Sense and sensuality

Summary

More than any other art form, opera addresses our senses. This is both its strength and its weakness.

Ihr wisst, auf unsern deutschen Bühnen

Probiert ein jeder, was er mag;

Drum schonet mir an diesem Tag

Prospekte nicht und nicht Maschinen.

Gebraucht das gross, und kleine Himmelslicht,

Die Sterne dürfet ihr verschwenden;

An Wasser, Feuer, Felsenwänden,

An Tier und Vögeln fehlt es nicht.

So schreitet in dem engen Bretterhaus

Den ganzen Kreis der Schöpfung aus.

As you know, on our German stages

Everyone tries out what suits him.

So don't hold back today

With backdrops or machines.

Use the heaven's greater and lesser lights,

And let's have plenty of stars,

Water, fire and rocky crags,

Animals and birds.

Let the whole round of Creation

Tread out these narrow boards.

(Goethe, Faust I, Prologue on the stage)

Opera doesn't need to be told this. It addresses our emotions and our intellect, along with all our senses. Its rhythms possess our physical body, our pulse races, our nerves tingle, our blood pressure rises, pain disappears, and all while our eyes and ears revel in beautiful images and sweet music.

In the heyday of opera, when the upper classes kept their own boxes at the opera house, culinary and erotic delights were also the order of the day. For example, there was the ‘aria di sorbetto’ – an aria sung by a less important character that didn't demand the listener's full attention, leaving him free to focus on supping his champagne and slurping his lemon sorbet. And once his thirst was quenched, he could close the curtains of his box in order to satisfy further appetites – opera no doubt played its part in keeping the birth rate healthy. The vestiges of that era could still be seen in the old Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona before it burnt down in 1994. The ‘chambres-séparées’ behind the boxes were all still there, with their dining tables and their curtains to provide the necessary privacy to the upper crust. Opera, as the Babylon the Great among the arts, always had a strong penchant for dissolute delights. The danger in all this is that opera's multifarious appeals to the senses means the sense of the whole undertaking gets lost. There is nothing better suited to lulling us into gentle slumber through sensual indulgence than the art of opera.