Librettist, researcher and former opera singer Caitlin Vincent uses her insider knowledge to show the tumultuous but fascinating world of an ancient but thriving art in “Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future.” We spoke with Vincent ahead of her Jan. 6 reading at the Harvard Book Store, where she will be joined in conversation with Nina Yoshida Nelsen, artistic director of the Boston Lyric Opera. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why write about opera?
For most of my life I have been backstage or in rehearsal rooms or in practice rooms. Opera has been a really important part of my life. But like any insider, when you are up close and personal with an industry you see the cracks, you see the snake pits, the controversies, the things you wish could be different. A lot of this book is really grappling with my own understanding of the battlegrounds that face the modern-day industry, from financial pressures to exploitative working conditions to outdated staging traditions, and just trying to lay it all out there and say, “How can we move forward? What should opera actually look like? Can’t we all just get along?” No, we can’t. Everyone has very different opinions. I wanted to approach opera like an industry, like an ecosystem, and not just as an art form, which is often how it’s perceived or framed. It is a business model, an unsuccessful business model but a business model nonetheless, and comes with 400 years of baggage. It’s a complex and fascinating industry.
What’s the most common misconception about opera?
The biggest and the one that threatens the industry the most is this idea that opera is not for me, it’s the purview of rich old people, it’s elitist, that I’m not gonna connect to it. That it’s hard work, that I need to have a master’s degree to understand it or to go. There are a lot of barriers around opera that are artificial, or presumed. A lot of that just comes from fear and a lack of familiarity. Opera is old, yes, but not all the works being performed on stage are old. There’s an entire repertoire of new works being produced every day. Yes, it can be expensive, but no more expensive than going to see Taylor Swift for $800, and a lot of companies have ticket sales specifically for younger generations: pay what you will, that sort of thing. Also, it doesn’t have to be hard work. If you want to read a synopsis ahead of time, if you want to know what the opera’s about, sure, you’re going to go in and maybe have a little bit of extra context. But you don’t need to be fluent in Italian. There are supertitles. They’re going to project them for you. And you don’t need to have listened to the entire opera three times and taken a test to memorize the music. It’s like any other art form. You can just go and experience it.
Are there relevancies you think people don’t know about?
Opera is all about the human voice. It is the last AI-free zone. There are not going to be any instances of too many fingers on stage. And in most cases, there aren’t going to be microphones. It is just people using the spaces in their cranial cavities to sing. It’s a really astounding historical thing in that way. And the stories are about human emotion. So, yes, some of these operas are from 200 years ago, but they’re about relationships, they’re about people, they’re about something tragic or funny happening to someone and how they respond. So in that way, opera is universal. It just depends on which opera you’re seeing. It’s often perceived as being like a museum piece, but it has continued to develop and evolve alongside us. And it really has pervaded our society in a way that we often don’t realize. It’s in pasta sauce commercials and car commercials. It’s in Bond movies. Some people might think they’ve never seen an opera, never heard an opera, but they’re still going to know some opera.
What is the importance in today’s political climate?
Art has always been political. It is created by artists who have something to say, who are commenting on some aspect of society. A challenge and a misconception with opera is that it’s beautiful but something that’s on a pedestal. A work that was written 300 years ago seems very removed from our time, but those operas were often very controversial at their time. They were political, they were making statements. A lot of times, they were censored by governments because they were so political. Looking at that allows us to think about what’s happening now, especially in the way some of those historical works are being staged, costumed and interpreted by directors and designers. When we’re talking about works being written by composers and librettists right now, those are shaped by experiences we’re all having and commenting on them. Sometimes in a subtle way, sometimes in a not so subtle way. There is a reason that art and artists are among the first to be silenced in certain kinds of political situations.
Caitlin Vincent reads from “Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future” at 7 p.m. Jan. 6 at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Harvard Square, Cambridge. Free.
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