkin-headed children celebrating a Halloween parade in Hudson, NY, I’m full of anticipation. Headed to the opera at the Hudson Hall. Who’da thunk? I’m a serious funk, rock, blues music lover and musician. A great drummer is required for me to love the music.
In spite of being a vocalist myself, I never was drawn to opera. I remember soprano Beverly Sills on 60 Minutes calling opera “controlled screaming” and nodding my head in agreement. Of course Sills said this with great affection. But it further planted me in the camp of “Opera? No, thank you very much.”
My only experience of opera was seeing a puppet play of The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna, Austria during my student year abroad. This insufficiency qualifies me as a low-cultured, worthless set of ears that can’t hear great music when I hear it in the eyes of any opera afficionado.
The definition of opera insists that all of the drama takes place through musical numbers with little dialogue. With that in mind, there are those who consider Evita, the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical about Eva Peron, a modern opera. Same could be said for Porgy and Bess, West Side Story, Les Miserables and Hamilton.
