Opera & The Internet
A Coming-of-Age Tale
Once upon a time, I sat at my computer in a youtube coma, clicking on the related videos column for what felt like hours but could have in fact been several days. I had started out watching videos of Wicked and hoping that one day I’d end up as a) talented b) tiny c) proportionately high pitched as Kristen Chenoweth, when I happened upon the Flower Duet. Now, in time I’ve realised that actually I’m not that hot on the Flower Duet, but back then it was a revelation. How do they sing like that? What in hell are they saying? Why did I find it so impossibly beautiful?
That I was a fish to water when it came to classical music was somewhat of a shock mainly due to the fact that as a tom-boy football player, I hadn’t particularly shown any propensity to the gentle world of music. I had been briefly forced into playing the clarinet — an exploit which should be labelled ‘misguided’ at best. And whilst we’d occasionally play The Beatles and a bit of Motown in the house, the ‘soundtrack’ to my childhood was definitely more along the spoken lines of the comedy hour on Radio 4. So when I heard (you know, really heard) Léo Delibes’ duet for the first time, I couldn’t have anticipated the world that would open up to me.
Youtube was my window into that world. Soon enough, I had latched onto singers I liked, composers that appealed to me, conductors that I found inspiring or amusing to watch — and every spare hour I had was spent listening, watching, soaking it all up. I believe I owe a great deal of whatever sense of musicality I’ve developed to those early days of locking myself away to watch video after video. In all honesty, my life changed completely. I was inspired, I was determined and I had direction — and the first step was youtube.
The internet is increasingly sold to us as something malevolent — lock up your sons, lock up your daughters, this is dangerous territory. But talk about an infinte medium for broadening horizons. Now you may well say, ‘Yes, it’s all very well, but you were locked up in your room on the internet looking at tame-ass opera’. You’d probably be right — but that also depends on your definitions of ‘tame’. And ‘ass’ I suppose, but we’ll let that go. Having the world of opera at my finger-tips revolutionised the way my brain worked, the way I experienced the world, the people that I met, the relationships that I made, and the direction that my life panned out. Doesn’t sound all that tame to me.
In a time in which the big-wigs of the opera world appear to be obsessed with broadening the horizons of opera, it makes perfect sense that they should harness the almighty powers of The Internet. Now we can check out promotional material online, stream live concerts, interact with musicians on twitter, Facebook, Youtube. Accessibility appears to be unlimited. But it seems to me that the most exciting and revolutionary presence of opera online comes from the fans. I’ve recently been introduced to the opera community of Tumblr — where memes, gifs and fan fiction, the internet triumvirate usually reserved for cats and Twilight, are applied to the complete works of Mozart. It’s possible to dismiss this way-in to classical music as the grim-reaper of opera itself, the greatly feared ‘Dumbing Down’. But who the hell are we to say that laughing at a Tosca meme and then checking out what Tosca’s all about anyway, isn’t a legitimate way of broadening horizons? In appropriating internet gimmicks usually associated with popular culture, the opera fandom lends classical music a hand — and allows those 15 year olds that stumble across opera on youtube by accident the right to say ‘Oh, there’s a meme about this? Must be pretty damn cool. I’m gonna watch Tosca’.
The secret about this post is that I’ve entirely robbed the idea from Tumblr’s opera worshippers. Welcome to the 30 Day Opera Challenge, in all its glory. This consists of 30 questions, to be answered daily, about the writer’s experience with opera. I just answered ‘How did you first learn about opera?’ — so as you can see, I’ll be taking the basic idea and broadening it slightly as I see fit. Unfortunately for me, it seems I’m already too uncool for the opera Tumblrs, as I don’t understand 30%-40% of the questions. What in hell is a ‘headcanon’ anyway?? So around day 15 it should start to get interesting. All this is in honour of the internet opera fandom — meme on, you crazy cats.
