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Mark at CityWoof recently went to hear his first opera. He writes in his blog he loved it and hopes to hear more. My excitement for him reminded me how much I enjoy the Opera. Let me tell you about opera before I drag Dr. Jung onto the stage.
Opera as we know it has been around for over 400 years. The earliest composers of opera were trying to recreate drama from ancient times. Ancient Greeks went to theater at religious festivals. They went as a community to participate in a ritual. The Greeks felt music could transcend a human soul, or interact with nature to alter both. The early opera composers were trying to recreate that experience.
“Opera” is a drama set to music and singing.
Music is beautiful; theatre is fun. The combination of the two, well, what is not to love?
Saying you enjoy opera is like saying you enjoy food. Like food, there are so many types – plain or fancy; nibbles or banquets, ‘old fashioned food’ or fusion cuisine. And then there are all the regional variations – German, French, Italian, etc.
Opera encompasses an enormous venue.
Some of the most beautiful music and memorable dramatic characters have been written for the operatic stage.
Music can do things that words alone can not adequately do. Often the words in an opera are rather simple – but when the composer as dramatist places them to a certain tone of music, they transcend to something spectacular.
“Whoever fears my spear will never pass through this fire!” hardly sounds moving on paper. Within the context of its music it is transformed into something beyond words.
In my attempt to blog about Jung and Opera I am getting into waters way over my head. There are books written on this subject; my little blog entry won’t do it half injustice.
Jung doesn’t seem personally interested in theatre, having only mentioned it twice in his Collected Works.
”One might describe the theatre as an institution for working out private complexes in public.’
From a Jungian point of view, the reason Opera remains so popular is it draws upon the Collective Unconscious.
Opera is full of characters that touch upon the archetypes.
We have all known a ‘Carmen’, the Seductive Woman. We all know (identify with?) Madame Butterfly who waits patiently for her love to return, only to be disappointed. Peter Grimes captures the misfit in us all, rejected by the tribe for not fitting in.
In early works of opera - and in Wagner - the characters ARE archetypes.
We go to the opera to share our collective dreams and experience the numinous through the fusion of drama and music.
