About the Festival
Opera, considered by many to be the most complex form of the performing arts, combines singing, orchestral music, acting, scenery, costumes and occasionally dance with drama or comedy - sometimes both. It expresses the whole range of human emotions - love, hate, pride, fear among others - and rewards the audience with an experience which lasts long after the final curtain comes down.
And yet many people have never experienced the joys of an opera performance. They are kept away by a myriad of fears: the performance being sung in a language other than their own, the music being of an unknown type, the action of the opera being foreign to them, the audience surrounding them being a bunch of elitists, the need to comply with a dress code or the cost of a ticket being unaffordable.
In reality, all these fears are unfounded.
The opera might be sung in Italian, German or French, but for the past 20 years or so, the text of what is being sung is projected in English above the stage in what is called Super-titles. This works like closed-captioning on TV, allowing the audience to follow along the action and is used even if the opera is sung in English, so one doesn't miss a word.
The music of operas is not of an unknown type. Anyone who was exposed to radio, movies, cartoons or TV commercials will recognize many operatic melodies. The melodies in La Boheme have been used in so many parts of our culture that you will find them familiar right away.
As for the action of an opera it may be set in historic times or much closer to the present but it is usually not different from the story of movies, television shows or novels, dealing with war and peace, family dramas, love, sex, betrayal, life and death. But there is a difference: while at the movies the music generally stays in the background and only accompanies the action, the glorious sound of opera embalms the action, becomes an integral part of it and provides the audience with an unforgettable aural, visual and emotional experience.
The audience surrounding the newcomer is made up of people who caught the opera bug last month, last year and of course quite possibly many years earlier, but otherwise they will not be in any way different from him or her. As for dress code, there is none to comply with. You will find people dressed from Sunday best to business casual to shirt and jeans.
Tickets to opera performances of Princeton Festival start at $25 so they are definitely affordable.
So, what are you waiting for? Come to see La Boheme, but be forewarned: opera is addictive!