Opera and Language

I haven't had a chance to go to the opera for a long time.
In the past, I used to go and watch rehearsals at the Paris Opéra, and was fascinated by "Wozzeck" at La Monnaie. I also saw Pavarotti's "Don Carlos" at La Scala. When I was at Toho, I played second violin in the orchestra　for "Cosi fan tutte" and "The marriage of Figaro". I thought these were very difficult.

In more recent years, I couldn't go to the opera because I was busy taking care of children and other daily concerns. It was unavoidable. Instead, I set myself the task of playing almost all of Mozart's violin sonatas over a period of four years. The program came to an end in the "Mozart Year" of 2006. But even now, in the springtime when a haze appears and I feel energy tingling through my body, I get the urge to play Mozart.
Perhaps the capricious changes in his music between laughter and seriousness, like the change from sunshine to a spring hail storm, fit the season.

Lalo, Shostakovich and Schubert are all superb, but when I enter my husband's study after I finish practicing, I hear Mozart's "The Magic Flute". My husband is going to be engaged in an opera project for the month of July in Brugge, an old city in Belgium, and the program is "The Magic Flute".
There was a time when I listened to this opera, just to see what it was like. I've also played some of the arias in concerts for four violins. But now, as I listen to the aria of the three queens, funny Papageno, and the aria of Tamino, I am struck by their unbelievable beauty.

It may sound strange, but I think it's good that I didn't know this opera very well, because now it's as if I'm encountering it for the first time.

And I've made another nice discoveryﾉI used to listen to this opera using a libretto containing both German and English, but it took too long to follow both languages, the German that I was listening to and the English that I was reading. So I decided to put the libretto away and just listen to the opera in German and voila! I understood it! And the music - I previously had no idea how perfectly the rhythm was matched to the lyrics.

Usually, music is played without lyrics. Sometimes I think of some words to go with the piece I'm playing, and this makes the music much more persuasive.
However, with opera, the language exists first, and then the music is attached to it. Add to this the stage, the performers and the dramatization, and it's like a drug. You're hooked.

Since I never paidmuch attention to my husband's music or concerts, the discovery this time is so beautiful, and I feel I have found something very nice.
Recently I have lost interest in Dutch, because my teacher had left Berlitz and I have been involved in administrative work at the conservatoire. But since Dutch is much closer to German than to English, I find that I'm now capable of understanding the lyrics of "The Magic Flute" fairly well, and for this reason alone, I feel like my studies of Dutch were worth the trouble.

I am not trying to argue whether an opera should be performed in its original language or not. Your enjoyment of an opera might be considerably diminished if you didn't understand the story or the situation.
However, I thought once again today how the musical value of an opera would be halved if it were not performed in its original language, considering how closely the rhythm, songs and music are intertwined with the intonation of the language.

I was born in Japan and I write, read and think in Japanese. However, I prefer to listen to Mozart's operas in the original language. Studying a language is an interesting way of learning to appreciate the original version of an opera. It expands your ideas, and it frees your mind.

I am glad that I have encountered a subject that I can enjoy for a sufficient while.