You Gotta Go There To Come Back

I always find it interesting to compare yesterday and yesterday's yesterday to today. It's crazy how many things change in just 24 hours... and even more so in a couple 100 years. So, apparently, Opera was the place to go back in the day. One stage. No mics. No digitally remastered soundtrack. No hardcore florescent lighting. Just a floor-full of talent and a couple 100 seats full of both the inquiring elite and loud and crazy townspeople. Oh how things have changed. Now-a-days, we dress for winter, slurp down a large coke, inhale a small popcorn, and sit in seat as far away from everyone else in the theater as we can get. We lounge back and tune in for special effects, surround sound acoustics, botoxed actresses, and a movie premise that we saw back 1880 and again in 1998.

I find it mildly entertaining that most of the people who attended Operas were going to be entertained, to keep themselves occupied. Kind of like today. Most of the movies and tv shows today are all about entertaining their target audience. They pump whatever they can into a 2 hour show of lights and colors to tell us what? Nothing. It's to entertain us. To keep us occupied. I must admit that when I go the movies I mostly sit passively and allow each action and word to flow in one ear and out the other. But sometimes, this bothers me. Sometimes I don't want to be fed the same storyline over and over again. I want to watch raw passion and talent. The Opera has that. Props.

Opera's Request for Respect: Granted.