Let me tell you the kind of people that my friend and I had to rub elbows with as we walked into the Shubert Theater just prior to the curtain for Carmen. I only saw two other people remotely close to my age. One was a 13-year-old who looked more miserable than any child should have any healthy right to be. The other was barely out of toddlerhood and looked about ready to throw a tantrum in his pressed shirt and shiny black shoes. The perfect representation of the pool of operagoers would be this: a woman in her 60s with a silk shirt, a pressed silk skirt, black silk gloves, nude hose, snakeskin heels, pearl necklaces and bracelets and a Fendi handbag clutched tightly in her 24-karat gold-ringed hands. Don't forget the rhinestone-studded opera binoculars. I call her the "Opera Diva." We were sitting in a vat of steaming privilege stew, a mélange consisting of money-flavored Boston aristocracy. Here I was, in my white hooded sweatshirt, sneakers and teal-colored skinny jeans feeling exceptionally poor next to Opera Diva. But what was I to expect? The environment of the Shubert itself foreshadowed the type of people in attendance. There was a crystal chandelier in the middle of the theater. The main chamber was adorned with baroque, gilded columns and meticulous fish scale carvings on the walls. It was all incredibly beautiful. I was almost floored when I walked in. But I didn't need the theater to impress me into speechlessness; the show itself would quite soon accomplish that.

From the second I heard the first few chords in the overture, my dark mood from feeling poor lifted and I couldn't stop smiling as the curtain rose on Seville. The orchestration was, of course, perfectly executed and the conductor, the famous Boston Pops Opera conductor Keith Lockhart, really drew out the sensualities and almost seductive emotions from Bizet's composition. The sound really draws from Cuban roots, specifically of Havana (thus the "Habanera") and I thought I heard some Middle Eastern influences as well, perhaps even overtones from the Iberian Peninsula and Córdoba.

The four main performers of Carmen were, needless to say, just fabulous. Tenor John Bellemer's portrayal of Don José was almost transcendent. I haven't heard such a great, strong tenor since the last time I watched Pavarotti on Youtube; I missed that powerful and heavenly voice. I wanted to hear him singing every second. To balance Bellemer's smooth and creamy tone was Dana Beth Miller's hard and sultry one. Her interpretation of Carmen is one to admire. She is perfectly suited to the role, which requires one to be sexy, opportunistic, loveable and seductive at the same time. Her voice is rich and thick; it has a resonance that rings in the chest and fills your head with sound. And speaking of resonant, Daniel Mobbs, who plays the cocky and self-assured Escamillo the matador, had a booming powerful baritone that made my head thud and my seat shake. I nearly squealed with joy at his excellent execution of "The Toreador Song." It's too famous to perform less than masterfully; he does not disappoint. His character also provided some welcome comic relief in a storyline rife with lust, murder, deceit and all those other great things. Finally, Hanan Alattar, who played the cheated first love Micaala, floats in with a beautiful high soprano: fluty but powerful, sweet but emotional. My one qualm with the show was that sometimes the orchestra would overpower the cast and the voices would be lost amid blaring trumpets. But still, the great overall performance made suffering through a sore behind and stiff legs quite worthwhile.

Listening to and watching the whole work from which those two famous tunes, "Habanera" and "The Toreador Song" come, a different sort of feeling came upon me. Those songs, out of context and usually extensively curtailed to fit into the time slot of a 30-second commercial, hold a completely different meaning when lodged in their correct places in the opera. Carmen, the beautiful and hedonistic gypsy girl, sings the famous "Habanera" when the soldiers of a brigade ask when she will love them. Afterward, during the second act, the matador Escamillo sings "The Toreador Song" when he is toasting himself for a great bullfight and flirting with Carmen. These timeless arias hold a different type of significance in proper context. These characters are declaiming their lives and presenting their philosophies, and these actors are pouring out their souls and their voices to live up to the name of these renowned arias-it's almost criminal to attach them to a Spongebob Squarepants episode or a Comcast Dish TV commercial. The themes of Carmen are too profound for that.

Since the word "l'amour" or "love" is thrown around a lot during the four acts of Carmen, one might suspect that it's an important theme of the opera itself. Those suspicions are entirely correct. Love just abounds in this score (it's mentioned at least 27 times in "Habanera" alone). Carmen, the aforementioned bohemian, comes in and seduces Don José, the greenhorn soldier, after she takes a liking to his looks. Later, when she is arrested for getting into a knife fight with another woman (who ends up with a slash on her face), Carmen convinces Don José (using lots of "love") to help her escape. She runs away and he ends up escaping with her, leaving a shy and honest girl who truly loves him, Micaala, and his dying mother behind. Then somehow, another man, Escamillo the matador, falls in love with Carmen too. Don José and Escamillo fight for Carmen's love and in the end, Don José's restrictive jealousy leads to the play's dramatic conclusion. The storyline just does not fit with a plug for Smartwater.

What I think Carmen accomplishes is artistically examining love, that word so liberally sprinkled into the libretto, stripped from all fancy and romantic ideals. It gets to what love is at its crux: a primal and insatiable obsession, an overwhelming psychological want to absorb a significant other. When love is inseparable from an unquenchable appetite for attention, is it still so beautiful? When the madness of love is brought to the surface, is it really still love and not lust? I found this theme to be dripping from every corner of the play and the richness that it adds to both the story and the music is quite delicious.

After walking out of the theater, I wondered to myself why younger people don't enjoy going to the opera. And I don't mean those little kids that were practically strapped into their seats by their parents. I mean the teenagers and the twentysomethings. Perhaps opera itself is becoming an anachronism in this era. Older types of productions tend to be very dramatic, maybe even overly dramatic and exaggerated. Traditionally, all aspects of the production were embellished tenfold to make up for the inability of audiences to see subtleties. Today, in an era of movies with zoom-in shots, black-box theaters, highly sensitive microphones and advanced lighting techniques, the grandiosity and bombastic ways of opera might seem loud and silly. It's in this way that opera might be antiquated. But it's an acquired taste, I guess. I still love it. I still consider it one of the greatest, purest, most beautiful types of musical expression. It is the fastest growing genre of classical art forms, according to the Boston Lyric Opera press kit, so perhaps opera is making a comeback in today's society. I certainly hope so. This is too wonderful an experience to let fade into the faint memories of another generation. I felt uplifted and in awe of the beauty that people could create together. I actually cannot wait until my next opera experience. But next time, I'll be sure to wear heels and a dress, or something. My dirty sneakers felt awkward next to Opera Diva's crocodile-skin pumps.