Whenever I mention opera to anyone under fifty, I get eye-rolls and/or raised eyebrows. People our age associate opera with old white men in tuxedos and a fat guy singing "figaro." It seems that opera is a dying art form reserved for the aristocratic quasi-nobility, aka not something Millennials could possibly be interested in.

Fortunately for us, music is music, so it changes and evolves depending on whose hands it's in. When young artists see opera, they see a traditional and powerful form of art that’s ready to be revitalized. Opera can become something new and amazing when its traditional elements are infused with youthful perspectives and contemporary themes.

A perfect example is the recent opera produced by the Lyric Opera of Chicago called "Bel Canto." The world-premiere opera, which is based on the best-selling book by Ann Patchett of the same name, took nearly five years to make since it required an original score and libretto. The book is about a terrorist attack and hostage crisis an unnamed South American country, and the unlikely relationships that develop between terrorists and hostages (one of whom is an American opera singer), so adapting it to the stage seemed only natural.

"Bel Canto" was curated by one of the Lyric’s favorite sopranos, Renee Fleming. As curatorial director, she was able to select the composer and librettist, and decide the creative direction of the production. The power was in her hands to either follow tradition or create something new and unprecedented. Fleming chose to bring youthful voices to the Lyric stage by selecting Cuban-American Nilo Cruz to write the libretto and the young Peruvian-American composer Jimmy Lopez to set it to music. Lopez drew on his South American roots to portray the setting and characters so authentically that the opera was both intensely real and intensely human. The perspectives of Lopez and the rest of the creative team allowed the Lyric to put on a production with a never-before-seen newness of sound and content.

It had been ten years since the Lyric stage had seen a world premiere opera, and it had also been a long time since the Lyric was a space of political and social conversation. Though the opera was five years in the making, it premiered at a moment when the world was still reeling from the terrorist attacks in Paris. Since the story is about terrorism and included gunshots and images of violence, a statement was issued to the audience warning them about the sensitive content. A discussion was also held after the performance in which the audience could hear from the creative team about how they navigated the sensitive issue and interpreted the cultural and political significance of the story. The opera house is not used to being a place of controversy, so nobody knew how "Bel Canto" would be received.

The performance turned out to be an opportunity for healing and empathy for the audience since the terrorists depicted onstage were just as trapped (by poverty, by oppression, by the SWAT teams outside…) as their hostages were. The plot and music also humanized the terrorists and showed that they are human beings too, who feel pain and loss and love just like everyone else. By realizing how trapped they were, and how similar they were to their hostages, they gave up on violence and discovered love instead.

Through viewing this emotional portrayal of such a brutal and sensitive issue, the audience was reminded that music can be a force of love and peace and hope in our world, and that meeting violence with violence and hatred with hatred doesn’t help anything. The audience left the opera house feeling like the dark world we live in is just a little bit brighter than we thought.

"Bel Canto" was a prime example of the great things that can be done when young artists take an interest in opera and see it as more than a dusty, dying art form. By combining the awe-inspiring talent of opera singers and heart-wrenching drama of the operatic tradition with new sounds and contemporary issues, our generation can make opera relevant and useful again. If this art form dies out with all the old rich people that populate the seats of opera houses now, the world will lose a very powerful and beautiful form of communication.