The Final Dance Through Opera HistoryFeb 14 '06 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line The gripping conclusion- Nazis, Nixon and Nightingales.
For the first time in opera history, Italy no longer held centre-stage in the genre's development. In fact, it was so far off centre-stage to actually be outside stage door, vainly hoping for the next Verdi or Puccini to emerge. None would, and with Puccini's death, so died successful Italian opera composers. However, for the first time two English speakers- England and America- were showing some promise. To say nothing of some rather interesting developments in Eastern Europe. Jitterbug with Janacek Leos Janacek (1854-1928) was a Czech composer who hit international fame late in life- he was 50 when his first successful opera, Jenufa was performed in 1904. In the just-under twenty years before his death who wrote some of the most startlingly original operas which not only explore new musical frontiers, but are also beloved by audiences. These two aspects rarely meet, but Janacek manages it. We can thank conductor Charles Mackerras for getting the mainstream Western opera companies on to this Czech opera guru. Janacek, like Smetana half a century earlier, imported Czech folk idioms into his music but by weaving them into a dense fabric of European classical style, you get the pungent harmonies without the great big sign-posting THIS IS A FOLK IDIOM. He never really did comedy- though there is levity- and his opera about the lives of animals, The Cunning Little Vixen can seem a bit cutesy in synopsis but the music ensures it never is. His last opera, From the House of the Dead, set in a gulag, is particularly strange because nothing really happens yet its 90 minutes of brittle, fragile music draw you into the sufferings of the prisoners. Janacek's The Makropulos Case, about a mysterious woman who never ages, has almost dropped from the repertoire due to an unfortunate performance at the Met in 1996. Richard Versalle sang the line 'too bad you can only live so long' then promptly died, onstage, of a swift heart attack. Some Stuff to Listen To: The Cunning Little Vixen is the most approachable, but the broodingly dramatic score of The Makropulos Case is also wonderful. Kujawiak with Krenek In the lead up to Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Germany was the place to be for creativity, slowly wrestling the title of artist favourite from Paris. Jazz was hugely popular, and found its way into a number of operas which are now more highly regarded as historical curiousities as opposed to popular performers. Ernst Krenek (1900-1991)'s Jonny spielt auf (Jonny Strikes Up) was one such opera which was a massive smash hit in Germany when it premiered in 1927. This heavily jazz-inflected work was also heavily condemned by the growing Nazi movement- not just for using 'black' music, but also by making the hero a black man who finishes the opera standing astride the world playing his violin. The one main lingering figure from this period is Kurt Weill (1900-1950) who, among other achievements, wrote one of the world's most famous jazz ballads Mack the Knife. He is best known for his quasi-opera The Threepenny Opera, an adaptation into the jazz idiom of John Gay's original 1728 work. He has two 'real operas' that are both rarely performed, but good. The bleak Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, about social degeneration (and home to the famous 'Alabama Song') where the only crime is running out of money, and the American realist drama Street Scene. One of the towering figureheads of Western Music was Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Up until this point, despite Wagner, Strauss and Debussy pushing out its boundaries, music had plodded along with tonality. This is now not the time nor place, nor do I have the inclination as it makes my head hurt, to get into tonality but then Schoenberg came along and basically screwed it all up, proclaimed it dead and kicked it out the window. With it, he developed serialism, a method were all twelve tones were of equal importance, meaning no one tonal centre. He wrote only one, unfinished, opera- Moses und Aron and a short, intense piece for soprano Erwartung (Expectation). Both are intense, rarely performed and can be musically devastating experiences when done well. Schoenberg's colleague Alban Berg (1885-1935) wrote two operas, Wozzeck of 1925 and the unfinished Lulu Both are outstanding masterpieces of the genre. Serialism is about as appetising to the general public as pubic lice, yet in Berg's operas whilst there may be initial discomfort in the opening minutes audiences soon find themselves sucked in against their will and a good performance of the three hour Lulu can fly past in what feels like minutes. Lulu is also noticeable for a death count that would make Wagner or Puccini proud- not one main character survives to the end. However in 1937, Nazism took a grip on music with the branding of 'Entartete Musik' (degenerate music), due to the success of a similiar attack on the visual arts the year before. This exhibition brutally attacked the Jewish composers such as Schoenberg, and non-Jews who were thought Bolshevik- such as Stravinsky (more on him soon). Composers such as Krenek and Weill were condemned for their use of 'black' music- aka jazz- which went so far to suggest that jazz was in fact a Great Big Jewish Conspiracy to destroy German music (in other words, Wagner). This was the final wake up call for many German musicians to leave the country, mostly to the US, where they became the most talented film composers in Hollywood of the immediate post-war years (especially Korngold). Few of the German composers who left Germany ever returned, and their places of death are nearly always in California. This mass emigration to the United States from Europe is what gives America its strength in art music today- some of Europe's brightest musical brains were suddenly teaching at American universities and many a rising star was sitting, taking notes in their lectures. The composers who did stay in Germany and to their principles often paid with their life (notable exception: R Strauss). The Nazis, largely to appease the pesky Red Cross, set up a special holding camp called Terezin which they filled with artists and scientists. The operas written here, for whatever was available and to be performed for visiting (including Red Cross) officials, are becoming increasingly popular. Maurice Sendak, the popular children's author (Where the Wild Things Are) now rising opera producer- is currently reviving Brundibar, an opera written to be performed by the children kept in Terezin. There is a certain added potency in the knowledge that after each curtain, certain members of the young cast would have been loaded on to trains for the destination of Auschwitz. Some Stuff to Listen To: Wozzeck is considered the superior work, but I adore Lulu for its seedy story and the moments of jazz by Berg- the most alien jazz you'll ever hear. The centrepiece of the opera is a short orchestral interlude that is a perfect palindrome. For some good degeneration, the best and brightest is without a doubt Kurt Weill. Galop with Gershwin In America, George Gershwin (1898-1937) was writing hit musicals, a new and uniquely American form, when he wrote the first great American Opera- 1935's smash hit Porgy and Bess. Gershwin was probably the greatest melody writer for the operatic stage since Puccini- line up the hits in Porgy including Summertime, I Got Plenty o'Nuttin and Bess, You is My Woman Now- yet there has been some debate on whether Porgy is actually a musical or opera. It has been presented in both forms, and seems to be more convincing as a musical- Gershwin in the opera versions writes in many musical conventions (more dance than usual, and reprises which are uncommon in opera). It is an opera that should be performed more often than it is, but is largely held back by casting difficulties. Gerswhin wisely stipulated that it was never to be performed by 'black-face' performers (white performers in lots of make up) but only by genuinely black performers. There is a bit of a deficit in this regard in opera. Many of the great composers of this period passed through Paris at some point, and many sat in the studio of teacher Nadia Boulanger (who would also instruct the next generation of American composers sixty-seventy years later). In France, Ravel had taken the mantle from Debussy as the father of everything good in French composition, and his two, short and incredibly witty operas both demonstrate a flair for orchestration and impeccable theatricality that most composers would have killed for. The better of the two is L'enfant et les sortileges. Igor Stravinsky, one of the fathers of everything in music due to his liberation of rhythm and form, wrote a few semi-operas in Oedpius Rex and The Song of the Nightingale but his one true opera, The Rake's Progress of 1951 is the pinnacle of neoclassicism- a nod to Mozart (it was the first 'numbers' opera- i.e recit-aria-ensemble-recit-duet-etc... in over a hundred years) with all the knowledge that the 150 years since had brought to the table. Russian opera was represented by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953). This was a composer with a deep sense of irony, who swapped between brutal modernism post-Stravinsky and a neat, tidy neoclassicism. He was constantly constrained by Stalin's doctrines about Russian Art and that he died just a few hours prior to Stalin is an irony that probably wouldn't have escaped him. His most popular opera is the crazy farce The Love for Three Oranges but he also adapted the sprawling War and Peace for the opera stage. Some Stuff to Listen To: This is very possibly my favourite selection of opera. L'enfant et les sortileges is divine, and at only an hour, is short to listen to and is treasure trove of musical miracles in easy bites. Poulenc's music can switch from bright and humourous to melancholic within a phrase, even in the farce Les mamelles. And Gershwin is Gershwin, and if you don't have Ella Fitzgerald singing Summertime in your CD collection you are a fool. Arabesque with Adams After the war, opera no longer enjoyed its place as the vanguard of the Arts. New operas, increasingly complex, were shunned by the public (sometimes deservedly, sometimes not) as too difficult to understand. Audiences wanted operas as entertainment, not a music appreciation lesson or experimental lab. Increasingly, entertainment onstage meant the musical and it was now that the golden age of the musical began and opera seemed to slowly drift towards the sunset. This is not to say that there weren't any successes, but they were becoming increasingly more isolated. Immediately following the war, Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) picked up where Ravel left off with his absurd, and deeply funny, comedy Les mamelles des tiresias. He got progessively more depressed though, with the tragic Les dialogue des Carmelites and then the depressingly bleak La voix humaine. For a brief moment it looked like Italy may produce another great composer- any one from Berio, Sciarrino, Nono or Dallapiccola- but audiences shunned them to the point there was almost a shift in the world's axis. This is a pity, as some of their stuff is brilliant and well worth the effort, but it'll never pack in the punters for an opera house. Elsewhere in Europe, opera got progressively weirder in both music and drama, with Ligeti, Stockhausen and Rihm producing works that are only similiar in that they are completely ignored by audiences (except, perhaps, the absurdity of Ligeti's La grand macabre). England produced their first great opera composer in three hundred years- Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) who wrote the brilliant Peter Grimes to re-open Sadlers Wells in 1945 and never looked back with a great string of hits ranging from comedy (Herring) to Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream) to psycho-drama (Death in Venice) to gothic horror (The Turn of the Screw). His colleague Michael Tippett (1905-1998) was the only other British composer to come close to Britten's success, but even then it is a distant second, with more brutal and complex works such as the iconic King Priam of 1962. In the second half of the twentieth century, America finally developed its own operatic voice- to the point that nowadays almost all new operas are being commissioned by American companies (with Denmark and Finland in particular racing to catch up). Gian Carlo Menotti (b. 1911) continues to write operas, unfortunately they're quite often musically weak. However his earlier works, despite not exactly being musically thrilling either, contain a superb sense of theatricality. His best are also his two shortest, The Telephone & The Medium. His 'opera for television', Amahl and the Night Visitors is also quite charming. Philip Glass (b. 1937) wrote the iconic Einstein on the Beach with Robert Wilson and it still holds its own as one of the weirdest nights you'll ever spend in a theatre. His third opera, Akhnaten is much more accessible, though presented in tableaux form and sometimes in A minor for minutes on end with gently undulating arpeggios in the lower strings. Finally, the only other composer from our time to have regularly performed operas is John Adams (b. 1947) whose Nixon in China was a huge international hit in 1987. Adams took Glass' minimalism and basically funked it up with a more dynamic orchestra, switching patterns more regularly and something more akin to stadium rock. Nixon is a hugely energetic opera, even in its reflective bits, and is wonderful but Adams has done better sense, refining his instantly recognisable style to something more subtle and wonderful. Some Stuff to Listen To: I love Britten's operas, and if you're starting out you can't go past Peter Grimes and the brisk comedy Albert Herring. Adams and Glass are two composers who have penetrated the mainstream market- Glass in particular was very in vogue in the 1980s in a way few composers have ever been since- and Nixon in China despite its faults is still a rollicking good time. And now... Some of the most exciting new work in opera is coming out of the US- Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking was an extraordinary success, receiving a dozen different productions in its first two years- but its strength was more on the strength of the drama than the music. His second opera, The End of the Affair was not so successful (it is also an interesting observation on the large number of operas being adapted from films). Heggie's rise to prominence was largely due to the commission from the Houston Grand Opera, who have single-handedly down more to develop new opera than any other company in the world. They also got Daniel Catan's opera Florencia en el Amazonas onstage to general acclaim. HGO also discovered Mark Adamo's opera talent with 1998's Little Women and, more recently, his boisterous comedy Lysistrata (and HGO has commissioned two more Adamo operas over the next six seasons). Outside the US, the UK's Thomas Ades has written a very successful The Tempest, taking the ultimate opera challenge in setting Shakespeare, generally considered the hardest English author to set to music. 2005 saw three very publicised operatic premieres. In San Francisco, John Adams' Dr Atomic, about Oppenheimer and the development of the atomic bomb, was received with widespread acclaim and adoration from both audiences and the hard-to-please opera press. Conversely, Lorin Maazel's 1984 was treated with absolute derision by all and sundry, with many critics pleading with Maazel to focus instead on his stellar conducting and put away his dreams of being a great composer (the fact that he completely bankrolled the Royal Opera Covent Garden production didn't help matters either). Finally, most recently there was the premiere of An American Tragedy by Tobias Picker at the Met in New York. America's finest opera house has had a woeful reputation of developing new work (Picker's work joining only John Corigliano's messy Ghosts of Versailles and a rather weak adaptation of The Great Gatsby by John Harbison)- largely due to the iron rule by artistic director James Levine's preferences and also because as a 4,000 seat barn of a theatre they have to keep in mind box office sales. Every few years with almost Swiss accuracy the music press proclaims opera dead. Again. Fashions change, and opera as mass entertainment was overtaken by cinema long ago. Perhaps the decline in cinema attendance at the moment is merely echoing what began in the opera world fifty years ago (and begs the question- if opera was the cinema of the 1800s, and cinema was the cinema of the 1900s, what will be the cinema of the 2000s?). There is a worrying decline in new works being written. Firstly, opera is monstrouly expensive and with the increasing corporatisation of the arts few companies indeed can afford the massive financial risk of a new work. Secondly, opera companies believe that audiences will shy away from new work. There is some truth in this- Moses und Aron will never sell as well as La boheme- but then again, post-war works aren't exactly given much of a sporting chance either. Perhaps most importantly, few composers can write opera. A composer is lucky to receive one comission in his professional life for opera which leaves no room for improvement and development (Donizetti wrote 72 operas, Verdi wrote 28 operas, Adams as the world's most prolific composer of opera in our time has written 3 and a half). Interestingly, as musical theatre moves increasingly more downmarket to attract more profit (We Will Rock You, I'm looking at you) it may actually prove to be the saviour of opera as a form of the 'thinking man's musical'. Whilst I'm generally sceptical of the new chief of the Met, Peter Gelb, his plans to develop new opera works in a smaller Lincoln Center theatre with the possibility (but, importantly, no guarantee) of transfer to the Met mainstage are very possibly the future for opera development. But it's easy for any opera buff such as myself to descend into gloom about what I love. I try not to do that. There is a lot already out there to love, and although opera has shrunk it ain't going anywhere. Some Dancing Partners Voice Types are explained in that handy-dandy link. All Other Parts: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four  |
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