A Student's Experience in La Boheme

Lynchburg College student Sarah Cates (right), with Michael Mayes (center) and Matt Booth

I have been around musical theater my entire life and have been involved in production for about 15 years. However, this is this first opera I have ever seen or been a part of. I wish I could have been exposed to one sooner. What I realize more fully after this experience, and what I fear many people do not realize, is that opera is not about the Language of the text or even the words. The key to understanding opera is to release this notion and, instead, give in freely to emotion. The substance of an opera is not its story, but rather the merger of music and physical expression of emotions. Many of my classmates who attended the performance were too caught up on the story, too distracted by the text being in another Language, too focused on the words being flashed on the screen, and too caught up in the literal events of the story. This seems to be generally true, that our society has become hyper-focused on latent content. Opera seems to be an ideal way to teach the importance of manifest content, which can be applied to most any academic subject as well as everyday life. The story of La Boheme is nice, a basic story of love and loss. Yet, the production was moving and extremely emotional. Thus, focusing only on the story you will only have a nice experience, but focusing on the production, acting, and delivery will create a lasting, moving, and memorable experience. Learning that the content of communication delves deeper than words is a vital lesson that many people need to learn, but it can only be taught through experience. Opera productions, especially those like the La Boheme production we just did, seem to me to be a great way to provide this experience.

This opportunity to work with Opera on the James was even more important to me in terms of music experience. In my voice lessons each week, Dr. Kim continually describes to me that I need to open up my chest, keep my head up, relax my neck, have confidence, and various other ways to improve my singing posture. Though I think I understood what he is trying to describe, I have trouble visualizing it and implementing it when I sing. During the first rehearsal we had with the principals I was blown away by their voices, especially the amount and quality of sound that rang through the room. The chorus members had a short break and I was standing off to the side watching the principals rehearse when Dr. Kim called me over to where he was standing. He gestured to Musetta (Penelope Shumate) as she rehearsed her aria and said, "That is what I am trying to describe to you in your lessons." She had the singing posture necessary to resonate sound well; it was a posture of confidence. Off-stage she was an extremely nice and humble, but when she stepped on-stage during rehearsal she became a performer. She was confident on every note, and starred, unashamed, straight into her reflection in the mirror as she sang. I knew the words that Dr. Kim constantly repeated about posture and I thought I knew what they meant, but it wasnt until that night that I think it all finally made sense.

Perhaps, for me, confidence was too subtle a word to describe how I needed to present myself. Now I know a more befitting word is passion. My vocal production has greatly improved and though I have not yet perfected my posture and performance, at least now I have a good understanding of what I should be doing and a mental image of what it looks like, which are really the important parts. The rest is just practice and will (hopefully) come in time.

-- Sarah Cates