If My Life Were an Opera

For the past 2 years, I have purchased season tickets to the Utah Opera with my sister-in-law, Kim. Now I know to some of my friends and family this may seem like a form of masochism, but we really love opera. No, really. I'm not just saying that to sound aristocratic or high-fallutin. (Although, I have to admit, I always feel so cultured when I can say things like, "this weekend at the opera," or "I'm looking forward to next season's adaptation of Butterfly." Try saying that at the next dinner party you attend and guaranteed, people will automatically spot you an extra 15 IQ points.) But besides the intrinsic value of snootiness, we really do enjoy the actual productions themselves. We love the staging and the sets; the sumptuous and sparkly costumes; the over-the-top dramatic plots--it's better than high school. I also especially love an excuse 4 times a year to go out to dinner at "girly" restaurants, dress up a little and leave my children in the capable (although infinitely less cultured) hands of their father. And most importantly, we love the music. Even if there is bad singing (and there very rarely is) or acting or dancing or standing or clumping around the stage, we love to mock. Oh how we love the mocking.

Now Kim is an actual opera singer so she is infinitely more informed when we go to the opera. She almost always has sung or heard many of the arias in each production. This weekend we attended the opera, "Regina." It's a contemporary work that I was completely unfamiliar with before attending. As usual, we loved it. One of the great things about dramatic opera is knowing that generally speaking, the characters are not going to have happy endings. You know going in that things are going to end badly...worse even than you can predict. The meticulous plan to thwart a dismal destiny will go sadly awry. There will not be blanks in the executioner's rifle. The long-awaited return of an old lover will not resolve the heroine's distress so suicide will ensue. The ghosts in the graveyard will not turn out to be friendly. "Regina" is pure melodrama, but the ending is not quite as tragic as you can expect from Wagner and Verdi. The characters and situations are almost accessible as real life. And it got me to thinking...what if my life were an opera?

Wouldn't it be great? What if I could swoon over all the little problems arising in my life? I could take great pains to avoid any consequences of my actions thereby setting into motion my ultimate downfall or I could become a fatalist and lie back and accept as my due all the heinous and cruel tricks of fate. Either way, I would be wearing an opulent gown and some stunning jewels. If all my world was set to music, my children's arguing would become a comical fugue, my inner dialogue-a dramatic aria, and a estrogen-induced mood swing would be the mother lode of a shrieking, hand-wringing scene. All in perfect tune of course.

I guess that's what I really love about opera--the escape from reality.