Opera: The Next Objectivist Obsession?

Over the years, the Objectivist community has thrilled to the novels of Hugo and Dostoevsky, the plays of Wilde and Coward, the concerti of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and the paintings of Vermeer and Capuletti. Will the operas of Mozart and Rossini be next?

They will, if John Kerns has anything to say about it.

Kerns will conduct a workshop called "How to Enjoy Opera" at TOC's 2002 summer seminar, to be held at UCLA from June 29 to July 6. This past January, the editor of Navigator interviewed Kerns to learn more about his workshop's goals, contents, and intended audience, as well as the origins of his own enthusiasm for opera.

Kerns: I actually got interested in the arts through accountancy. I am a financial consultant here in San Francisco, and I had a client, the San Francisco Ballet, that was nearly bankrupt. It had a negative net worth of $800,000, which in those days [1974] was a lot of money, and we had aged payables of five years, so if you were foolish enough to be a creditor of ours you could wait five years to get your money. It was a very interesting kind of "survival" business problem to work on. But I also found that these were very nice people, so I thought I ought to see what they were doing on the stage. I then became interested in the company and got to know some of the performers, which is lots of fun, and then became a board member.

Also, I am a trustee of the Opera House restoration committee. As you may remember, about ten years ago we had a bad earthquake in San Francisco, and as a result of that we decided to spend about $100,000,000 to fix up the Opera House. This required closing the Opera House, which nearly killed the ballet and the opera, the two major tenants of the building. But it was a very interesting project involving cooperation between the two organizations. So, again, it was a fascinating type of administrative challenge. The backstage "drama behind the drama" is now a cliché, as it has been the subject of so many plays and movies, but it is very real: arts administration is a fascinating drama.

Navigator: What was your introduction to opera like?

Kerns: I went to a couple of operas as a child, and they didn't make much of an impression on me. But the first one I attended as an adult was Don Giovanni, which is an absolutely wonderful piece. It is an interesting "Objectivist" piece too, because there is a way of producing it that shows the Don is kind of a hero-who had a rather strange pastime, I'll admit-but an Enlightenment hero standing up against the Church and convention. Anyway, I was very taken by it. So I started going to operas, and I have been doing that for twenty years. I have probably seen 150 productions.

Navigator: Why did you call your workshop "How to Enjoy Opera"? What will you be doing in it?

Kerns: I have two goals in teaching this course. First, I want to convey the fact that going to the opera is a lot of fun. You know, opera was originally a very popular pastime, sort of like World Federation Wrestling or football games. You'd go there and vendors would be walking through in the middle of an aria-Get your Pepsi! Of course, if you had a girlfriend, a box at the opera with a convenient ante-room would be an ideal spot for a romantic encounter away from the eyes of your wife. I think today's audiences are too reverential and miss out on the fun. Consequently, opera gets a bad knock because you are supposed to dress up and all that. I want to convey the idea that going to the opera is still a lot of fun if you approach it the right way.

My second goal arises from a conviction I have, based on my own experience and my experiences with people that I take to opera: I want to show that there are a couple of things you can do that will greatly increase your enjoyment of an opera performance. I want to pass along some "how to's" that can really make a difference. For instance, there's a certain amount of homework you should do, so that you know what is going on. But I also have hints about where to sit; what are the best seats in the house; what are the ways, if you don't have a lot of dough, to get cheap opera seats. And I want to convey those tips.

Navigator: Who is the intended audience?

Kerns: The workshop is designed for someone who has never seen an opera or, for that matter, for someone who is affirmatively hostile or dismissive of opera. At the end of the presentation, participants should be in a good position to decide whether they want to give opera a try and will have a pretty good idea of what they will be in for. Naturally, I will be making the pro-opera argument. The workshop will also be designed to provide value to an experienced opera-goer.

Navigator: Will the course discuss the musical genre of opera as well as opera-going?

Kerns: Of course. I will be using lots of samples, lots of video clips, to demonstrate two things at once: Why opera is powerful, why it is fun, why it is so moving, why it is the grandest of all art forms. But, at the same time, I'll be doing a little teaching about the different types of opera, the different national styles, and the different sorts of singing.

I think I will start with a clip from a musical. I want to convey the idea that musical theater is opera. It is a combination of singing and actors presenting a story. We call it a musical and the French call it comic opera. But it is opera. It is a particular kind of opera that opera-types call by its German name, singspiel, in which speech unaccompanied by music (the play's dialogue) is followed by song. A familiar example is Mozart's Magic Flute. The point is: If you like musicals, you like opera.

So I'll be showing that you have a spectrum: ordinary words, as in prose; then poetry, where the sound of the words is also taken into account; then you have music, which is a powerful emotional hook; and then in opera you add everything together, which gives you the words, the sound of the words, and the music. I want to illustrate that progression and argue that words and music together are a more powerful form of communication than words alone.

I will also talk about some of the various ways in which opera handles words and music. For instance, singspiel is speech alone followed by song. Other forms of opera speech become more musical. In operas that contain dry recitative, speech is lightly accompanied by a harpsichord. Maybe a better way to say it is that speech is punctuated by the harpsichord or that flourishes are provided by the harpsichord. In parlante-style operas, the distinction between speech and song is greatly reduced. Orchestral music is heard all the time and integrated into the scene. The result is to impart a deeper emotional effect to the speeches.

Navigator: Is there anything else that you will be explaining about opera?

Kerns: Well, I will go through some major scenes that help answer questions like: What is the typical construction of an opera? How does an overture tell you what is going to happen? But really I want to look at scenes that will show you why an opera performance is so emotionally powerful.

Navigator: It sounds as though I had better attend. I've spent a lot of evenings at the theater and the symphony and the ballet. And of course I've listened to operas on CD. But I've never been to an opera, perhaps because the whole opera-house experience seems so daunting.

Kerns: That is my basic goal: to make it un-daunting. In some ways, admittedly, opera is the least accessible art form. It is not like movies. For example, an opera is often sung in a foreign language. But that is not a barrier if you know how to do your homework. And, yes, opera can be expensive. And, yes, the audience is often formally attired. But I know a guy who goes to every performance of every opera here in San Francisco. Not just every production, but every performance-and he is a bus driver, who shows up in his uniform.

Anyway, once I've shown you how easy it is to go to the opera, I want to show how much fun it is. Obviously, there are lots of crappy operas. But when opera is good, it is the best. It has everything: music, song, dance, drama, brand-name artists, sets, costumes. It really is the most powerful combination of the arts ever devised.

This interview was conducted for Navigator by Roger Donway.