When I was skyping my mom and dad, I asked them what they both thought about opera and they had vastly different responses. My mom, who is intrigued by foreign cultures and history, said that she finds operas beautiful and mesmerizing. My dad, on the other hand, had trouble finding entertainment through a story being sang in a language that he did not understand. When I was 12, we all attended an opera together in Austria and unfortunately, I can’t remember much because I fell asleep fairly quickly; my dad did the same. My mom, however, watched the entire opera and found it to be a wonderful experience. She found the performer’s singing ranges to be astounding and she was captivated by their powerful voices. She did say that it was not something she needed to experience more than once. Because of our different culture, she is accustomed to more modern forms of music and plays, and prefers the more typical American style of entertainment. I think the majority of Americans these days feel similarly.
Looking back and remembering snippets of the opera I saw, and then comparing it to the Beauty and the Beast film that I watched for our class, there were many similarities, but I was pleasantly surprised by one of the differences. Perhaps I was too young and uninterested in the past, but as I watched Beauty and the Beast, I found it to be quiet humorous. I had never accompanied the idea of comedy with operas, but I found myself laughing quite regularly.