A Fan’s Perspective: Writer Joseph Tirella’s Unique Path to Discovering Opera
The road that leads to the encounter with opera is totally distinctive for each one of us. My friend, writer Joseph Tirella, shared his journey through music with me: from rock and jazz and experiencing the raw passion of an opera night in Sicily to contemporary operas, and at last, to exploring the grand operas of the 19th century. Joseph is the author of The New York Times Best Seller, Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America (Lyon’s Press; 2014). A graduate of CCNY’s MFA program, his nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, Slate, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Vibe, among other places. His poetry and fiction have been published in Barzakh, Yes Poetry, Newtown Literary and Promethean.
You are a jazz connoisseur who has knowledge of some contemporary operas. During this time of isolation you are beginning to discover several iconic 19th century operatic works through radio broadcasts and the abundance of streaming. How do you find this experience of finally getting to know grand opera?
I think, more than anything, opera is a welcome and much-needed distraction at this particularly challenging time. I’ve been working from home like many people and listening to WQXR, the great NYC classical music station. WQXR has been broadcasting operas live from the Met for years, and listening to opera on the radio just seems right at the moment. Plus now, so many great operas are being streamed, it’s a great opportunity. We can’t get to the opera house these days but we can listen to it nonetheless.
I’ve always been drawn to more contemporary operas because, given my taste in music, those operas seem, ironically, more accessible to me. I’m more familiar with music from the 20th century like that of Stravinsky and Schoenberg, or contemporary composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich, so listening to Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle”—one of the first operas that I really got to know—just seemed a natural progression. It felt more like home to me since I was already familiar with Coltrane’s later work, which is very experimental, or Ornette Coleman’s free jazz or Miles Davis’s electric period. Whereas to me, Puccini or Verdi sounded like set pieces from another time, like they were cast in amber. The dissonance and near atonality of Bartok’s opera and the stark stage setting when I saw it at the Met a few years back, was very modern, even postmodern. Same with Berg’s “Lulu,” a very challenging piece that put me on steadier ground musically.
What did you feel and think when you saw an opera for the first time? (Mascagni’s “Cavalleria rusticana” in Sicily, right?)
Yes, that was truly unique. I saw “Cavalleria Rusticana” in Taormina at the magnificent Teatro Antico. It was the summer of 2002 and it was a perfect night, right on the Mediterranean Sea with the stars out and the lights of the Sicilian coast visible behind the stage. We were there on vacation and we sat on the ancient flattened stones—they gave us foam pads to sit on. That was the first opera I ever bought on CD after I discovered its famous transcendent Intermezzo from the opening sequence of Scorsese’s “Raging Bull.” Aside from being one of the most moving pieces of music that I ever heard, and once I learned that the opera was based on a story by the great Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga and set in Sicily, I knew it was destiny. The music, the story, the opera, it’s all part of my cultural ancestry as my grandparents came from Sicily.
But the opera itself was unforgettable. The lead tenor, right in the middle of the opera, sat down and stopped singing. He was so pissed off that he started shouting at the conductor! The whole thing came to a crashing halt! Then he insulted the audience saying that we were too stupid to hear all the mistakes the conductor and the musicians were making. It was chaos and the Sicilian crowd went nuts! (laughs). They were standing up and shouting and cursing at him! I was amazed. I went to see an opera about Sicilians in Sicily and it was like being in the back row of Shea Stadium with an army of rowdy Mets fans! I thought they were going to rush the stage and kill him. Eventually, the opera continued but when his character runs offstage and is killed, the audience started applauding and shouted “Kill him for real!” “Die, bastardo!” “Buffone!” I couldn’t believe it was happening. I later heard from a Sicilian friend that many opera singers don’t like to perform in Sicily because the crowds are too tough. Ha, I’d say so!
What does opera do to your senses that is different from jazz? How about similar to it, if at all?
Well, one thing they have in common are the show-stopping soloists. Jazz, like opera or any serious music, requires dedication and training. I grew up with rock music. I started playing guitar at 14 and played in a band in college. Music has been a constant companion to me throughout my life. I bought my first jazz records at 16. In a few years times, I was dipping a toe into classical music and I studied music theory in high school. So for me it’s been a slow and steady progression from one genre of music to another.
Jazz is very much about the feel—like Duke Ellington said, “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”—but you need real music training, just like opera. So there is a dedication and a seriousness to the musicians who play jazz or devote themselves to opera that does not exist in pop music. And that comes across in the music. Like jazz, opera, for me, is all about the music, which overwhelms you—in a good way. Jazz is about improvisation; you know the chords and the melody of the song, and the rest is up to you as a musician. It’s not about reciting music. You’re creating it on the spot. Opera, like classical music, is about realizing the composer’s vision. Of course, great singers and soloists bring their vision to it too. Both jazz and opera, like all symphonic music, are a much purer form of art and it shows—if you listen—in the musician’s performance.
Some operas have been criticized for weak story lines and “scripts” (libretti). As a writer, how do you see the marriage of words and music in opera? How much do the words being sung matter to you?
I don’t worry about the lyrics at all. I just like to have a sense of the general narrative arc. I like to know what the story is about. I don’t need to know what every word means. Like with “Bluebeard,” I read Angela Carter’s retelling of the old folk tale so I had a general sense of the story. But I am more than willing to just go with the flow and get lost in the music. With the few operas I have listened to in English—such as Gershwin’s “Porgy & Bess”—I found it disconcerting to understand what they are saying! I get lost in the feel and the emotions which transcend language to me. Maybe it’s from growing up in a family that included many older immigrants who only spoke Italian or Sicilian. But I never had a problem understanding how passionate or angry they felt, even if I didn’t understand the words they were saying.
Among the operas you have seen and listened to so far, which one is your favorite, and why?
I have a special place in my heart for Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana,” as I think the Intermezzo just sublime; it’s on par for me with “Ave Maria” or Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”—it moves you in a way that makes you glad to be alive. I can listen to Pavarotti sing “Nessun Dorma” every day. But for a number of reasons I would probably pick Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle.” I think it’s because it was the moment when I realized that opera spoke to me as an art form; that a composer could take a story—in this case a folk tale—and work with a librettist and adapt it—be it a folk tale like “Bluebeard” or Shakespeare—and make it new. Then the musicians bring it to life with a director, whose vision of the drama, the staging and the performance makes it come alive. And, like any durable art form, it can be reimagined and reconceptualized. I’m not a purist at all. Take Shakespeare and set it in the future for all I care. Just make it good. So when I realized that opera was an art form that could do that—that it was flexible—I was sold. It wasn’t just a particular style of music or design or staging. From there, I started with 20th century opera and backtracked to grand opera. So I would very much like to go see some Puccini or Verdi and I will! But for now, I’m content to listen to it on the radio or watch it on TV.
What would you say to people who have no knowledge of opera to convince them to experience an operatic performance?
Well, I go back to my experience of seeing “Cavalleria Rusticana” in Taormina. That experience really drove home the point to me that opera is the music of the people. It might be considered an art form only for the rich or the elite in America for whatever reason, but opera is beloved by ordinary people in Europe, especially in Italy, where it was born. And they are attached to it in the same visceral and emotional way that people are connected to their favorite baseball or football team. What I saw in Taormina that night were hundreds of Italians who felt that the singer was insulting both them and a beloved opera that was very personal to them. And they acted like soccer hooligans when he let them down and cursed them out—he flipped the audience the horns when they booed him!
In America we don’t think that art, especially one as refined as opera, inspires such violent emotions in fans as a sports team does. But it does! It’s an art form for the people. And it’s very personal. My Sicilian-born grandfather didn’t have much formal education but he loved to listen to opera on the radio. For me, opera is personal because it’s part of my cultural heritage, so why shouldn’t I want to know it? Of course, I started with the most difficult operas—by Bartok and Berg, and post-modern ones like Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten” and “Einstein on the Beach”—but I’ve come around, thankfully, to Puccini and Verdi. Strange, but true!
Photos courtesy of Joseph Tirella
