But even those are characterized by the florid expressions and emotionality that startle us so when we first come across opera. There are comic operas that explore those other powerful human experiences: absurdity and laughter. Perhaps no art form elaborates upon the depths of that suffering as does opera. That does not mean we suffer any the less, nor that we have the final word on tragedy or the last laugh on oppressors who visit terrors upon us.īut it does mean that within our travails, whether in love or war or both, we come to a deeper sense of all that is life, all that is death, the whole riddle wrapped in the enigma and rolled into the package that presents itself to us upon birth and proclaims, “Here, make something of this, if you will, if you can, though suffer you must…” But as we have seen countless times before, there can be great nobility in that suffering. No, the world will not be saved from its suffering, no matter the tireless efforts of peacemakers and people of goodwill to bring about, finally, the kind of heaven, or at least a sense of repose, to the earth that its human inhabitants have always dreamed and written and sung and painted about.
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