The Mozart Effect

I've noticed that people who aren't "into" opera or classical music seem to think that Mozart was the only opera composer. There have been two instances in the past few weeks that confirm this hypothesis.

When I was in Traviata, I was, of course, humming and singing bits and pieces of it all the time. Then I expanded my Verdi humming repertoire to Rigoletto. Alex, of course, followed suit, and spent a day or two humming Caro Nome. So one day when I picked him up from school, in the thick of the knock-knock joke phase, his teacher told me some knock-knock joke involving Beethoven (I don't remember it exactly) and then said she found that joke in honor of Mozart, because Alex had been singing Mozart all week. "Oh!" I replied, "Has he been singing Papageno?" and Alex replied, "No, the banana song." (I'll add the link later - it's a clip of Renee Fleming on Sesame Street, singing a counting song to the tune of Caro Nome, and there are these bananas in it that freak me out.) I held my tongue about the composer mix-up because really, it wasn't worth it.

The other interaction was with an old high school friend on that social networking site almost everyone belongs to. I have videos there of Alex and me singing a medley from La Fille. This h.s. friend commented that he liked it, Mozart opera, his favorite. Umm... this time I did reply with a comment and a correction.

While I'm glad that the Non-Opera-Lovin' Public at least knows the name of a classical composer, it's not all about Mozart. It easily could be, but it's not.