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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.
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.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
16 people want to read
About the author
Henry Pleasants
24 books6 followersHe studied voice, piano and composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, receiving an honorary doctorate in 1977.
In 1930 he became a music critic for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. He became their music editor from 1934 to 1942.
In 1948-49, he served as the army's liaison officer with the Austrian government. He served as an intelligence officer in Munich, Bern and Bonn for the Foreign Service beginnin in 1950. In 1964 he retired from the Foreign Service. He settled in London with his wife, Virginia Pleasants, a harpsichordist and fortepianist.
For 3 decades he gave lectures and conducted seminars on singing at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.
From 1945 to 1955, he wrote articles on European musical events for The New York Times. He wrote regularly for Opera Quarterly, was London editor for the magazine Stereo Review, and for 30 years, beginning in 1967, he was the London music critic for the International Herald Tribune.
He was best known for his 1955 book "The Agony of Modern Music," an attack on 20th-century serious music, and an argument in favor of jazz and other vernacular styles as the true music of the time. He followed this with "Death of a Music?: The Decline of the European Tradition and the Rise of Jazz" (1961) and "Serious Music — and All That Jazz!" (1969).
His major enthusiasm was the human voice. His "The Great Singers" (1966) became a standard reference work. He also wrote "The Great American Popular Singers" and "Opera in Crisis."
His last book, published in 1995, was "The Great Tenor Tragedy: The Last Days of Adolphe Nourrit."
In 1930 he became a music critic for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. He became their music editor from 1934 to 1942.
In 1948-49, he served as the army's liaison officer with the Austrian government. He served as an intelligence officer in Munich, Bern and Bonn for the Foreign Service beginnin in 1950. In 1964 he retired from the Foreign Service. He settled in London with his wife, Virginia Pleasants, a harpsichordist and fortepianist.
For 3 decades he gave lectures and conducted seminars on singing at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.
From 1945 to 1955, he wrote articles on European musical events for The New York Times. He wrote regularly for Opera Quarterly, was London editor for the magazine Stereo Review, and for 30 years, beginning in 1967, he was the London music critic for the International Herald Tribune.
He was best known for his 1955 book "The Agony of Modern Music," an attack on 20th-century serious music, and an argument in favor of jazz and other vernacular styles as the true music of the time. He followed this with "Death of a Music?: The Decline of the European Tradition and the Rise of Jazz" (1961) and "Serious Music — and All That Jazz!" (1969).
His major enthusiasm was the human voice. His "The Great Singers" (1966) became a standard reference work. He also wrote "The Great American Popular Singers" and "Opera in Crisis."
His last book, published in 1995, was "The Great Tenor Tragedy: The Last Days of Adolphe Nourrit."
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September 29, 2017
Opera was apparently in crisis way back in 1989 when Pleasants sent this to the publisher, but those days are halcyon compared to today - as Peter Gelb has just fired fifty staff at the Met, which last year took in 67% of its potential box office revenue. Classical music audiences are getting ever hoarier, with not enough juvies replacing them in the seats. Opera in particular has trouble attracting the young and middle class because ticket prices are so high.
For Pleasants though the crises are more artistic than financial. Ghastly Regietheater productions (German for allowing the director to set and stage an opera however she or he wants, in whatever time period, with whatever anachronistic or bizarre costumes and props). Opera as an art form that privileges the orchestra over the singing. The televising of operas, in which directors focus on close-up shots, distracting from the unity of the whole. The vanishing of the appoggiatura.
The case of the appoggiatura (a descending or ascending grace note prior to the note that ends a phrase) pits historical performance practice against what the score literally shows. Baroque composers did not write appoggiaturas into the score because it was understood that performers had a variety of options to ornament or enhance the ending phrases of cadences; the composer was leaving it up to the singer to choose her own. It was understood that she would either choose an appoggiatura, or something similar. Pleasants argues that this continued past the Baroque into Mozart, Beethoven, Weber and Rossini. So where one of these composers ended a cadence with two identical notes, it was understood that this was not what would be sung. Yet scores have been interpreted so literally from the 2oth century on that the historical practice of singing the appoggiatura has long ceased. At some point in the 19th century (say, Wagner) composers began to write scores with precision, leading performers not versed in music history to misunderstand that Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven had not written so precisely because what was automatically understood did not need to be so meticulously notated.
In a fascinating article, "Of Pitch and Transposition," Pleasants notes that opera singers will occasionally transpose an aria a half tone or whole tone down, because the notes at the top of their range are harder to hit (sometimes, depending on the singer, impossible). Naturally this raises concerns of violating the tonal unity of the opera. But Pleasants argues that the issue is not key, but pitch. Today the pitch standard is A440: the A above middle C has a frequency of 440 Hertz. But the standard pitch has varied according to time and place. In Lombardy in 1880 it was A422. In Rome the pitch was lower, a full note below our own today. For some reason Covent Garden in 1868 was using A450. (In the later 19th century the pitch was raised to accommodate wind players, who wanted greater brilliancy.) What this means is that today's singers are singing higher than 18th and 19th century singers, stressing and straining the top of their ranges more - unless they transpose down. "Thus, for truly "authentic" performances of just about everything from Handel through Gluck and Cherubini to Beethoven, Schubert, Weber and Rossini, orchestras would have to be tuned down a semitone...and that Beethoven, exposed to his "Eroica" as played today, would be hearing it in E instead of E flat."
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