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The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera
A user's guide to opera―Matthew Aucoin, "the most promising operatic talent in a generation" ( The New York Times Magazine ), describes the creation of his groundbreaking new work, Eurydice , and shares his reflections on the past, present, and future of opera
From its beginning, opera has been an impossible art. Its first practitioners, in seventeenth-century Florence, set themselves the unreachable goal of reproducing the wonders of ancient Greek drama, which no one can be sure was sung in the first place. Opera’s greatest artists have striven to fuse multiple art forms―music, drama, poetry, dance―into a unified synesthetic experience. The composer Matthew Aucoin, a rising star of the opera world, posits that it is this impossibility that gives opera its exceptional power and serves as its lifeblood. The virtuosity required of its performers, the bizarre and often spectacular nature of its stage productions, the creation of a whole world whose basic fabric is music―opera assumes its true form when it pursues impossible goals.
The Impossible Art is a passionate defense of what is best about opera, a love letter to the form, written in the midst of a global pandemic during which operatic performance was (literally) impossible. Aucoin writes of the rare works―ranging from classics by Mozart and Verdi to contemporary offerings of Thomas Adès and Chaya Czernowin―that capture something essential about human experience. He illuminates the symbiotic relationship between composers and librettists, between opera’s greatest figures and those of literature. Aucoin also tells the story of his new opera, Eurydice , from its inception to its production on the Metropolitan Opera’s iconic stage. The Impossible Art opens the theater door and invites the reader into this extraordinary world.
From its beginning, opera has been an impossible art. Its first practitioners, in seventeenth-century Florence, set themselves the unreachable goal of reproducing the wonders of ancient Greek drama, which no one can be sure was sung in the first place. Opera’s greatest artists have striven to fuse multiple art forms―music, drama, poetry, dance―into a unified synesthetic experience. The composer Matthew Aucoin, a rising star of the opera world, posits that it is this impossibility that gives opera its exceptional power and serves as its lifeblood. The virtuosity required of its performers, the bizarre and often spectacular nature of its stage productions, the creation of a whole world whose basic fabric is music―opera assumes its true form when it pursues impossible goals.
The Impossible Art is a passionate defense of what is best about opera, a love letter to the form, written in the midst of a global pandemic during which operatic performance was (literally) impossible. Aucoin writes of the rare works―ranging from classics by Mozart and Verdi to contemporary offerings of Thomas Adès and Chaya Czernowin―that capture something essential about human experience. He illuminates the symbiotic relationship between composers and librettists, between opera’s greatest figures and those of literature. Aucoin also tells the story of his new opera, Eurydice , from its inception to its production on the Metropolitan Opera’s iconic stage. The Impossible Art opens the theater door and invites the reader into this extraordinary world.
- GenresNonfictionMusic
320 pages, Hardcover
First published December 7, 2021
40 people are currently reading
272 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 20, 2022
I was hesitant to pick up this book because there are so many mediocre “what is opera?” books out there. But this book delivers and is written in a way that newcomers to opera and super fans can both enjoy.
The Preface and Introduction are probably my favorite parts - concise and high level but also get at the heart of why opera is how it is. The inner chapters have a string of pearls quality and you do not have to read them all or in order for them to make sense. The chapter on Verdi and Shakespeare was my favorite.
As a composer of operas the author has a special relationship to the art form and this shines throughout. Cleanly and clearly written throughout.
The Preface and Introduction are probably my favorite parts - concise and high level but also get at the heart of why opera is how it is. The inner chapters have a string of pearls quality and you do not have to read them all or in order for them to make sense. The chapter on Verdi and Shakespeare was my favorite.
As a composer of operas the author has a special relationship to the art form and this shines throughout. Cleanly and clearly written throughout.
November 21, 2021
Thanks to Netgalley and FSG. A wonderful young composer is our guide through the creation of his opera Eurydice, other works about the Orpheus myth and some of his favorite operas, both old and new. Even if you don’t know opera very well, the author does such a wonderful job of walking us through several famous collaborations of librettists and composers and gives special insights as to what these great works of art mean to him and to the larger world.
October 25, 2022
I was familiar with Aucoin's name but I am not familiar with his music. I had a vague idea that he was a conductor, but I had no idea that he is so young and such a gifted writer. This is an enormously engaging book (with one serious misstep that I will address later.) The premise is one that seems insurmountable, but he reigns it in beautifully and makes it manageable and compelling. He explores disparate operas based on certain themes or characters; a real strength is that he touches on both warhorses and relatively unheard of newer works. His voice is articulate and instructive without being condescending. For the most part, I was absolutely taken with this work. AND THEN...in a chapter late in the book, he includes a "conversation" with Sarah Ruhl, a playwright who was his collaborator on an opera based on Eurydice. This passage was maddening because its tone and structure were artificial, banal, contrived...you get the point. It was "cute" when the rest of the piece was honest and well-developed. I found it a big disappointment in a book that is so winning in so many other ways. Luckily, he doesn't end the book there, instead focusing on a well-known and well-loved opera to conclude. This is a must read for any opera fan...even those who think they have it all figured out.
October 30, 2023
Matthew Aucoin's writing is effective even for a novice like me who may have a few favorite arias but never sat through a whole opera from start to finish. Instead of taking the leisurely textbook approach of walking through the history of opera, Aucoin cuts to the chase by covering select pieces that are close to his heart and two from his own career. I was particularly intrigued by the creative process behind his opera production of Saraha Ruhl's Eurydice, a play that's been on my TBR for years. I'd also love to see a production of Crossing, his opera about Walt Whitman's time volunteering at field hospitals during the Civil War. I admit that I didn't always understand the more technical parts, but if you're fond of other people's enthusiasm and their geeking out, you'll be in good hands.
January 27, 2022
A gorgeously written, engaging romp through a representative collection of operas. Aucoin is a smart and funny host and the writing is intimate and conversational. The range of topics covered make the book read more like a collection of extended essays, but it all still holds together somehow. I'm an amateur opera buff and this book helped me understand what the magic is all about.
December 17, 2021
Fascinating and captivating. Perfect read for any opera lover but also for those who want to learn more about opera. It is a lover letter to one of the most complex art forms and it leaves you with a deep appreciation for the world of opera. Matthew Aucoin is a talent on the rise and one to watch both on the stage and on the page.
March 9, 2022
I would love to see this made into a Fantasia meets Cosmos sort of PBS special, with Aucoin narrating parts while we could hear and see it. Fascinating even for someone with little knowledge of, or frankly, even appreciation of opera (until now!)
February 21, 2022
Those of us who are fans or even addicts of opera have a hard time refuting those who point out what they dislike about it. They’ll say that they don’t want to watch and listen as two severely overweight sweat hogs profess their love, or they’ll complain that a character spends half an hour dying, singing all the while. Such things do happen in opera, and with some frequency. And a director may have to fish around for some logical reason to have a character return to the stage, other than that the score calls for that character to sing an aria. We supporters of the opera do not deny any of this, but, damn it, we overlook or condone the absurd for the sake of the sublime.
We all had cause to be excited when word came that young American composer Matthew Aucoin would be publishing THE IMPOSSIBLE ART: ADVENTURES IN OPERA, a book advertised as a bold and energetic defense of the art Aucoin practices and loves.
I’m sorry to report that much of what Aucoin has to say is beyond the reach of readers and operagoers who lack, as I do, advanced knowledge of the technical complexities of music. For a large part of the book, I might as well have been reading about how to build a rocket. I was simply lost. I would always hope to argue that we don’t need to have a graduate degree in music and play six instruments in order to appreciate opera, any more than we need a degree in horticulture or a highly developed green thumb in order to appreciate a garden.
On the other hand, when Aucoin removes the barriers and speaks in language we all know and understand, he can be fresh and engaging. Recalling a performance of his opera EURYDICE in Los Angeles, he describes all the elements coming together — singers, instrumentalists, designers, stage technicians, etc., and “The audience coughed cheerfully and continuously, as opera audiences do.”
Elsewhere he refers to “the dreary decades of the mid-twentieth century, when new American operas were either bloated neo-Romantic pageants or stubbornly spiky twelve-tone dissertations.”
He goes on: “How much richer the century would have been for the art form if more opera companies had taken an interest in the sectors of American musical life where stuff was really happening! Can you imagine the operas Duke Ellington or (even more enticingly) his consummately gifted arranger Billy Strayhorn might have written, or, a couple of decades later, the opera that might have emerged from the creative ferment of the composers of the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians?“ (Aucoin is cofounder of a group called the American Modern Opera Company — AMOC, pronounced a-muck, as in “Everything’s running amok.”)
If you can swim or skim through the more impenetrable aspects of the book and make it to the final chapter, a treat is in store for you: this young composer’s abject tribute to Mozart and the finale of THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO. Now there’s a work to which everyone, from the most sophisticated musicologist to the untrained beginning operagoer, can only bow.
We all had cause to be excited when word came that young American composer Matthew Aucoin would be publishing THE IMPOSSIBLE ART: ADVENTURES IN OPERA, a book advertised as a bold and energetic defense of the art Aucoin practices and loves.
I’m sorry to report that much of what Aucoin has to say is beyond the reach of readers and operagoers who lack, as I do, advanced knowledge of the technical complexities of music. For a large part of the book, I might as well have been reading about how to build a rocket. I was simply lost. I would always hope to argue that we don’t need to have a graduate degree in music and play six instruments in order to appreciate opera, any more than we need a degree in horticulture or a highly developed green thumb in order to appreciate a garden.
On the other hand, when Aucoin removes the barriers and speaks in language we all know and understand, he can be fresh and engaging. Recalling a performance of his opera EURYDICE in Los Angeles, he describes all the elements coming together — singers, instrumentalists, designers, stage technicians, etc., and “The audience coughed cheerfully and continuously, as opera audiences do.”
Elsewhere he refers to “the dreary decades of the mid-twentieth century, when new American operas were either bloated neo-Romantic pageants or stubbornly spiky twelve-tone dissertations.”
He goes on: “How much richer the century would have been for the art form if more opera companies had taken an interest in the sectors of American musical life where stuff was really happening! Can you imagine the operas Duke Ellington or (even more enticingly) his consummately gifted arranger Billy Strayhorn might have written, or, a couple of decades later, the opera that might have emerged from the creative ferment of the composers of the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians?“ (Aucoin is cofounder of a group called the American Modern Opera Company — AMOC, pronounced a-muck, as in “Everything’s running amok.”)
If you can swim or skim through the more impenetrable aspects of the book and make it to the final chapter, a treat is in store for you: this young composer’s abject tribute to Mozart and the finale of THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO. Now there’s a work to which everyone, from the most sophisticated musicologist to the untrained beginning operagoer, can only bow.
February 1, 2023
I was recommended this book by an alumn of my sixth-form college, after we were discussing how incredible it is that the genre of Opera can simultaneously include Mozartean Da Ponte operas such as Figaro, as well as sublime compositions such as Eugene Onegin. We then had a further revelation, at how a composer such as Tchaikovsky could write an opera as characteristically Russian as Eugene Onegin and then also a piece like his Piano Concerto in Bb.
Anyway, what is wonderful about this book is that it doesn't particularly concern itself with the operas you would expect it to. Ranging from Monteverdi to Adès, the entire operatic history is contained somewhere within this book. I appreciated learning more about Verdi's Falstaff and Macbeth, when most writers would typically have chosen Aida and La Traviata. Aucoin's writing is also clearly very personal. It's wonderful how he is able to draw comparisons between his own operas and the operas of, say, Stravinsky who he studied earlier on in the book. I also appreciated the teenage-Matthew Aucoin revelation, upon watching Figaro, that "Whatever I was looking at, it was might queer". I had never looked at the opera from that angle, but how true!
I thought this was a great, relatively easy, relatable read. Prior knowledge of opera advised!
Anyway, what is wonderful about this book is that it doesn't particularly concern itself with the operas you would expect it to. Ranging from Monteverdi to Adès, the entire operatic history is contained somewhere within this book. I appreciated learning more about Verdi's Falstaff and Macbeth, when most writers would typically have chosen Aida and La Traviata. Aucoin's writing is also clearly very personal. It's wonderful how he is able to draw comparisons between his own operas and the operas of, say, Stravinsky who he studied earlier on in the book. I also appreciated the teenage-Matthew Aucoin revelation, upon watching Figaro, that "Whatever I was looking at, it was might queer". I had never looked at the opera from that angle, but how true!
I thought this was a great, relatively easy, relatable read. Prior knowledge of opera advised!
February 7, 2022
This is a spectacular book! It's hard to imagine how a talented musician/composer could also be such a fabulous writer. Just the Preface and Chapter 1 would be worth reading for ANYONE remotely fond of opera. He is able to articulate just what comes together in this art form to make it resonate on a many levels--from gut to spiritual to 'other.' Opera is so much greater than just the sum of its parts.
Reading the book has made me want to rethink some of my prior opinions and to listen again to several I thought of myself as being done with. I especially drank in his chapters on his own work, Eurydice, and Thomas Ades', The Exterminating Angel, both of which I was able to watch through The Met's High Definition Live Broadcasts. According to Aucoin, pandemic shutdowns/cancellations allowed him the free time in his crazy-busy schedule to write the book. Well, that in itself might be a reason to be grateful for the pandemic.
Reading the book has made me want to rethink some of my prior opinions and to listen again to several I thought of myself as being done with. I especially drank in his chapters on his own work, Eurydice, and Thomas Ades', The Exterminating Angel, both of which I was able to watch through The Met's High Definition Live Broadcasts. According to Aucoin, pandemic shutdowns/cancellations allowed him the free time in his crazy-busy schedule to write the book. Well, that in itself might be a reason to be grateful for the pandemic.
February 18, 2023
Cobbled together from his essays for the New York Review of Books, Aucoin has loosely structured this around the theme of Opera's 'impossibility', which he means both in an aesthetic and an almost spiritual sense. Opera as vanishing point, transcendent and intransitive, silly and sublime. If theatre is an imperfectionist's medium, then Opera is perhaps the most imperfect form of it, deliciously implausible, wildly immanent. You get the sense that what he loves about Opera has as much to do with it can be as what it often is. The book makes this argument only indirectly, and so it perhaps functions best as a form of self-interrogation from a restless young composer trying to understand what makes a good opera, and what might in fact be possible in one.
February 19, 2022
I confess I did not read every word of the book. I skipped chapters on the operas I have never seen and am not likely to see, but having seen the author’s version of Eurydice at the Met this season as well as The Exterminating Angel, I loved the insights. I am also a Shakespeare aficionado and have seen the Verdi operas, several of many times. There is so much to love about the book. I loved the informal style and forgive his over sharing details of his personal life. The conversation with Sarah Ruhl was very insightful. This is a great book for opera fans.
December 7, 2025
I’m happy to know Matthew personally, and was so excited to tell him when I met him for the first time that I had completed his book with a new love and appreciation of the operatic form.
A composer myself, I was drawn to this book purely from a want to learn more about this art that was foreign to me. I was so deeply entwined with this book when I picked it up - this was also one of the first books I read out of sheer want in a LONG time.
I’m always thrilled to see Matthew’s work, and I think, for my own study, that this book even deserves a second read.
A composer myself, I was drawn to this book purely from a want to learn more about this art that was foreign to me. I was so deeply entwined with this book when I picked it up - this was also one of the first books I read out of sheer want in a LONG time.
I’m always thrilled to see Matthew’s work, and I think, for my own study, that this book even deserves a second read.
February 22, 2022
Great writing on operas ranging from incredibly familiar to literally never heard of this in my life. Bonus points from me for an entire chapter on The Rake’s Progress. Love how effortlessly conversational and almost friendly the writing is, it’s something I think a lot of people try to do but are not this successful. Just a really fun read and I love the recommended recordings to accompany!
December 27, 2021
I particularly liked the last 2 chapters. One is on the author’s opera Eurydice, which I saw a few weeks ago, and the other is an appreciation of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro“ which is one of my favorites.
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November 29, 2021As seen in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
February 11, 2022
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May 6, 2022
Avoid this book written by someone who writes mediocre operas. He has nothing interesting to say. Put it down.
November 22, 2023
A four or 4.5, but it gets boosted just because I love the way he talks about marriage of figaro.
February 12, 2024
A great book and worth reading, but too grounded in 2021 (and the pandemic and trump and…) for it to be be worth revisiting in the future.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews