Connections/Opera

I'm Irina Shifrin, and I work in human resources, and my topic is opera.

There are very few moments in our life that make you feel that

it's a big moment. And you can get spoiled and that's how opera makes me feel.

In the midst of our busy week

it's a celebration. It's music

it's acting, it's costume, it's scenery, it's poetry. And above all, it's the operatic human voice.

Carmen was a breakthrough for me. All of the sudden it all came together, and there was no acting, there was no theater. There was frighteningly real, raw emotion.

This painting makes me think about Carmen. The way she entered with a stared defiance, old and mysterious like a sphinx. And one cannot really get Carmen

without Manet, that colorful, intense, sensual, a little bit violent culture. When I look at the matador I think, "This is Escamillio," and he could have just step off Carmen's set.

Each time La Traviata's main character, a famous courtesan, Violetta, dies, for a moment the world seems such a dull and lifeless place. This statue reconciles me to Violetta's death. If she didn't die that's how she would look. And that's probably why composers and librettists love to kill their leading characters while they're still young and beautiful.

I associate Monteverdi's Orpheo with this statue. Orpheus is leading Eurydice from the underworld. He's not supposed to look at her.

And it's very dramatic, it's very uncertain. And he is asking, "who will assure me that she follows me?" She's also confused why Orpheus is not looking at her. Doesn't he love her anymore?

When I look at this kimono and its bewitching beauty I think about Madame Butterfly and Pinkerton, who is in love with her, even though he might injure her butterfly wings. I think exactly the same thoughts. I must have it!

Regnault's Salomé is triumphant, happy, careless. It's just the wind. It's just the caprice.

Solario's painting, she seem to be so unemotional. In the opera

she's all about emotion. She's bored, she doesn't know what she wants, and she's in pain.

She's ready to pay with her life for getting her desires fulfilled.

Robert le Diable is considered to be one of the first grand operas, that would have four or five acts, huge casts

and very lavish, splendid productions. Today even largest opera houses simply cannot afford this kind of expensive production.

You can imagine how taxing it must be on a singer, not to mention

the audience, to sit through four or five acts. There's a whole range of psychology that studies

the psychology of happiness. One of the theories is that the only time when we are happy is when we are in the flow.

When you lose track of time. When you forget about the problems of your life.

Being in the opera, listening to the human operatic voice, gets me into the flow, and

that's when I'm happy.