Opera

Harvard FAS

Opera is a form of theater that mixes singing and orchestral sound with poetry and visual spectacle in stagings. Performances of opera, by engaging (and sometimes even overwhelming) multiple senses, challenge us to question intellectual truisms like critical detachment. For some people opera is the most beautiful and moving musical genre that has ever existed. For others, opera means unreasonable demands on stamina (five-hour operas are not rare) and a level of acoustic strangeness that…