where did all the ties go?

by guest contributor Nicholas Adubato

My introduction to opera occurred early in my life; I was sitting on the floor of my grandmother’s house on a Saturday morning, which was typical for my family, and my grandmother, who is exactly as dramatic as all Italian grandmothers are, was crying her eyes out while Puccini’s Madame Butterfly blasted from her ancient, dust-covered speakers. I recall my grandmother describing the story of Madame Butterfly, explaining how her lover had returned from war with a new wife, which caused suffering and shame on a level to where she was forced to commit seppuku, all the while my grandmother was reenacting the suicide itself, pretending to disembowel herself with a plastic knife. 

The whole scene, and the subsequent remark by my grandmother, calling Butterfly’s suicide “beautiful,” put me off to opera for what was essentially all my adolescent years. But despite this rather traumatic event, I have come around to Puccini and opera as a whole in my college years. I recently had the opportunity to finally see an opera live for the first time through one of my college classes. As fate would have it, I saw Puccini’s La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera. 

The night was as expected for late April: rainy and somewhat cold, but not bone chillingly so. The rain was especially frustrating to me, as I just got my Brooks Brother’s blazer dry cleaned the previous week…but I suppose that’s my punishment for choosing to live in New York City. Events like these, whether it’s the opera, or a formal, or even the dreaded job interview, events where you need to get “dressed-up” are ones I look forward to with great anticipation. Having gone to Catholic school and dressing like a cast-member of Dead Poets Society every day of my life for a few years has instilled in me a liking for preppy attire and being my most presentable when afforded the opportunity. In the modern-day university, or really in modern life in general, these opportunities are few and far-between; conceptions of “formal” dress, or even formal attitudes have morphed significantly over the last sixty years or so. The opera, before actually having experienced it, seemed to me not only the perfect opportunity to put on a tie and act as if I were a member of high-society for the evening, but to be immersed in the pageantry of such a night and fleeting ideals of what is “formal.” 

Upon walking from my favorite American-fare restaurant situated conveniently across the street from Lincoln Center, I could feel the disappointment mounting within me. Sneakers, t-shirts under blazers, not a tie for miles, and so much damn denim. I tried to brush it off–it was Monday night after all and the weather was not doing anyone any favors. Why trot out your finest apparel when the air was a perpetual mist? I also realize I sound like a keyboard warrior reactionary type, harping on stuff like “where did all the REAL men go?” but I couldn’t help but feel something was off walking into the Met. Most of the women seemed to be dressed in their best… I guess? I admittedly have a raging case of “male-brain” when it comes to these things, and the eternal image of femininity I have is of my mother who is rarely seen outside of jeans and a fashionable shoe, so dresses and floor-length gowns are not exactly something I’m privy to. 

The Met itself was its usual baroque self; golden accents abound and the marvelous red velvet carpeting which engulfed everything as far as the eye could see. I got on the elevator to meet my fellow classmates in the family circle section, which I quickly found out was so dizzyingly high up the ticket should’ve come with a complimentary oxygen mask and a pack of Dramamine. Truthfully, it really wasn’t that high up, my eyes are truly that of a bat’s and I’m equally as dramatic as my grandmother, I really was just happy to be there, and it was fun to imagine the lives of the New York City elite down-below, with their sparkling water and such. 

The show got underway, and like my grandmother, I was almost immediately in tears at the first aria. Looking around, it seemed like I was far more engaged than some of the others around me; a boy dressed in jeans and a flannel had fallen asleep, another girl had her pocketbook situated in her lap with her phone hidden within the bag, and she was scrolling like her life depended on it. It was nice to know these opera terrorists weren’t in my class, but it still filled me with a quiet rage inside. 

The first intermission had come not a minute too soon, as seems to be the case with opera, I made my way to the concessions, and I think I almost dropped dead on the spot. $24 for a champagne flute, $8 espresso, $6 Toblerone, $6 water, it was almost too much for me to take. Now on a high and mighty hunger strike, I returned to my seat, still fuming at what I just saw and the copious amounts of denim, and questioned if this was truly what the opera was. Were exorbitant prices, fancy carpets, and an exclusive dining club down below the true embodiment of what the opera was all about? Surely not. It couldn’t be. The show on stage, which was about bohemian society and suffering as a poor artist, seemed to be making fun of exactly the nonsense going on in the crowd. The irony was too much for even me to take. There was no shortage of pageantry on stage; the performers were everything I could have imagined and more. By the end, partially due to my boycott of the bottled water prices, I had no tears left to cry and it was time to return to my now–in comparison to the beauty I had just witnessed–boring and exceedingly dull life in the Bronx.

It wasn’t until I got back to my apartment and looked across at my neighbor’s shrine to the Virgin Mary displayed on her porch that I realized something which consoled my angry soul. The opera isn’t meant for us. It isn’t meant for this bland American postmodern culture taken over by the Protestant dismissal of aestheticism. Opera can only be understood with magical thinking, which isn’t inherent to our culture. Opera is completely surreal and melodramatic; nowhere in life does someone fall hopelessly in love in a matter of minutes, and further, nowhere are people singing constantly. To understand opera is to accept the absurdity of the whole thing and embrace it with the degree of separation from reality it requires.

Looking out at Our Lady’s tears and bleeding heart it became clear to me that there was a reason my grandmother so loved Puccini and viewed Madame Butterfly’s death as beautiful; opera aspires to something divine, something metaphysical we can’t fully understand on earth, but it is something greater than us. To the American WASP hegemony, who urges us to only aspire to utility and maximizing efficiency, such frivolous things like a decorative tie are useless. Our modern life is not conducive to understanding and appreciating the beauty of the opera and its inherent decadence.

In my grandmother’s eyes, Butterfly’s death, as would be the case with La Bohème’s Mimi, was her willingly submitting into the world beyond our own. And my grandmother, with all of her Italian Catholic bones, surely envied her on some level. Death, according to modern modes of thought, is the perpetual monkey on your back, something always to run from. The realm of opera, on the other hand, in all of its beauty and unreality, completely subverts this modern aversion to the inevitable fact that we all will die.

Nicholas Adubato is a student at New York’s 3rd best university.

originally published in cracks in pomo: the zine

Graphic by Patrick Keohane (Revolving Style) @revolvingstyle