You may think you don’t know opera, but you’ve been listening to it all your life. So says
Scott Williamson, general and artistic director for Opera Roanoke, and an accomplished
tenor with an impressive résumé both here and abroad. In fact, it is a pet peeve of
Williamson’s that people today often think opera lovers are elitist.
“If you’ve watched Looney Tunes, you’ve listened to opera,”Williamson says, and perhaps
went home humming it. He demonstrated by singing a couple of bars by Wagner (with
substituted lyrics), “I’m gonna get dat wascally wabbit” from an Elmer Fudd cartoon.
He goes on to rattle off several Hollywood films that featured classic arias. Witches of
Eastwick came to mind.
“The three witches (Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon) were flying around to
Pavarotti singing Puccini. And, the sound track of the award winning film of Tom Hanks
and Denzel Washington in Philadelphia features an aria sung by Maria Callas.”
In fact, in by gone years opera was the people’s music, Williamson says. During the 17th,
18th and 19th centuries people of all classes went to the opera. The “cheap seats” were
filled as quickly as the box seats or orchestra section.
“Intellectuals sat next to soldiers and laborers and discussed the performance.”
The first operas were performed in the early 1600s in Italy. They included acting,
scenery, costumes, and sometimes dance. Opera is usually performed in an opera house
to the accompaniment of an orchestra or musical ensemble. In those earliest operas,
comedy was blended with tragedy. The popularity of this art form soon spread across
Europe. However, sensibilities were jarred by some of those comedic works, which led to
many reforms over the pursuing years.
Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. It is an art form in which singers
and musicians perform a dramatic work, combining text and musical score. The word
“opera” means “work” in Latin. Libretto, which is the text of an opera, means “little
book”. Arias are the songs in which performers can express themselves in a more
structured style and exhibit the full quality of their voices. Arias are the operatic music
familiar to most of us. Duets, trios and other ensembles often occur in operas, and
choruses are used to comment on the action. In some forms of opera, the dialogue is
replaced by spoken words.
The mid to late 19th century is considered the “golden age” of opera, and was dominated
by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy, with Giacomo Puccini and
Richard Strauss dominating in the early 20th Century. There were many experiments in
the 20th century with modern styles such as atonality and serialism (Arnold Schoenberg
and Alban Berg), Neoclassicism (Igor Stravinsky) and Minimalism (Philip Glass and
John Adams). But you don’t need to know these terms or the names of composers
to enjoy opera. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso
became widely popular and beloved by large audiences beyond the circle of opera fans.
Operas have also been performed on and written for radio and television.
Williamson is a high energy guy, with dreams of raising awareness in the Roanoke Valley
area to how much opera has to offer, not just for a few intellectuals or the wealthy but
everyone. And, if folks won’t go to the opera, he’ll bring the opera to them.
In October, Williamson and his wife, Amy Cofield Williamson, a renowned soprano with
a long list of performances at home and abroad, along with a quartet of young singers
from Opera Roanoke, performed at Trinity Ecumenical Church before an audience of
about 200. It was called Opera 101. Besides the live performances of arias and duets,
film clips from famous cartoons and trailers of popular films featuring operatic themes
were viewed.
Opera 101 was Opera Roanoke’s first public performance of notable size here at the
lake, but Williamson says they are hoping in the future to return two or three times
a year: during the Fall, Spring, and Summer months. They did put in a visit in recent
years to the SML Newcomers Club and Waterfront Women’s group, and Opera Roanoke
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