Wow. 4 opera clips.

So, I considered myself an actor long before I started singing, and it was as an actor that I came to be a singer. I was already getting paid to do straight theater when I went to my first opera. At that point, I hated musical theater, and I expected opera to be even worse. I hated that it was all mugging, and the movements lacked any purpose and there wasn't really any acting at all....

My first opera was a choir (which I was not in) field trip, and I only went because I had crushes on half of the girls in the choir.

I was blown away.

Not because of the music, which I didn't really get, but because of the acting-- real acting!

Later, when reading "writings in restaurants" I discovered that the guy who many consider the most important modern acting teacher agrees with me. As I read more, I learned that David Mammet writes over and over again that he finds the acting in opera today consistently better than acting on film or on broadway. This is because what most opera singers do is direct and simple and there is a reverence for the script and for the text. The good ones don't mug or try to show off their acting they just f@ckin' do the thing!

SATAN! I'll start with the most accessible one: Yep, this is Sam Ramey playing satan. Opera was often the Marilyn Manson of it's day. In this piece Satan mocks god, and even gives him an obscene gesture! How do you think this went over in ultra catholic Italy?




OTELLO. Next most accessible-- Placido Domingo is just plain exciting. English subtitles.


Old School PUNK ROCK! This clip is vintage punk rock to me from the costumes to the irony, raw emotion and open mockery of the audience. The clip is a play within a play-- the commedia dell'arte stock plot mocking the cuckold husband. The actors are husband and wife performing a show as husband and wife. In both cases, the husband has just discovered that the wife is having an affair. the actor no longer finds the show so funny, but the audience doesn't get that he's gone off script, "bravo!" The wife keeps trying to return to the show as if nothing happened.



OPERA REVOLUTION. For hundreds of years it has been opera that led the way. The two major revolutions in acting technique in the 20th century were led by opera singers. The first was Feodor Chalyapin, who was the father of what became known as the "Stanislavski Method" after the man who wrote down Chalyapin's teaching. The second was lead by Maria Callas. In the early 40s, Callas brought renewed realism and even vulgarity to the stage. Legends abound about the real-life touches she brought to scenes such as taking off her shoes after a party-- revolutionary at the time. Her controversial performances were to inspire a revolution in acting that would eventually reach Broadway in the late 40s and Hollywood in 1951 with Marlin Brando.

Though she was known for "dominating" an audience, here she brings simplicity and honesty to what was a "dead" repertory at the time: