People ask me this almost every time, often in a lowered voice, like a confession. Here is why it should hold nobody back.
There is a moment I recognise well by now. It is when someone hesitates over booking a RandOpéra and finally comes out with it, slightly embarrassed: “but the thing is, I know nothing about opera”. I hear it on the phone, I read it in messages, sometimes I catch it in a look as we set off. So I would rather say it once and for all, in black and white.
The RandOpéra was never designed for people in the know. It was designed for surprise, for what happens when a real voice rises among the trees, a few metres from you, with no microphone and no stage. And to live that, there is nothing to revise. Here are the five assumptions that come up most often, and why they fall apart one after another.
1. “You have to know about opera.”
No. Most of the people who come have never set foot in an opera house, and that is absolutely fine. Nobody will ask you the title of the aria, or the name of the composer, or whether the voice is a soprano or a mezzo. What happens is far simpler than that. You walk, you chat, you half forget why you are there, and then the singing starts. What you feel at that moment depends on no musical education at all. It either grabs you in the gut or it does not, and I can promise you it grabs almost everyone.
2. “It is too posh, it is not my world.”
I understand where the image comes from. You say “opera” and you picture red velvet, evening dress, stiff silence. Forget all of that. Here we are in walking boots, in jumpers, with a rucksack and a water bottle. We sit down on a rock or in the grass. There is no dress code, no allocated seat, no correct way to hold yourself. The only elegance that counts is the elegance of the place and of the voice. The rest is an outing in the open air just like the ones you already do, with a little extra soul waiting at the end of the path.
3. “You have to be a serious walker.”
The half-day RandOpéra is around two hours of walking on accessible paths, at an easy pace, with breaks. I always choose routes where you can hold a conversation without getting out of breath. If you already walk for an hour or two at the weekend without thinking about it, you are more than ready. And if you have any doubt about a particular date, write to me beforehand: I will tell you honestly whether that day’s route will suit you. My job is precisely to adapt the outing to the people who are there, not the other way round.
4. “I will be asked to join in and I will feel awkward.”
None of that. You have nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing to applaud if you do not feel like it. The singing is a suspended moment, and everyone takes it in their own way. Some close their eyes, some get their phone out, others find tears coming without quite knowing why. There is no staging that pushes you to the front, no circle where everyone holds hands. You are free, simply present, and that is all anyone asks of you.
5. “An opera voice in the middle of a forest must sound terrible.”
The opposite is true. A lyric voice needs no PA system, it is built to carry through open space, and nature gives it an acoustic I find more beautiful than plenty of concert halls. The singing lasts around twenty minutes, the artist stands a few steps away, and the silence of the forest makes every note sharper. I keep the artist’s name secret until the day itself, in fact, because the surprise is part of the experience. You are not coming to see a name on a poster. You are coming for a moment you will not forget.
There we are. If you have read this far, the urge was probably already there somewhere, behind the small hesitation. The RandOpéra is made for exactly that: for the curious, not for the experts. For people who want to feel something rare without having to tick a single box. If you want to know more about how the outing runs, the prices and its spirit, it is all on the RandOpéra page. And if you would rather live it through words first, I tell the story of one of those mornings in RandOpéra: when an opera voice appears at a bend in the path.
On the same theme
The next RandOpéra is coming up
Setting off from Divonne-les-Bains, half a day at €40, a full day at €55. Places go quickly and the artist stays secret until the morning itself. Join the RandOpéra WhatsApp group to get the next dates before everyone else and book your place.