In Opera as Opera, I name experiences of opera on recordings or videos “demi-encounters.” In Orality and Literacy, Walter J. Ong calls the electronic media “secondary oralities,” a term that accurately defines their source-to-receptor relationship, and the radical change in presence they entail. And we are getting slippery with language if we term these opera derivatives “opera.” They are selected parts of opera (selected, that is, through limitation, subtraction) that have been preserved in document form. Like live performance and unlike written documents or fine-arts objects, they beam energy at us. But the energy isn’t human; it’s electronic. It only transmits a remembrance of the human energies that were expended at the real event. This remembrance will remain unchanged forever, duplicating itself whenever summoned. We should further distinguish between the purely ear-oriented documentation of recordings and the eye-ear (but eye-dominant) documentation of video—something like “audop docs” and “vidop docs” should serve. “Opera,” I think, should be reserved for opera in whole, in its natural state. If these other terms not only clarify what we’re talking about in relation to that, but seem to imply a diminishment, that’s because they diminish. A part isn’t a whole, and to declare a part a new kind of whole in itself is to claim the status of an artform for what is only a transmission device.

What are the characteristics of opera in its natural state?^(I) In my last post, discussing the not-of-this-world aspects of Sony’s Otello, I wrote: “I hope we can all agree that an opera should take place in a shared space, in which all its elements are heard and seen in constant relation to one another . . .” So there’s one thing. All the participants, along with the audience, are together in a dedicated place. The place might be out of doors—the Boboli Gardens, an amphitheatre or stadium or park—but it’s more commonly and more favorably in a room, a special place that embraces the performers and all the sights and sounds and other emanations of their labors, and (as importantly) closes out all others. Again most commonly and most favorably, the room is a theatre of a particular sort, designed and equipped to display to best effect the aforementioned sights, sounds, and emanations.

To experience opera in its natural state, we have to go to the dedicated place, at an appointed time. It does not come to us, nor does it cater to our conveniences of schedule or whims of mood. We share the theatre with all the participants and, close-up, with our fellow audience members. Since all this is purely voluntary and we are presumably predisposed to liking what we are willingly committing our time and attention to, there is something—now more, now less—of the gala spirit, of a sociability of common purpose, to the occasion. We give ourselves over to it, engaging with it on its terms, and observe a kind of common-consent decorum for its duration. If we don’t like what we’re seeing and hearing, escape is often awkward, and leaves us with a sense of having been cheated. The dominant energy of the event comes from the performers, but there is energy from our side, too, in our reception and response, and simply in the vibrant reality of our presence.