It might seem odd, doing all the things one does to have a night out – buying tickets, hiring a babysitter, finding parking – when it’s preordained that the evening will end in tears. In some cases, though, tears are part of the package.
When the curtain falls on Opera Tampa’s production of La Traviata, it’s a safe bet the audience will contain several red, tear-moistened eyes, and that the applause will be accompanied by a fair number of sobs and sniffles.
Verdi’s 1853 opera is one of the composer’s most-cherished works and a real tear-jerker, too. A story of love, sacrifice, sorrow, suffering and finally … well, no spoilers. But get ready for the waterworks.
Opera’s grand spectacle and effusive emotions seem designed to tell tragic stories, and many of the form’s best-known works fall into that category: La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Tristan Und Isolde among them.
Opera may do tragedy best, but other art forms also tell tales that end in tatters. Shakespeare had a handle on the form – Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth are among the most familiar names in theater. Aside from Romeo and Juliet, which everyone knows. And is a tragedy.
Movies? Bicycle Thieves, Titanic, Love Story, Brief Encounter, The Fault in Our Stars – it’s amazing concession stands don’t sell boxes of tissues for $12 a pop.
Tragedy, teen tragedy specifically, was practically a genre unto its own in the late 1950s: “Endless Sleep,” “Teen Angel,” “Tell Laura I Love Her,” “Ebony Eyes,” “Leader of the Pack” – a tawdry mélange of morbidity and melodrama that (sometimes) had a good beat and you could dance to it.
Tragedy is all over the arts and entertainment, but why? What is it about consumptive courtesans, mad kings and conniving offspring and doomed high school sweethearts that keep us coming back?
The most common answer, catharsis, comes from Aristotle. As the work reaches its tragic conclusion, the audience can release the feelings of fear and pity built up in the preceding acts. Tears may be shed but the audience is left contentedly drained.
Also, tragedy is a way of safely confronting uncomfortable and complex emotional situations. If we choose to go down the tearful path with any work of art, it’s with the understanding that we can withdraw should the discomfort grow too intense.
We’re attracted to tales that depict a series of events escalating to the point in which the protagonist triumphs or tragically falls. Those tales can take place on stage or on the news. Real conflicts are complicated, confusing and often unresolved. When La Traviata concludes, the audience can leave secure in the knowledge that the doomed heroine, Violetta, will rise to die yet again another day.