If this had been happening to me all along in the states, I was completely unaware of it. Coming at opera from a different perspective than the many singers who were drawn to it from a young age or for whom it was part of their culture, Johnson has a cogent take on its ongoing relevance in the 21st century. In The Marriage of Figaro , you have a lot of stuff about the servants standing up to the aristocrats. You may say we don't live in a time of servants and aristocrats, but we still have a lower, a middle and an upper class, and there are times when the lower class has to stand up for itself. The Marriage of Figaro has a man cheating on his wife.
People still do that.
You have a boy and girl dealing with the changes as they go through puberty. You still have that today. The comedy of human experience continues from century to century, taking time only for costume changes. And the tragic dimension of life will always be with us. I thought about the meaning of Hansel and Gretel when I did the opera in Germany.