Previously in this series.
You are a man who spends literally hours ranting about how the fairer sex cannot be trusted, yet you have never been faithful to anyone.
You are a woman and two possessive alpha males, both armed, are fighting over you. You’re surprised when this ends badly.
You employ a large retinue of servants far more worldly-wise than you whose only duties include dusting invisible furniture and giving you unsolicited romantic advice.
You find that you are never too busy to tell complete strangers about your all-consuming plans for revenge.
You discover that you have been flirting with your own brother and think, eh. I could do worse.
You join the priesthood to get over your ex, and end up having sex with her in a church.
You are supposed to be some sort of Asian, you think, and this fact makes everyone just a little bit uncomfortable.
You are an artist, and you are broke and your apartment is a dump. Maybe this is because you spend all your time singing and carrying on ill-advised love affairs and never actually create any art to sell?
You are a nobleman with a spacious yet sparsely furnished mansion, and even though your assorted relatives, friends, and neighbors have their own residences, all the action seems to take place in your living room.
A fan has caused a great deal of trouble at one of your balls.
Incriminating letters never seem to be right where you left them.
Is it just you, or is your young ward suddenly looking irresistible?
Everyone tacitly agrees not to discuss the fact that your lover has far more romantic chemistry with his best friend than he does with you.
You go to a lot of parties, but no one ever eats anything; they just stand around making a lot of toasts and occasionally engaging in fisticuffs.
Literally the only “hiding place” that ever occurs to you is under the master’s bed.
You spy on people through keyholes and get exactly what you deserve.
You could not succeed in seducing your maid if your life depended on it.
The magistrate’s daughter is promised to another. You despair.
Your headstrong offspring refuses to obey you. You despair.
Your wealthy if unscrupulous patron offers to set you up for life, but you cannot forget the pure love you once knew in squalor. You despair.
The most genuinely charming male of your acquaintance is actually a woman.
The Devil seems like a perfectly reasonable person to ask for advice.
The dashing newcomer in town bears a striking resemblance to your long-lost soul mate, but your soul mate would never wear an outfit like that.
Your ex is a scoundrel, a bigamist, and a colonialist oppressor. How are you supposed to get over a catch like that?
You have no real friends, only rivals masquerading as friends who want to steal your lover.
Let those who have not been imprisoned for theft/a crime of passion/failing to kiss the appropriate nobleman’s ass cast the first stone, that’s what you always say.
Your beloved is headed off to war — never mind which war, it couldn’t matter less. The two of you sing about glorious goodbye sex instead of actually having it.
Someone has stabbed you! It’s unfortunate, to be sure, but it does not interfere with your ability to sing.
Everyone knows which tenor you will ultimately end up with, but this does not stop you from dallying with a smoldering baritone, two spear-carrying foreigners, and a mezzo in trousers.
Although you are bedridden with tuberculosis or possibly a broken heart, same difference really, you still manage to find the lung capacity for two more arias and a farewell duet.
You announce, dramatically and at great length, that you would rather perish than live without your love, leaving fate no choice but to call your bluff.
Tags: how to tell what novel you’re in, let’s go to the opera together, music, nicole s. chung, opera, operas aren’t that long nicole
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You are a young woman and you are making a horrible romantic decision.
In three hundred years, your relationship with a cross-dressing mezzo or castrati will be taken as pure queer subtext by hormonal, queer young voice students.
I seriously didn’t know there was any other subtext to flirtations with mezzos in trousers
The question is not whether or not there’s queer subtext. The question is whether or not the composer was aware there was queer subtext.
To go old-school, where would you like your Internet delivered?
You really, really love your coat.
What I love is how Musetta goes to sell her earrings and Colline goes to pawn his coat and Schaunard’s like ‘ummm I guess I’ll give you the gift of not having my company so cya bye.’
“You’re surprised when this ends badly.”
Hah. I think this covers every operatic plot.
You’ve never met a single woman in your entire life who wasn’t your aunt.
or your maid!
I <3 Anna Russell too.
Or, and this is after she spent half the opera scheming to marry you, your mother.
Also – you don’t look anything like your maidservant, but you trade places and NO ONE can tell the difference.
I was going to say — as long as you wear a false mustache, no one will recognize you, including your lover and others with whom you have been acquainted for years.
See also: tiny masks, because the most identifiable feature of any person is their cheekbones and eyebrows. Without those cues, we are lost and indistinguishable.
Or your manservant.
*heart eyes*
You have consumption, therefore you are super horny and your coloratura is KILLER.
Although you are bedridden with tuberculosis or possibly a broken heart, same difference really, you still manage to find the lung capacity for two more arias and a farewell duet.
…and quite possibly a farewell lap around the stage, even though your tuberculosis is so far advanced that strictly speaking, you shouldn’t be able to walk.
Also, all-Mozart edition:
You’re getting married today, and caddish noblemen keep hitting on your bride.
Your village is being threatened by either a giant sea monster or a giant snake.
Your servant duties also include making hot chocolate, which is the only thing your mistresses will eat for breakfast.
Statues sing at you and damn you to hell.
“operas aren’t that long Nicole” my ass, and I literally mean ouch, my ass, after sitting for three to four hours.
this is me at the ballet, I cannot fault you
but but but but
the end is always the best part
that’s when the lady dies OF SINGING TOO MUCH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkZBYuhoMc4
the literal explanation for this ^ is that her lover died and so she also just…dies.
dies of… … … ?
Your job is to guard some gold. It’s enchanted, and there’s only one loophole that would allow someone to steal it. You loudly announce what the loophole is within earshot of an eavesdropper — and then, to your horror, he steals your gold. The NERVE! (Tag that one “you had ONE JOB Rhinemaidens.”)
Late reply, but my favorite thing is that they spend fifteen minutes shitting on him for trying to get with them, then tell him renouncing love is the only way to get the gold. Why shouldn’t he?! He might as well try his luck SOMEWHERE?
“You find that you are never too busy to tell complete strangers about your all-consuming plans for revenge.”
You’ve been watching me on the bus, haven’t you?
You die of thirst in the treacherous deserts of New Orleans. Also, your knowledge of American geography may be a little fuzzy.
You are an artist, and you are broke and your apartment is a dump. Maybe this is because you spend all your time singing and carrying on ill-advised love affairs and never actually create any art to sell?
gawd, it’s part of the process, Nicole. You wouldn’t understand.
You pine away at your spinning wheel.
Your good friend, who is young and sometimes brash but loyal and well-meaning, is killed, tragically.
Before he dies, the two of you sing a tenor/baritone duet that’s not homoerotic at all.
Your name, your cousin’s name, your cousin’s son’s name, and your best friend’s name all sound exactly the same when sung. This creates no problems for any of you whatsoever.
You alternate between plot-advancing conversations in a monotone (inexplicably accompanied by a hidden harpsichord) and melodic bursts in which you repeat every line fourteen-and-a-half times.
Your laugh is weird and inappropriately loud, but nobody else looks at you strangely when you bust out with it.
Just thought you ought to know that I read your comment and made a weird, inappropriately loud laugh at the end without meaning to.
A while ago, after watching Massnet’s Manon, I announced that all potential admirers must shout ‘You temptress! You quintessence of woman!’ at me at frequent intervals. I’m still waiting.
I’m getting married next weekend (WTFFFFFFFFFFFFF) and now I must find a way to work this into the vows.
DOOOO IIIIIIT!!!
Everyone dies.
Also the pit orchestra is drunk by the end of the show.
or, if a comic opera, no one dies but there are many, many close calls.
Usually with several comedy beats for laughter, followed by another for violation of the 4th wall.
To be fair, the bit about the pit orchestra applies to musicals/comic operas as well, and in fact is easier in those cases because there are sometimes breaks in the music. Basically anytime the orchestra is not on stage and thus can swill with abandon.
Fun fact:
About half a century ago, at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, the brass musicians used to mark in their scores how many beers they could finish between numbers. Things would get kind of messy by the third act.
You and your friends bathe fully clothed in a small body of invisible water, singing to men who pass by, to lure them.
Everyone knows which tenor you will ultimately end up with, but this does not stop you from dallying with a smoldering baritone, two spear-carrying foreigners, and a mezzo in trousers.
Stop reading my diary!
J/K what would I want with a tenor
A smoldering baritone or the mezzo in trousers, people. Only good choices.
Smoldering baritone for me, please.
Also, I am a mezzo, and now wish to be the mezzo in trousers who spirits our heroine, however temporarily, away from her dreary, predictably heroic tenor.
You might! Some female type persons are tenors, but get discouraged from calling themselves that, or even exploring/practicing/singing at all in their naturally lower range.
/not bitter hahaha why do you ask
But seriously my tenor range is the shit.
I’m female, but also agender, for reference. So “they/them” if you please
But I mean I would totes be the bitch in trousers with big tits (that everyone somehow ignores until I – TWIST – reappear in a dress in the second half!) who with dashing charm and disarming wit almost completely seduces the main soprano, until of course for some reason she’s put off by the dress (I mean, whaaaaaaat how come tho)
Mmm, contraltos in trousers. Marlene Dietrich what now?
Yes! This prompted me to go watch her analysis of the Ring Cycle yet again! “I’m not making this up, you know!”
Your boyfriend’s name is really Dick Johnson.
omg I love fanciulla
“giocamo un poker” – the most hilarious
ugly cry-laughing at work. I AM AN OPERA QUEEN AND THE WORLD SUDDENLY UNDERSTANDS ME.
addition: your biggest problem is that you’re just so damn beautiful that life is near-impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBcLPqpSJ6g
O fatal gift, o cruel gift
That heaven, in its wrath, made me!
You make us so vain, so haughty,
I curse you, I curse you, o my beauty!
I can only pour out tears,
I have no hope, I will have to suffer!
same, gurl.
This is where I share that I once cried so hard during La Traviata that I ran out of tissue and ended up using my whole scarf as a hankie. There was a woman in the row ahead of me who cried so hard she left before the final act. I love opera so much sometimes.
It took the entire curtain call at one performance of La Traviata for me to calm down and stop sobbing. Damn you, Natalie Dessay.
Admitting to never having danced a minuet counts as coy flirting.
You REALLY love the military. Like, REALLY.
Here are some more:
1. You are the pure, innocent young wife of a lecherous nobleman who thinks it perfectly reasonable to sentence you to death in order to marry your ladies’ maid. In a rare show of female solidarity, you forgive the maid, but go to the execution singing about the doom that awaits your disgusting husband after death. The chorus bids you adieu as you flub the C5.
2. You have bad PTSD about something that happened to Grannie LouLing, and you think that this gives you the right to decapitate your suitors.
3. Your rival has sent you a poisoned drink, flower, or apparel. Buh-bye.
4. You are a nun. You will die. You will invoke the Virgin Mary before you do.
5. You are a powerful sorceress, queen, or wise woman who has made terrible sacrifices for an unworthy foreigner who promptly leaves you for a cute young thing. You give ’em what for. Kids and /or gardens will be severely damaged in this process.
“no matter what happenes, it can all be laughed off as everyone goes to watch a garden fireworks display” — Note comic zoeras ONLY
Gleichzeitig is my favourite word in German, all because of Ariadne.
Oh, and the best one: your marriage to an unsuitable man, or the act of your intended putting your wedding veil on an escaping queen, or drugs supplied by a German apothecary will render you insane. During your manic episodes, you may stab your husband, and sing of the great happiness that awaits you on your wedding day. You will either recover spontaneously when your intended comes back to you, or after many high notes and dueting with some creepy glass harmonica, you will succumb to death by opera.
My life has been too many scoundrels, bigamists, and a colonialist oppressors. I need more mezzos in trousers.
Right?! But it’s hard for me, because I *am* that mezzo in trousers (actually a contralto/tenor but you get what I mean) <le sigh>
Onstage, the tenor gets the girl. Offstage, it's always the baritone.
After a dazzling, empty life in the gilded cage of kept womanhood, you are finally living with the only man who has ever truly loved you. Until his dad comes and tells you to break up.
Your husband has slept with every female organism in the manor, and is now gunning hard for your maidservant. You want him back SO BAD.
Nothing makes you happier than jewelry. Nothing.
There’s one last chance to escape, to be happy, to survive. You decide to do one last show/chase the prince away forever/voluntarily just cease to be alive.
A universal truth: sopranos may duet with the tenors but will always want to go home with the baritones. Or the mezzos in trousers.
You lose your favorite handkerchief and it totally ruins your life and the lives of everyone around you.
You keep hearing dreadfully dull and boring music in your head, and it eventually causes you to have a mental break down and kill your wife.
“You go to a lot of parties, but no one ever eats anything; they just stand around making a lot of toasts and occasionally engaging in fisticuffs.”
but that’s what parties are LIKE
You’re female and the love of your life dies. You must die, too.
You’re male and the love of your life dies. For you, dying is optional.
Everyone knows, but no one says outright, that you are a sex worker. You get to have fabulous parties and then die of, ahem, “consumption”, by which they mean, erm, a medical condition people expect you to have picked up in your line of work. As a last act of nobility, you dump your boyfriend because your profession is harming his super-innocent little sister’s marital prospects, which are *completely* your responsibility.
Mozart opera seria edition:
You can’t decide whether your power grab should involve marrying the emperor or killing him. You are surprised when pursuing both courses at once turns out to be a bad idea.
You will do literally anything for your ambitious, sociopathic girlfriend and tell her so. You are surprised when this turns out badly.
You hear your love spurning you, so you decide to become a tyrannical dictator.
Your father is ignoring you, so you decide to die.
Half of the men on stage are actually women in trousers. That half somehow has way more man-swagger.
Incredibly, your suicidal (or homicidal) tendencies lead to a happy ending with everyone alive and properly paired off.
No matter how evil you are, you have a last-minute change of heart that leads to virtue and repentance.
Mozart opera seria edition:
You can't decide whether your power grab should involve marrying the emperor or killing him. You are surprised when pursuing both courses at once turns out to be a bad idea.
You will do literally anything for your ambitious, sociopathic girlfriend and tell her so. You are surprised when this turns out badly.
You hear your love spurning you, so you decide to become a tyrannical dictator.
Your father is ignoring you, so you decide to die.
Half of the men on stage are actually women in trousers. That half somehow has way more man-swagger.
Incredibly, your suicidal (or homicidal) tendencies lead to a happy ending with everyone alive and properly paired off.
No matter how evil you are, you have a last-minute change of heart that leads to virtue and repentance.
The ruler of your kingdom has just told you that he is in love with your stepdaughter — the one you don’t like very much and have routinely abused. You and your daughters respond to this by verbally abusing and degrading her right in front of him, demonstrating that you have that special kind of stupid that is so rarely seen these days.
No kidding.
General:
– You are a soprano, or a soprano, or possibly a soprano, unless, of course, you are a baritone or tenor. But most likely a soprano.
– There may possibly have been a mezzo, but as you are a soprano, you likely trampled her just before your big aria, while finding your light.
– You are forty, but play sixteen.
– You never date anyone unless it promises to end badly for both of you.
– You almost never sing in the vernacular of your home country.
– You never break Chekhov’s rule (if you see a gun in the first act, it’s going off in the last).
– Simple costume changes completely obscure the identities of your close significant others, friends and family.
– You are introduced with a whole chorus behind you, who repeat things you’ve said.
– You are so very Catholic and so very saintly that God himself forgives you for committing suicide and/or murder.
– You are thin, pale, sickly, and able to hit notes only dogs can hear.
Mozart Edition:
– You are a soprano, and a baritone is ignoring you. This vexes you.
– You are a soprano, and a baritone is making advances toward you. This vexes you.
– You are a baritone, and you observe another baritone making advances toward a soprano. This vexes you.
– You are a baritone whose advances are rebuffed. This vexes you.
– You are a mezzo in trousers, but you are more horny than all the guys. This vexes you.
– You are a tenor, and you are delighted that there’s so much to gab about.
– You are a sassy servant/peasant/birdperson. Your sassiness is eventually rewarded.
– You are in the chorus. This vexes you.
Handel Edition:
– You never worry about not getting your point across, because after stating it, and then a short period of a something else, you repeat what you already said, but this time with more pretty.
– You have a passionate desire to bone a castrato, despite the obvious difficulties therein.
– You have fourteen arias. This is too few.