If you are at home and want to listen to good music and have some drinks its very easy these days to order a dial a booze delivery, often in under 1 hour you have your order done.
I’ll be singing at Prachtwerk in Neukölln for Berlin’s first ever ‘Opera on Tap‘ on February 10th! If you don’t know what ‘Opera on Tap’ is, let me give you a quick rundown:
- Singers give accompanist music
- They probably don’t rehearse
- Everyone gets a beer (including singers)
- You listen to drunk opera whilst drunk
I dunno about you, but that’s basically the dream, and why they serve refreshments at intermissions at opera. And by refreshments I mean brandy, wine, and chocolate. Going to the opera doesn’t always have to be an intellectual affair. Opera is about emotions and beauty. Opera’s meant to be crazy, and ‘Opera on Tap’ brings back the rowdiness to opera that was lost somewhere along the way. Back in the day, like when Mozart was king, operas used to be something more akin to a rock concert (you’ve seen Amadeus right?). People would get get several glasses of wine and shout at the performers. “Bravo” wasn’t just reserved for the end of an aria, but would be shouted in the middle of a performance. And if an aria was exceptionally exquisite, an audience could demand an immediate encore.
Imagine this:
That was opera in its hay-day, my friends.
Back in college, every once in awhile some friends and I used to get together and have opera marathons. “MARATHONS?!” you’ll think, but let me tell you, this was more like watching Buffy, or Game of Thrones. We would make breakfast, watch some Rossini, have some coffee while watching some Strauss, make lunch with Berg, and round off the night with a drinking game to Saint-Saëns. Never for one moment did it feel like work, because we allowed ourselves to have fun and take it a bit less seriously.
Nobody tells you that that’s OK, but it’s totally OK.
Anyway, long story short, come get drunk with us and we’ll sing some opera for you!