I’m awful at blogging regularly. My apologies.
On Monday we went to the opera, which was a lot of fun. We saw Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Now, this opera, has the peculiar feature that most of the action in it occurs offstage. So we’re told about everything that has happened, from a duel, to a battle in which one character is left for dead, to a gypsy woman being burned to death and setting a revenge plot in motion.
“Hannah,” you’re saying, “this violates every rule of storytelling I’ve ever heard.” Well, yes. And also no. While Il Trovatore isn’t one of my favorite operas, it got me thinking about the conventions of operatic storytelling, which are very different from the conventions of novels.
Novels are about showing what happens. In some ways, they’re the best possible format for that: even movies, while they can show you what people do, can’t describe how they feel about it. Novels let you portray the particular experiences of your characters in excruciating detail.
Operas are about telling — singing, in fact. The entire style is built around people telling you what’s going on. Action isn’t particularly important in operas, because it’s hard to sing in the midst of an action scene! There isn’t really dialogue — mostly arias, which are essentially soliloquies, in which the characters talk about themselves.
This is interesting. It means that all operas are essentially about storytelling. (The program notes for Il Trovatore noted this, and that the first act of the opera is taken up entirely with characters telling each other stories.) The story isn’t just what the actors do and what happens to them: it’s how they tell it (sing it). The libretto provides one expression of what the character is doing/has done/will do. The music adds another layer. You don’t go see an opera to find out if the soprano will kill herself at the end (she will). You go to see what she has to say about killing herself, and how she says/sings it. The way they tell the story is as much a part of the story itself as the actual events are.
Opera has from its beginning been very heavily influenced by Greek tragedy, which is extremely reluctant to have deaths on-stage (in fact I can’t think of any acts of violence that actually happen on-stage in tragedy).
The interesting thing is that in opera, lots of deaths do happen onstage: just not always the interesting/active ones. Plenty of sopranos die from consumption or poison (or being buried alive), so they can sing right up to their death.
I find the deaths with a little bit of suspense more moving: like when Cio-Cio-San stabs herself, at the very, very end of the opera, and up to the last moment you keep hoping she’ll avoid it. I imagine the end of Tosca is similar, although I haven’t seen it.
I don’t agree with the statement “even movies, while they can show you what people do, can’t describe how they feel about it.” There are a lot of ways to describe this in film, among them, an actor’s expression or body language, the choice of shot, and the use of sound. Actually, I find the sound design in films to be particularly interesting. You can tap into a more primitive emotive state without words. (See, for example, the use of sound in Hitchcock movies to add to the suspense.)
You’re right, and the point about sound is a really good one. I just meant that movies are a little more external, in general, than novels. But sound is huge.
I wish novels could have soundtracks, actually. I’m a sucker for movie music.