From Doomscrolling to Opera

The void

YouTube got hit with the AI plague a while back. I'm not talking about people using AI mindfully — I mean autonomous pipelines that monitor trends and pump out useless content on a schedule. Once that started, I lost most of my desire to use the platform for entertainment. It's still great for learning, but for entertainment, it's not my first stop anymore.

Then I dropped the other social platforms for the same reason. I've been resisting doomscrolling for almost a year now, and it's created a void — a much-needed one — that pushed me to start experimenting with classical entertainment.

Why classical never clicked

I was slow to come around to traditional genres because the most popular classical music never really resonated with me. I assumed that if I was going to be a jazz listener, I'd have to fully embrace ten thousand notes in a five-minute sax solo at 150 bpm. In reality, I never liked songs that were that stimulating.

The same thing kept me away from classical. I figured joining the club meant regularly listening to Für Elise and music at that intensity, when really I just wanted some smooth, somber nocturnes from Chopin or Satie. I don't despise the musicians who pushed the envelope on tempo and technique, but I needed to experience something in the genre that resonated with me deeply before I could work my way backward to the harder pieces.

Theatre, same problem

I've hit the same wall in theatre. I've attended several Broadway-style musicals and largely enjoyed them, but never enough to start checking what was opening next in my area. Great experiences, but they didn't strike a personal chord.

The pattern was the same: I started with the most readily available flavor, got the wrong taste in my mouth, and stopped searching. Until I largely retired from social media. That created a vacuum in my desires for entertainment — something deeper and more complex than seventy-five fifteen-second videos. After experiencing the worst in entertainment, I went looking for what I considered the best. My first stop was opera.

Why opera worked

Opera was a no-brainer once I did some research. It combines classical music, poetry, and massive vocal performances in a single form. There's a wide variety of historical and noteworthy modern productions to enjoy, and most importantly, the contextual classical music made me appreciate pieces I would have otherwise dismissed. It pushed the envelope for me in a way the standalone canon never had.

Where I started

I started with Rigoletto's dark and tragic drama. That introduced me to Luciano Pavarotti, who had somehow escaped my cultural awareness for decades. Since then, I've been managing a watchlist and reading librettos for fun.

Met Opera On Demand

If you're also curious about opera, I'd recommend the Met Opera On Demand service. It's $15 a month and gives you access to many productions that are considered the best way to experience these works at home.

I hope to one day attend an opera house for a live production, but unfortunately my personal opera renaissance kicked in one week after the Dallas Opera concluded their season. Until they return, I'm more than content with the Met's on-demand catalog.