Opera in Crisis: Tradition, Present, Future

In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Henry Pleasants, author, critic and historian, discusses various aspects of the contemporary opera scene from the viewpoint of one who has been listening to, and writing about, opera in Europe and America for sixty years. The crisis he describes is twofold. On the one hand, producers and their set designers have been taking it upon themselves to reinterpret and, in many outlandish cases, to ignore or distort the composers' original instructions. On the other hand, there was been a remarkable dearth of viable new operas since the heyday of Puccini and Richard Strauss in the first half of the century. The result is that there has been virtually no growth in the repertory, and the opera-going public suffers either from boredom or from outrage at the bizarre productions on offer. First placing opera in the frame of Western (European) musical evolution over the past four centuries, Pleasants then identifies the problems associated specifically with opera - the successive dominance of singer, composer, conductor and producer. He goes on to tackle such pertinent contemporary concerns as the transfer of opera from opera house to film; the misguided omission of unwritten appoggiaturas; a rising pitch; the bias against transposition; and the vexatious question of the ages at which singers should begin their careers. Discussion of the German season at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1980s and the achievements of the Vienna State Opera in the decade 1945-55 shows what can be accomplished by the right personnel and the right management at the right time and place under the right circumstances. Other essays touch on the problems that singers have brought upon themselves by the interpolation of unwritten high notes; opera as propaganda; the jargon of vocalism; and the discovery of the oldest recorded singing voice. A concluding article assesses the present state of the operatic vocal art.