By Morgan Roberts
Lately I have been talking about how the opera is all about telling a story.
Well there is one more crucial part of opera… its almost all music. It’s the most recognizable music too. Sometimes when you hear it, you know exactly where it came from and the emotions of the character singing it.
It’s amazing to me how just a simple tune and words can make the audience feel something that they didn’t come in feeling. That’s one of the joys of theater — to make people feel happy, sad, angry, or even upset with one of the characters that they know in their mind isn’t real after the show, but, during the show they get lost in it and begin to think it’s almost real. Or at least that’s what happens to me when I go to see a show.
The music that we do for “Turandot” is a soft melody that I just can’t seem to get out of my head no matter how hard I try! I will find myself singing it around the house without even knowing it.
A lot of people are asking me how I memorize the Italian, but I don’t really have a specific answer, I guess. It’s like asking a baseball player how to hold a bat or a basketball player how to shoot a hoop. You just practice.
Other than practicing the Italian, the notes are very important. If you sing a wrong note, it sticks out like a gray hair. Weird analogy, I know, but do you get the picture?
Everyone has to be right on key to really bring across the full experience of the music. I have finally memorized the words and almost all of the kids are comfortable with the Italian.
Some of you also might be wondering what all “Turandot” is about… well, its basically about a princess whose ancestors have been betrayed by a man and so now she never wants to get married.
So, she comes up with three riddles that a man who wants to marry her has to answer. If the man gets even one of the questions wrong then he is put to death by his head getting chopped off in front of the town.
I don’t want to give too much away but it’s one of the few operas that ends even remotely in a happy ending. A side from the opera tragedies, the environment of rehearsals is an amazing judgment free place where you can always be yourself.
I’m really looking forward to the shows but I am dreading the end of what has been so far an amazing experience.
Make sure to come straight back here next week so I can tell you more on how things are going!
Morgan Roberts is a 13-year-old from Maple Valley preparing to sing in her second Opera with Seattle Opera. She will be writing about her experiences as part of Puccini’s Turandot which will be performed at McCaw Hall this August. She was profiled in the Maple Valley Reporter in fall of 2010 when she was cast in her first professional show, A Christmas Carol at ACT Theater in Seattle. Morgan is a familiar face within Tahoma School District’s musical theater after-school program, performing the roles of Pinocchio, Violet Beauregard and Mary Poppins. She also appeared with the Hi-Liners in Burien as Young Cosette in Les Miserables.
