[image above: from Minerva Britanna, or A Garden of Heroical Devices, by Henry Peacham, 1612]

The concept of an “opera guide” is not new — in fact someday I might enjoy researching the history of the idea. Certainly in the days before subtitling, audiences were not expected to understand every word being sung in a foreign language, but rather to start the show with some basic understanding of what to expect from the characters, setting, and plot. Affordable pamphlets would allow fans to prep for a new show or to relive their favorites, sometimes with sheet music for beloved fragments printed alongside the libretto. When audio recordings became widespread, LP box sets would often be packaged with deluxe booklets, containing not only the complete libretto in multiple languages but also essays, commentary, historical and contemporary images, etc. (These continued into the CD and streaming eras, but usually with a huge decline in readability, elegance, and quality). To this day, live performances are usually accompanied by “program notes” shedding additional light on the work being performed.

So what exactly am I doing here, and where do my ideas come from?

The inspiration

The informal opera guides that I started creating for friends in 2021 were most directly inspired by Fred Plotkin and his terrific book Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera, originally published in 1994 and released as an audiobook in 2004. After a set of preliminary chapters, Plotkin spends much of the book in a series of guided walkthroughs through eleven specific operas (Rigoletto, Tosca, Lucia di Lammermoor, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Don Giovanni, Les contes d’Hoffmann, Eugene Onegin, Don Carlo, Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, and Elektra). Writing in the middle of the CD era, he wrote candidly about the hands-on process of taking home a specific CD box set, examining the enclosed booklet (with specific page numbers), sitting comfortably at home, reading along with the text while each disc plays, flipping back and forth with Fred’s color commentary, and letting the scenes play out in your imagination. This was described so persuasively by Fred — and was so enjoyable when I tried it myself — that I quickly internalized it as the ideal way to learn an opera. I found that when I took the time to really “pregame” before a performance by spending a couple weeks digesting the show, I was able to show up on “game day” with a template in my head for what I was excited to look and listen for, allowing for both positive and negative surprises and an overall richer, more memorable experience. In contrast, when I would “go in cold” I’d find the performance less engaging, more likely to go in one ear and out the other.

The new approach

But we’re not in the ’90s anymore (which is no attack on Fred, who continues to give very engaging talks at the Brooklyn Academy of Music before many Met Opera Live in HD screenings!), and new approaches are possible. After spending decades immersed in various digital archives and media formats (academically, personally, and professionally), I realized I might actually be in a position to contribute something meaningful here.

I start with the fundamentals of who/what/when/where, then find a digital edition of the libretto that’s readily available — most often from the good folks at Decca Classics, but from other sources as well — and select one or more audio recordings that will fit conveniently with the text we’re working from. I don’t claim (as many critics and fans do) to recommend the best recordings, only those that are most suitable for my purposes as a guide. If you become introduced to an opera through my web site, fall in love with it, and then go on to discover a different recording that you like even better, then congratulations — that sounds like a pretty great time! (I do, of course, try to consult the consensus opinion about which recordings are great. The first stop is always Ralph Moore at Music Web International, along with the irascible Dave Hurwitz at Classics Today and some others). Also, I seek out one-disc “Highlights” compilations as a supplemental resource for two reasons: 1) to give you a less time-consuming option for sampling the show, and 2) to help me direct my attention and my commentary on the crucial scenes.

But the biggest game-changer of what I do is quite simply music streaming! The vast majority of the great commercial recordings by major labels, and even many indies, is now available for instant, fully authorized, track-by-track access through all of the same services you use for pop music (Amazon, Apple, Spotify, Tidal, YouTube, etc) in addition to specialist services dedicated to classical music (such as Idagio, Presto, and the Naxos Music Library). If I want to talk about a particular moment of a particular recording of a particular opera (say, Leonie Rysanek’s famous scream when Siegmund pulls the sword from her tree, or the clumsy tape edit of a Plácido Domingo high note), I can send you to that exact moment with a single click of a YouTube link. More importantly, if you want to skim through my plot synopsis of a 4-hour opera and then pause when you reach a scene that sounds particularly interesting, you can click any track title in my document and go listen to the scene for yourself, already prepared with the basic story context for what you’re hearing.

Thanks partially to my father’s dedication to Shakespeare in performance, I am also fascinated by the infinite ways that these old shows have been performed and interpreted, over the centuries and around the world. The stagecraft and imagery of opera has been undervalued by academic and hobbyist discourse for a long time. There are some practical reasons for that! But we’re not in the dial-up Internet anymore. Alongside the music-streaming revolution has come a revolution in high-res visual imagery as well, both in digital archiving of the past and in photography of the present. With those powers combined, we can look at details from an Isolde costume from 1907 right next to one from 2023, allowing the visual history of a show to be in conversation with itself.

Other writing influences:

• Denis Forman‘s 1994 book A Night at the Opera (The Good Opera Guide in the UK), which enjoys its casual, jokey tone and isn’t shy about being opinionated.
• William Berger‘s books Wagner Without Fear (1998), Verdi with a Vengeance (2000), and Puccini Without Excuses (2005).
• The Calder series of opera guides (1980-1994) edited by Nicholas John and published in association with English National Opera, recently resurrected as the Overture series at Alma Books.
• For Wagner specifically, I salute Kate Wagner (no relation) of Wehwalt.net for their relentlessly insightful, personal, rigorous, and iterative essays on the Ring cycle.
• Additional shoutout to Chris O’Leary, whose blog Bowiesongs/Pushing Ahead of the Dame (2009-2017?) offered commentary on each song David Bowie ever recorded. His use of unexpected, seemingly unrelated photos was initially baffling to me, but over time I came to see it as a way to explore the cultural contexts that shaped the music and a reflection of Bowie’s referential “hypertext” mind. I now see how deeply this influenced my approach to examining these operas in cultural contexts and with kaleidoscopic visuals. Chris has adapted the blog into two great books, by the way.

Regular readers will also notice other recurring features: I love the combination of music and commentary that opera podcasts can provide, and particularly admire the multidisciplinary approach of the late great Aria Code podcast (hosted by Rhiannon Giddens), and the charming co-host rapport and commitment to accessibility of Opera for Everyone (co-hosted by Pat Wright). And I find it profoundly useful to try to list the themes of a show right at the beginning of each guide, although it usually ends up being the last thing I write — a nice capstone.

And of course an occasional sprinkling of tweets, memes, and other online pearls of wisdom: “pieces of flair,” if you will.

One last unexpected benefit has been a selfish one: writing these guides provides me with a sort of alchemy, transforming a one-day opera ticket into a long stretch of time filled with anticipation and immersion in another world. Even if the performance ends up as a disappointment, I never regret the time that I spend preparing for it, exploring connections, traveling across time and space, marinating myself in the five-dimensional meanings and contexts nested within any given show. If my work here gives you even a fraction of that experience, then I’m a happy opera guide.