Supporting The Arts

My love of the arts is real. My available “free time” to attend live arts and budget for tickets and donations to support local organizations is also real.

Between my personal involvement with nonprofit organizations, my kids passions, and my mother-in-law’s board affiliations, we pretty much tap out as maxed at this point in our lives. And I have to be okay with that. In fact, I’m pretty pumped with it because it drives some focus and commitment for this busy time period of raising 4 kids between 14 and 4.

Last weekend the kids and I joined a dance challenge for “Baby Shark.”

This past Friday David and I went to see the final show for the 2018-2019 Virginia Opera season. It was “Madama Butterfly.” The set was gorgeous with cherry trees in bloom and minimal Japanese houses with sliding walls. The storyline was heavy. Puccini wrote the opera based on Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, by David Belasco, and it debuted in Milan in 1904. Over a century and five versions later, the Puccini music and libreto are still gorgeous and intense. (Talk about a different experience from performing Baby Shark in our backyard!)

For starters, the opera is set up as a home for geisha’s, but basically the main character gets sold off to an American soldier that swoops in and leaves the female lead waiting three years for his return. Layer on the fact that one evening or weekend together left the woman pregnant, yikes! (Stop reading now, if you don’t want the ending to be spoiled.)

Then for him to send in his new American wife to take his boy away from the Japanese “wife,” whom then commits suicide because she’s so heartbroken… heavy. Her whole life’s purpose had been around waiting for a man to love her and caring for their child. No meaning and purpose lead to dark desperation and many times people choosing to end their suffering.

2018 Opera Gala with opera singer, Rachel Mikol, and my mother-in-law, Elisabeth Muhlenfeld Wollan.

Are you glad you decided to read this? I’m already tired of Madama Butterfly just writing a brief synopsis, but I’m not tired about considering how the arts (opera, print making, painting, writing, dance, etc.) can make us feel and relate to the world around us.

Reading an article or looking at pictures online will never compare to personal, human interaction with art and performance. Therefore we get the babysitter, toss on a fresh outfit after a long work day and show up to shows, fundraising events and board meetings.

The future’s only guarantee is the use of more and more computer code taking on more more of the functions people have been performing for centuries. BUT a computer can never replace the creativity or emotional intelligence of humans.

Therefore, my strategy is to invest my time and money where you get a Two For One: 1) Today’s humans get a place to do introspection while creating art for others to enjoy and learn from and 2) Showing my kids that doing art is fun and investing in our local arts community is important.

Lotsa love,

Leah