Opera has a reputation as a rather dreary art form, full of over-complicated/ridiculous plots and fat women screeching.  Nothing could be further than the truth in a lot of cases.  And rather than mocking opera without even trying it, many people would do well to learn lessons from it.  Writers especially because it may come as a shock to some, but opera imparts some very important lessons to us.  The following are just some of them.

Lesson: Good characters can have terrible flaws.

As taught by: Tosca, Ernani, Aida and La Boeheme.

In Tosca, the title character (who is a notable singer within the opera) is the epitome of a wonderful person: she’s sincere in her faith, tries to do good in the world and her love for Cavaradossi (a notable painter and her lover) knows no bounds.  Except that Tosca becomes wildly jealous when she sees that Cavaradossi has portrayed another woman as the Madonna in his painting in the church in Act 1.  She is haunted by the woman’s eyes and they argue back and forth before Cavaradossi finally changes the Madonna’s blue eyes to black eyes like Tosca’s.

Normally I’d say that extreme jealousy like Tosca’s would make me hate a character, but it works in her case.  She’s a good person but has a fatal flaw: her jealousy.  The same is true in real life, as I’m sure we’ve all noticed.  Even the best people in our lives can have horrible character traits and that’s something authors really need to recognize.  Yes, even the main character of the novel has to have something unlikeable about them.  That’s how real life is so why should fiction be any different? Continue reading →