I Hate Comic Opera. Sometimes.

As an actor, I learned comedy through improv theatre, but fell in love with opera for the epic, the heroic, the transcendent. And I've seen a lot of comic opera that is just not, well...funny.

But I just spent three months submerged in the best Italian buffa ever written. If I've learned anything, it's that even comic opera, even with all its iron-clad notes, timing, and traditional schtick, must have an absolutely ridiculous improvisation to it: the actors have to feel like asking,

"Are people actually watching us have this much fun?" 

and the audience has to feel like asking,

"Am I allowed to have this much fun?" 

Otherwise if it is practiced and cute -- if it only qualifies as 'charming' -- we're only imitating what comedy in the theatre is actually supposed to be.

And the difference between a good joke and a bad shtick is that a joke has to come from something the character would actually do, even in their own absurd logic. Schtick uses a logic outside of the characters - it's something superimposed onto them.

I learned this from a fart joke in Pasquale.  At least a fart is good for something.

This is Glenn Seven Allen, being very funny in a Barber directed by Benjamin Wayne Smith, who is also very funny. Credit to Wildeye Photography, whom I hope got some good laughs.