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I was 19 the first time I went to the opera. The parents of a college friend invited me along to experience one of the most excruciatingly boring evenings of my life.

The opera was Giuseppe Verdi's Otello, and Shakespeare never seemed so weird and inaccessible. I still vividly remember shifting in my seat and feeling trapped having to listen to several adults screaming and shouting all at once in a language I did not understand.

But I also vaguely remember that evening, a moment towards the end of the opera that caught my attention. It was Desdemona's prayer during which the whole auditorium fell eerily silent, seemingly mesmerized, as a voice pure and simple sang an Ave Maria - and I Listened!

Unfortunately, the prayer was short lived and ultimately in vain. For as poor Desdemona finished and lay her head on the pillow, the orchestra interrupted my brief respite of tranquility, first with an ominous chord and then a thunderous clap.

Otello entered the bedchamber through a secret door and proceeded to strangle his innocent wife, accompanied by more loud and brutal noise. I know now that it was Verdi's prayer that insidiously hooked me on opera.

The perpetrator of my misery that evening was the Metropolitan Opera on tour. So smitten would I become with opera, that some years later I wrote to the archivist of that opera house, searching for an answer to the question, who besides Verdi that evening had planted in me the insidious potion that had activated my opera DNA.

I received a most gracious letter back, some days later, informing me that the astounding cast for that performance had included James McCracken as Otello, Gabriella Tucci as Desdemona and Robert Merrill as Iago. That letter comforted me, as I was pleased to learn that at least my addiction and passion for this great art form had begun with the operatic equivalent of a fine reserve wine.

And for me, so many years later, it remains that there is no greater Opera than the one I saw that momentous evening: Verdi's masterpiece, Otello.

-- Will Kent

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The idea of teaching an "opera class" was a personal dream of mine that actually began to materialize around 1996. Like many middle aged persons of my generation, I wanted a drastic change in my life that would bring new and exciting challenges while allowing me to continue to give to others. I had been a very successful physician for 25 years, but the changes in the Health Care System in this country were distancing me more and more from my patients and the care I felt they deserved. So I closed my practice in Denver, moved to Sebastopol and asked myself, "What now"?

Some months later, I was visiting a friend in Bristol, UK and I attended a class she was taking in the Adult Education Program at the University of Bristol. The class was entitled "Mozart's Operas" and it was brilliantly taught by a practicing Lawyer with no musical background other than his love of opera. A few days later, my friend had a dinner party attended by her opera teacher, myself and three other opera lovers.

After dinner, the group sat and listened to 10 different interpretations of the Willow Song from Verdi's Otello, and into the wee hours of the morning, we discussed each singer's interpretation of Verdi's brilliant music. I knew that evening that I wanted to surround myself with others who loved this grandest of all art forms. If a Lawyer could teach opera, I reasoned, why not a Physician?

I returned to Sebastopol and began to develop a curriculum, oblivious to the fact that I had no place to teach. After 30 years of attending opera in this country and Europe, as well as working as a "super" in productions at the Opera Company of Boston ("supers" are the seeming cast of thousands on stage who inhabit the opera but don't sing, thank God) and sitting through countless opera lectures, I had developed very definite ideas about how I would teach and what I could convey to others.

I determined that my main qualification for teaching was in fact my Passion for Opera. From that, I developed what I felt was an honest, straight forward approach to understanding and appreciating opera that was easy, friendly, exciting, non-intimidating and most of all would allow a student to relax, open his/hers ears and simply listen. The composer would do the rest. I named my first course: A Passion for Opera: All You Have to Do is Listen!

In 1998, I approached Santa Rosa Junior College's Community Education program about teaching the opera class. You can see from the article that follows, my effort has been as rewarding for me as I hope it has been for the nearly 1000 students I have taught over the past 6 years.

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I am concerned about the future of Opera. Over the years, my mission in teaching "opera appreciation" has become more defined and urgent. We need more opera goers who understand and love this magnificent art form and are dedicated to the composers who poured their lives into their works and the singers who give so much of themselves and their voices to interpretation.

More and more in this country and especially in Europe, the composers of the great classical operas and the great singers who interpret the roles, are being displaced by directors, producers, and conductors, who while important contributors, are in reality more dedicated to self-aggrandizement through their own creative and egotistical corruptions of classic works of art. While box office may be temporarily enhanced by a coloratura soprano straddling a Howitzer while singing Casta Diva to Nazi troops, such abuses in no way enhance or contribute to any new understanding or enjoyment of Bellini's bel canto masterpiece, Norma.

Opera will survive these dalliances of egos and economic bottom liners and thrive once again. It will only happen, however, when a more dedicated, passionate and educated audience, who pays first to hear then to see, returns. At that point opera will regain the luster and excitement that has thrilled audiences for hundreds of years.

Is there no place, then, for invention and creativity in Opera? One may hear La Boheme 25 times in a lifetime, but it cannot be boring to an opera lover as long as the composer's intent is fully realized and glorious vocal interpreters are allowed to sing the words of a simple 19th century seamstress and her romantic poet.

There has always been invention and creativity in Opera. Opera is a living art form. Invention and creativity happen every time a great singer steps onto the stage, and unencumbered by absurdity, is allowed to sing with all the nuance, color and magic that the composer has written.