Opera Day

What the day is

Opera Day is observed on February 8. Opera began around 1600 in Florence, with a circle of musicians and scholars attempting to reconstruct how they believed ancient Greek drama had been performed.

Origin and background

The acoustic question is the one worth answering, because the usual assumption is wrong. A trained opera singer is not simply louder than an orchestra. An orchestra can comfortably out-power any human voice, and shouting harder would not help.

What trained singers do is move energy into a narrow frequency band around three thousand hertz, produced by a particular configuration of the vocal tract. Orchestral sound has comparatively little energy up there, and human hearing happens to be most sensitive in exactly that region. The voice therefore occupies a gap in the orchestral spectrum rather than competing with it, which is why a single unamplified singer remains audible over eighty players at the back of a large house. Researchers call it the singer's formant, and it is the technical basis of the whole art form.

This is also why opera houses are shaped as they are and why amplification is resisted: the effect depends on the room and is undone by a microphone.

The economics are less elegant. Opera is expensive to produce, combining orchestra, chorus, soloists, staging and rehearsal, and ticket sales rarely cover it anywhere in the world. Companies depend on subsidy or philanthropy, which is why funding decisions periodically threaten entire institutions.

For newcomers the practical barriers are largely solved. Surtitles are standard, so the language problem has gone, and most houses have cheap seats plus cinema broadcasts.

How to take part

• Go to a live performance rather than starting with a recording. The sound does not survive speakers.
• Read the synopsis first. Nobody follows an opera plot cold, including regulars.
• Start with something short and dramatic rather than a five-hour epic.
• Buy the cheap seats, which are often acoustically excellent.
• Listen for the voice cutting through rather than over the orchestra.