Photo courtesy of BLO.org
You may have reached my site as a result of reading my Twitter-based “Opera and Classical Music” newsletter from paper.li. The truth of the matter is that I am a life-long musician. From the time I was 19 till I was 45, I played music full-time, most of that time spent as a musician in the United States Army.
While I was always a fan of classical music, I really didn’t start appreciating opera until about ten years ago. Even then, it took attending three operas for me to warm up to the genre, and now, I go through warm and cold stages of like and dislike.
I enjoy opera because it is such a grand spectacle. The music is at times noble and intense, at other times majestic and awe-inspiring, but almost always sublime. The sets and costumes add to the glorious tones emanating from the stage, while the big voices and often matching big hair provide a goose-bump generating human experience unequalled throughout the arts.
Opera is not for everyone. For some, it is an acquired taste, something that needs to be nurtured before an individual can fully grasp its meaning. Others have no interest, and disrespect the genre with classless jokes. While opera is by no means mainstream, it can still serve to inspire and stimulate, while at he same time be entertaining and educational.
It’s not over till the fat lady tweets
About a year ago I started following the tweets of my local opera company, Boston Lyric Opera. A few twitter searches later, I had several orchestras, artists, and opera companies in my tweet stream, and took advantage of Twitter’s list functions to separate those updates for closer perusal. I thoroughly enjoy the amounts of free media that opera and classical music companies now release through the Internet. Much of that media is now being shared on Twitter, and the new service from paper.li allows me to aggregate and distribute that media to my own network of friends, family and followers (many of whom are the same opera companies and orchestras that I draw stories from).
Through posting and reposting across several networks, awareness and buzz for opera and classical music is generated, and maybe, just maybe, as the genre begins to revive itself, we won’t have to listen to all those dumb jokes.
By the way, opera and classical isn’t the only music to which I listen. I’m a big fan of smooth jazz, what people often refer to as “Weather Channel” music. Sadly, it too is ridiculed by many in the mainstream. That’s okay by me, though. Since neither of these genres are very popular, I almost never have a problem getting tickets to a concert or performance. Remember that next time you’re standing in line for Bruce Springsteen concert tickets.
