Rock concerts are so over! Totally. They’re just too 20^th century. Most operas were written way back in the 19^th, but they seem brand-new compared to a lot of the rap music we’re hearing. The love songs in operas are romantic, and the breaking-up ones are really terrific. Operas can also be sexist, but not exactly in the same rap way. In a 19^th century way, long before the feminist revolution.

There’s an opera club just for millennials in Silicon Valley. Members only have to be under 33 to join. It includes students from Berkeley and Stanford, and already has a group rate from the San Francisco Opera. The club is called Millennials for Mimi, but it’s also for Floria in Tosca, Violetta in Traviata, Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly.  Members are considering Norma, but she’s buried alive, and that doesn’t really happen anymore. The club meets every four months to vote for our choices, and there’s always wine and artisan cheese.

Think of La Bohème for something truly relevant. There’s Mimi who’s practically frozen in the miserable apartment she can’t afford. Rents have sky-rocketed in Paris, just like anywhere you’d want to live in the US. Back then, people who had tuberculosis were sent to sanitariums in places like Switzerland, but there’s absolutely no way Mimi could have paid for that. either. France didn’t yet have a universal healthcare system in 19^th century, and sending people to the mountains seldom helped. High rents and expensive medical care are both happening right here and now. An American seamstress with a pre-existing condition wouldn’t qualify even if we followed the French example. So far, we haven’t.

A sympathetic opera director could tweak La Bohème a bit at the end and send Mimi to Martinique, where they speak French and it’s lovely and warm all winter. She might have lived much longer there.

The same aria Rodolfo sings to her would work just as well if Mimi sailed off to the French West Indies instead of dying in that garret.  Rodolfo is an artist who could paint picturesque local scenes and sell them to plantation owners. The ending is the only thing that needs updating to seem completely modern. TB isn’t invariably fatal. Why should sopranos and tenors have to sing their last aria when they’re dying?  Opera stars admit that singing when they’re simultaneously coughing, bleeding and lying down is extremely challenging.

In Tosca, all the lead characters die, but Floria shouldn’t have to fling herself off a parapet. Opera singers tend to injure their actual selves when they’re required to do that, especially in rehearsals. Divas aren’t acrobats. Our club met one who needed arthroscopic knee surgery and missed three performances. How about changing Floria’s parapet suicide to mere overdosing?  Her lover Mario could save her with a secret potion like Narcan. That wouldn’t make Mario any less heroic and they could still sing their grand duet.  Save the parapet for Scarpia; the tyrannical, lustful, corrupt villain in a powerful position.  Almost every opera has one, but he could easily be the worst.

Club members always vote for La Traviata, partly because of Violetta’s intriguing profession. She’s a courtesan who sees no shame in some financial help from gentleman friends.   Alfredo, an artist from a prominent family, is deeply in love with her and able to ignore her sideline.  He might have had a lot in common with Rodolfo, but Alfredo has a father who objects fiercely to having an artist son and a courtesan daughter-in-law. Though Violetta has a glorious soprano voice, neither that nor her promise to become a faithful wife won’t move him a centimeter. He equates Violetta with a porn star, and sends his son away from Paris. Violetta also has tuberculosis, clearly the favorite death sentence for 19^th century sopranos. Though his father eventually relents to let Alfredo return from exile, he’s too late. Violetta dies in his arms.

Eloping to a French island never occurred to Violetta, Alfredo, Mimi or Rodolfo, though both operas are set in France. How could they not know? At our next opera club meeting, we’ll discuss why no one went to the Caribbean, and the ways a courtesan’s life is valuable and should be saved.

Madame Butterfly is another favorite, but even after Puccini wrote five versions, Cio-Cio San commits suicide in all the endings.

With the suicide rate rising alarmingly, we’d really welcome another finale.

Hari-Kari by sword or knife is rarely done anymore, and it’s depressing to see Cio-Cio’s exquisite kimono covered in blood. Let her take sleeping pills with just enough sake so her devoted Suzuki arrives in time to save her. Cio-Cio would still be heartbroken, but alive in Kyoto, which has Geishas disguised by elaborate makeup and hairdos.  No one will recognize her, and she can reprise Un Bel Di Vedremo with her son in her lap. The audience will leave assuming she’ll meet an unmarried American tourist at a Geisha show.

At the next meeting, Millennials for Mimi will be working on Aida and Rigoletto, and thinking about what can be done with Norma. With all that operatic suicide, betrayal, torture, collusion, corruption, lying and disease available to us, 2019 will be the most exciting year since our founding in 2015!