#opera was an incredibly international art form. also bc productions would be performed in different countries all the time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saviourkingslut · 1 month

Text

not to be about opera again but to be about opera again. as an art form it has the reputation of being super stuffy and something for snobs who don't know how to have fun only but honestly this was one of, perhaps even THE main theatrical entertainment for centuries. i wish people knew how hard these things can go and how engaging they can be. like characters kill and die and fight wars and (almost) commit human sacrifice left and right. characters fall in love they mourn they're ecstatic they cry they're furious it's an extremely dramatic and emotional art form! and i understand that opera does not appear approachable bc of the general conventions of the art form but i promise old works can be fun and engaging if you go watch them with some preparation beforehand (reading the libretto helps) - not to mention not all operas are old bc there are so many modern operas which engage with topical events! also the music slaps.

#le triomphe de trajan (1807) out here calling for a man's execution with this banger:#point de grace pour ce perfide; que tout sons sang coule sur un autel #(no grace for this treacherous man; let all his blood flow on an altar)#this is also annoying to me when people write historical fic and the characters treat the opera as this elitist thing #that they don't know anything about.#you know when they go to the opera reluctantly and then they have no idea what's going on on stage or who the composer is.#which is. very unlikely for anyone with the money to attend an opera in certain opera houses in the 19th c. tbqh #like im more of an expert on paris and vienna idk what it was like in london #but if you were decently (upper) middle class or nobility (esp in paris) you went regularly. this was like a whole social space too #i recently read a fanfic and one of the characters was like 'oh it's in italian. i don't know that' and the other character went like #'it's by a man called donizetti what did you expect'#(this was situated in 19th century london)#like first of all. donizetti was NOT a librettist he was a composer he did not write the text #and second of all. he worked on french operas ?? so did rossini. and spontini.#opera was an incredibly international art form. also bc productions would be performed in different countries all the time #(sometimes changed and/or translated but not necessarily)#and again like i said. this was one of THE main forms of entertainment. people were familiar with its conventions! it was well-liked!#ofc bc of the seating prices it was not very accessible to lower classes most of the time #but lbr most characters that get written into an opera scene in fiction are at the very least decently bourgeois lol #i wish people knew how to properly historicise forms of entertainment whose reputation has changed in the modern era #from what it was a century or more ago #very adjacent to people 'cancelling' old lit bc of 'bad takes' like idk how to tell you this but people thought different back then #completely different world view from what we have today. that does not make lit from that era irredeemable it is just from a diff. time #acknowledging that and reading the text critically but also still enjoying it are things that go tgt here #ok rant over (it is never over)#curry rambles

10 notes · View notes