Opera for Peace Masterclass
OperaCreated to promote cultural understanding across continents, Opera for Peace works to develop the next generation of opera professionals to become ambassadors of important values, acting as a positive influence on society and future generations. During a week in April 2024, Opera for Peace brought together a diverse group of emerging artists from across the globe at the Villa Medici in Rome to learn from each other and from a selection of their artist Ambassadors, some of the greatest artists of today. This film features six singers who followed masterclasses with Opera for Peace Ambassadors and tenors, Lawrence Brownlee and Brian Jagde.
Lawrence Brownlee is a leading figure in opera, both as a tenor on the world’s top stages, and as a voice for activism and diversity in the industry. Captivating audiences and critics around the globe, he has been hailed as “an international star in the bel canto operatic repertory” (New York Times). Heralded internationally as an artist with ‘a remarkable future’ (Opera World), American tenor Brian Jagde has a celebrated career on the world’s leading opera stages. In the 23/24 season Brian returned to Covent Garden and Metropolitan Opera as Don Alvaro in Verdi’s La forza del destino, followed by his house debut in Cavalleria rusticana at Teatro alla Scala.
Available on Friday 28th June 2024 at 1900 CET/ 1800 London / 1300 New York
Which values, and which operas? It is not very difficult to see that the genre is not suited to represent important values, let alone ‘acting as a positive influence on society and future generations’.
Since most plots of operas are tragic, i.e. things don’t end well for the protagonists, generally opera’s ‘social message’ cannot be considered as ‘a positive influence’. Think of the plots of Il coronazione di Poppea and Orfeo, of Cosi fan tutte, Lohengrin, the Ring, Aida, La forza del destino, La Traviata, Otello, Pelléas et Mélisande, Salome and Elektra, etc. and most ‘modern operas’ like Die Soldaten, Wozzeck, Erwartung, Neither, Le Grand Macabre. So this initiative can only draw on a very restricted number of works to instrumentalize them for something that their makers had not in mind.
Say MY NAME
I’ll do the rest
Say MY NAME to me DIRECTLY: and I will PERFORM divinity.
No thumb typing (smartphone) disaster excuses…
just sheer poetical wisdom and philosophical clockwork statistical automated economies of PEACE and love.
.
In case #Slipped_Disc associates don’t know how if _this_ is important.
It is.
#Communism will positively derail and destroy _your every attempt_ [to CAPTURE PEACE and myself_gratefully,] with the most #radical_delusions.
#SlippedDisk is surely aware of this.
It {PEACE} is a guaranteed_impossibility.
So…
Please make appropriate arrangements. So that we can be actual friends in person: that is more than half of the equation
Most staged operas nowadays have notoriety-seeking lashings of sex and violence (even if not in the libretti), so “peace” doesn’t seem all that relevant to the proceedings.