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A week or so ago I went to see an opera in a local bar, Mozart’s ‘The Marriage of Figaro’. It was called operagasmic, since the bar it was in in York is called Orgasmic. It was being produced as a dissertation by one of the students at York, in an attempt to make opera more appealing to a wider audience, and in particular young people. The opera was split into scenes, and each scene was directed by a different person and had different actors and actresses in. The idea was to get as many people involved in the production as possible, as well as getting as many people to go and see it as possible. The whole thing was done in english as well, and in between the scenes there was a compare to explain what was going on and what was happening between the scenes – some scenes were cut to make the production shorter than usual.
I had never really considered going to see an opera before this, and only went along this time to support a friend of mine who had directed two of the scenes. Although I do quite like classical music, opera always seemed a bit expensive or a bit too sort of posh or whatever. Operagasmic changed my mind totally, however. Even though it was a student production, the voices of those in it were incredible, and the whole performance was wonderfully enjoyable, and has made me want to go and see many more performances. With the easter holidays coming up, I hope to go and see a performance and see if I enjoy it as much as I did operagasmic. Again, it’s one of those things in life that you might usually steer clear of, but which is actually really really good.
