The Rant continues...

This post was submitted to us in May, 2010 by Meche Kroop

Thrilling to this afternoon's broadcast of last autumn's Faust from Chicago Lyric Opera, I asked myself "What makes this such a beloved opera"? Duh, it's the TUNES! Can't anyone write tunes anymore? It seems like the academic branch of music approves the abstract, the inaccessible, the mind-numbingly boring. The critics fall all over themselves praising the new creations. Granted, some members of the audience seem to like these contemporary so-called operas, especially if they are tarted up with special multimedia effects. But for most of us, we avoid them like we avoid bedbugs, or we persuade ourselves to "give them a chance" and then walk out of the opera house stony-faced and glassy-eyed with no intention of ever seeing them again.

So, if most contemporary opera fails to sustain this precious art, what is the future of opera? Here is one opera-lover's opinion: American musical theater. On my way into the Metropolitan Opera House, I could not fail to notice the crowds thronging to see "South Pacific". They have been thronging all year, night after night. The history of the American musical is a glorious one and I fail to see the difference between that and what we call "opera" which happens in an opera house. Well, there is one difference and that is amplification. What if we took all these gloriously tuneful creations and presented them in a rather smaller house with good voices sufficient to carry without electronic assistance? New York City Opera has done a bit of this over the years but hasn't trusted the process and used amplification. I personally don't think we need big "names" to get people to see good music theater.

Some would argue with me that these are not operas. So, what IS an opera? It is a story accompanied by vocal music. It seems to me that Carmen had a bit of difficulty getting recognized as an opera because of the spoken dialogue. Are "Entfuhrung" and "Zauberflote" any lesser on that account? At the very least, American musicals, the good ones anyway, seem to do a great job using melodies (TUNES!) that stick in one's mind and swell in one's heart to enhance a story. I think not only of South Pacific but Oklahoma, Pacific Overtures, A Little Night Music, Candide, Carousel, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George....well, you get the the picture.

In my opinion, English is not a beautiful language to sing as Italian is. But it does lend itself very nicely to cleverness and humor. That is why the works of Gilbert and Sullivan are so cherished. They need full status in the operatic canon as well.

So, let's build a small opera house (something like Juilliard has) and bring in a large audience for an expanded notion of what opera is. It's all about entertainment isn't it? Mozart and Rossini didn't write for academia. They wrote for the public.