I recently went to see Rossini’s Maometto II. Though in substance a tragedy, it is, like the composer’s better known comedies, a work of the bel canto style. In many operas, the plot is slightly ridiculous and implausible, but bel canto operas place a particularly strong emphasis on beautiful singing as opposed to serious plot and character development. The story is often clichéd and trivial. On the surface, the world of these artistic works is a hyperbolic fantasy far removed from real life. And yet, while listening to one of the arias in Maometto II, I realized that this melodramatic operatic universe had something insightful to say about living life.

All of the major figures in these operas take time out from doing things to feel and express emotion. Granted, they live in an artificially dramatic and tumultuous universe, where enchanted animals reveal secrets and where your lover turns out to be your archenemy in disguise. In the throes of the emotion elicited by these events, they produce beautiful arias, in order to process what happened, to grieve, to celebrate, to motivate, and because it’s simply their primary mode of being. Indeed, they’re singing about how they feel more often than they’re actually doing anything. And it’s of course these performances that the audience comes to see.

The lives of most people aren’t nearly as outwardly dramatic as the lives of these characters. Inwardly, though, we live through dramas that are no less moving. It’s not so much what happens that matters as it is how we’re affected by it, and objectively minor occurrences can loom large in the subjective world of the one undergoing them. An ordinary life is beautiful and compelling and emotionally charged, but rarely is it dignified with the thoughtful and expressive song and dance of the operatic world. This is a shame and has an unfortunate stifling effect. The true valence of events is unacknowledged, psychological realities are unresolved, and personal growth is frustrated. It would be better to take a page from the Italians and sing an aria from time to time, maybe even not metaphorically.