I was napping earlier this evening when I was woken up by high-pitched strains of Puccini's Madame Butterfly playing on channel 13. I don't know much (i.e. almost anything, except for when my parents took me to see Carmen with them when I was six and I threw a temper tantrum because I was so bored) about opera but watching it in my extremely fuzzy state, I just thought woah the movie version of this with Jeremy Irons is wayyyy better. I'm a phillistine.
It got me to thinking about how ghettoized the different art forms are and how some arts are just irrelevant to most people except their practitioners. Sure poetry seems like the most important thing in the world to me, but that's only because I'm a poet. Then I scoffed and thought yeah, but nothing beats the arch silliness of modern dance but then I thought you're just as likely to meet someone who calls themselves a postmodern poet with a straight face as you are to meet a dancer who calls themselves a postmodern dancer. So maybe it's a toss up between modern dance and modern poetry.
But then, there's opera: opera is an art form that's so colossally expensive to stage that it's existence is bound to the conservative tastes and money of its patrons, so it hasn't really progressed since the 19th century. What's worse? The delusional, solopsistic, self-importance of postmodern art forms or the bourgeoise relic that is opera.
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You know, I'll just say it: I kind of love opera. I do! It's like a ruin that sings and wears make-up.
And you are clearly responding here not just to your alienation from Puccini, but to the supreme awesomeness that is M. Butterfly, the movie.
I think that with all these things, as with many other much-despised media, I have to just remind myself of the essential question; the medium per se. Is there anything off-putting or weird about people singing an entire play? Not really. But opera is SO expensive to stage and to see, and our understanding of what makes good music has changed so much in the past 100 (or even 10) years that yes, it is totally alienating.
It makes me think, suddenly: Is there something about music specifically that makes music from 200 years ago seem so much farther away from us than, say, the novels of 200 years ago? Is music in some ways more elastic, does it allow for greater change over time?
In any case, opera can't be totally obsolete-- see: Carmen: A Hip Hopera. Your parents should have just waited for that.
Define relevance, I guess.
If you mean in terms of more concrete things like money and audience, opera and postmodern dance beat poetry (postmodern or otherwise) hands down. If you mean it in other ways, like the ever-so-vague "cultural impact," they probably win, too, but I think the interesting parts of an answer to that question would come out of a real, solid sociology of each one of those art forms.
I have to wonder, by the same token as you saying that as a poet poetry is the most important thing in the world to you, whether as a poet I'm more inclined to downplay (or have no real perspective on) poetry's relevance, in whatever ways one could define that term.
Also, no matter what you say, I know you really think dance is the most irrelevant.
alex, you're right. i do kind of think dance is most irrelevant, with the caveat that L/A/N/G/U/A/G/E poetry is equally as irrelevant as modern dance. but i guess the kind of modern dance i'm talking about is basically the equivalent langpo.
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