Just a little Snape musing...

[valis2]

rickfan37 did her own build-a-snape here and mentioned this really excellent point:

Here’s the Urbane!Snape myth again. I don’t know, and we’re given no clue in canon. I simply don’t believe he’s a closet opera buff and spends his spare time humming along to great arias, or that he can quote Dante or Shakespeare at will.

It really made me think of something new. I've always been a bit apprehensive about fics where Snape quotes Byron and listens to Bach.

I think what really is happening is that giving Snape these "pretentious" hobbies is a way for an inexperienced writer to "shorthand" their characterization of him, because in just a sentence of quoting/playing classical music, they set him up (in their minds) as a certain sort of character, aloof, mysterious, educated, etc. It's a short-cut.

The thing is, the sort of character they're trying to develop is not canon. Snape is a pure-blood, and would most likely know very little, if anything, about the Muggle world (his matchbox comment notwithstanding). And I'm certain that most pure-bloods wouldn't want to involve themselves in any sort of Muggle-world scrutiny.

So authors who attempt this short-cut are really doing canon a disservice, when what they really need to do is discover what would make him an aloof, mysterious, and educated character in Rowling's world.

Just my little musing for the moment.

Comments

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

It's stayed virtually unchangeable since the 1600s; you could've gone to the opening show of the opera house in Venice in 1637 and the aesthetics would've been exactly the same as they are in today's opera

Which sounds astonishingly like the WW, doesn't it?

To have an opera culture worthy of fans and not just curious culture-starved people, one needs more than a nutter with delusions of grandieur.

Like Mozart.
*ducks* Yes, he was a genius, but like most geniuses he was a nutter.

I think everyone's working at cross purposes here. "Wizard Opera" doesn't have to be an entity into itself any more than "wizard candy" or "wizard chess" is. When I think of wizard opera or even wizard theater I think of an offshoot (for want of a better word) of the non-wizard tradition of the same. Which is why the origin really doesn't matter. What matters is what the culture ultimately chose to do with it. Do they just attend muggle opera? Do witches and wizards perform muggle operas 'by the book'? Do they just throw in a few whiz-bang special effects (imagine what wizards could do with Wagner!) or, what I'd guess, did opera evolve, even just a little bit, into something slightly different in the WW than what you'd expect to see at the Met.

You know what the weirdest thing about this entire conversation is? I absolute despise opera. I enjoy many types of music, classical and modern, but was raised with opera almost 24hrs a day, 7days a week screeching through my childhood home. Both my parents were opera lovers and my mother was a fangurl of Beverly Sills. It still sounds to me like someone backing over the cat. And this from someone who lives with a trumpeter.

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

Oh believe me, I've seen it staged. You don't think I was allowed to escape that, do you? I grew up in NY. I saw "the best." Also, about two years ago I decided maybe I'd "grown into it" and went to see an acclaimed traveling production of an exceptionally popular work. I still punch the car radio off my NPR station faster than you can blink every Saturday afternoon.

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

Well ... I grew up in California. I've seen opera around the US and in Europe. New York's opera productions are not the best.

Oh, well then. Excuuuse me.

*bows deeply to world authority*

[pen-and-umbra.livejournal.com]

did opera evolve, even just a little bit, into something slightly different in the WW than what you'd expect to see at the Met.

It's just how I would apply Occam's Razor. There are various different types of classical music, not as in types of music but how it is performed (symphony orchestras, chamber music, solo instrument works, etc.) Opera hasn't evolved into any other form of expression than what it is now -- there is no art house opera, there is no alternative opera or "chamber opera" -- so why assume, without proof, that the wizarding opera is the only exception to the rule?

And I can completely understand people not liking opera. When viewed objectively, it is rather bizarre a genre, and on occasion does sound like a particularly painful animal mating session. Yet, I love it so much. (The odd thing? I grew up with 24/7 opera, too, and I grew up to be a fan.) Same thing as I have with country music. I like pop, I love jazz (another very American genre), I listen to just about everything, but country? Nuh-uh. Makes my skin crawl, for reasons clearly passing my understanding.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

there is no alternative opera or "chamber opera"

Actually, there are such things as 'chamber operas'. The most frequently performed is Britten's Turn of the Screw, which has only 11 instrumentalists and was deliberately written for a very small ensemble because of monetary concerns. It's done in mid-sized houses but a lot of the effect is lost. As well, some of the early operas were intended for chamber performance in a courtly context. One might also consider the French division of operas by type, as they were performed in different houses.

Basic argument is sound, though. :)

[pen-and-umbra.livejournal.com]

Really? How fascinating! I mean, I've seen operas done with a minimal orchestra, but those have been scaled-back productions of the usual suspects, not operas specifically written for a small number of instrumentalists. Would you consider it more a modern genre, the experimentations of a few individualists, or a legitimate off-shoot of the big-house opera tradition we know? Any other example operas that would come to mind?

As for Britten... due to being scarred by a Peter Grimes production, I'm actively trying to forget what little I've heard of his stuff. :P

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

It's a typically 20th century thing, although it covers a lot of ground. For instance, in all honesty, Ariadne auf Naxos is a chamber opera--it's written for a chamber orchestra and was originally intended to be produced along with Moliere's Bourgois Gentilhomme, not in an opera house per se. Strauss is a master of making that little orchestra sound a lot larger than it is, but the thing was never meant for a barn like the Met. Similar thing for Rake's Progress. Some older works, like Pergolesi, are considered similarly, and something like Peri's Dafne is definitely a chamber work.

Turn of the Screw is nifty. Short and tight, a set of variations on a twelve-note theme. Peter Grimes is still better, though. I can live without Billy Budd.