Les feux d’artifice s’approchent
![Based on an original photo by Clive Barda]](http://parterre.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/prima_donna_nyco.jpg "Based on an original photo by Clive Barda]")
According to the always reliable Zachary Woolfe, among the beans spilled at the NYCO “Koch” Gala last night was the strong suggestion (from no less than Rufus Wainwright himself) that a production of Prima Donna is planned for an upcoming George Steel-planned season. [New York Observer]
Yes, but these operas weren’t presented because of public demand. Opera companies took risks on them and the audiences were won over. If it had been exclusively up to audience demand, they may have never been staged.
I completely disagree with you, iltenoredigrazia. I’m very glad that opera companies mount a mix of the new and the established. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen Dr. Atomic or Appomattox. I agree that these operas aren’t for everyone, but I’m glad they were commissioned and produced. I don’t know if they were commissioned for “prestige” only (this sounds like another word for “vanity project” to me), but I think I would be poorer if they hadn’t been.
BTW, I’m also happy with the proportion of established to new operas. I’m not an all-or-nothing guy.
squirrel wrote: The idea of warming up leftover stage works from ten years ago was completely foreign.
Gatti-Casazza wrote of reviving Verdi and Donizetti works at La Scala, after some years where they hadn’t been staged. And this was in the 1890′s.
Cruz, the 1890s is not the time of Mozart and Beethoven, as the previous poster and I were talking about. The 1880s and onward were the beginning of a concept of “repertory” and, incidentally, “Meisterwerk”
‘Repertory’ starts far, far earlier than that, both in France and Germany.
Well, Mozart and Rossini had stopped composing(and living) long before the 1890′s, which is the period that I beleive Squirell is referring to. And Verdi only had one opera left to write. In general, it is fair to say that in the early 19th century there was much more emphasis on contemporary opera than today.
My apologies, squirrel. I thought you were responding to this by Sanford@19: There was a time when Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, et al, were unknown quantities
which was written in response to this by iltenoredigrazia@17: Come on, look at the bel-canto and early Verdi revivals starting in the 50’s.
I thought that some Mozart operas did languish for decades after he died, although they are now part of the standard repertoire (or “repertory,” if you prefer). And he did compose a few operas that bombed in their first runs. I guess my point here is that if we only commissioned works that we knew would be box office successes from the launch, we would have missed out on some of the much-loved classics.
…But would any American opera written after 1940 have been commissioned if opera companies only gave the public what it knew it wanted?
Actually, there is a parallel universe of music theater works composed entirely for the free market for that very period–the canonical repertory of American musicals from Oklahoma to Sweeney Todd. And it can stand a fair comparison to the American operatic repertory of that period.
However, before we all go off into Ayn Rand-esque ecstasies about the inherent superiority of the free market in providing art, there are a few problems here.
First of all, the American musical has not been in the best of cultural straits these past thirty years; while scattered outstanding works have been produced, the genre is no longer central to American popular culture, and is almost as much subject to crises as is opera.
Second, production costs have been mounting faster than the demand for them. For instance, orchestras have been remorselessly whittled down from forty-odd to twenty if you’re lucky. A grand spectacle like Don Carlos or Die Frau ohne Schatten simply hasn’t been commercially viable for decades; too many people. As a result, the commercial musical theater has come more and more to depend on the nonprofit theater (supported directly or indirectly by the government) for the previews that are so necessary to see what the public really thinks.
no apologies necessary. Yes, I think Cosi was very much out of the repertory of most companies for decades, though the music was played with a different text and plot in Germany for many years. Was Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni ever “out of the repertoire” in Germany? (It makes little sense to look beyond country borders until after 1900 or so).
You’re right, works should be commissioned in good faith, ie: because we want to hear them, but today it’s rarely worth the trouble. Since the commodification of the performing arts in the early 20th century, we have made “museums” out of opera and orchestral institutions. Try as we might to get out of that situation, we can’t because the public is trained to think of them that way. I generally think we should just try to make them the best damned museums we can.
And I don’t believe that a public driven repertoire would be limited to Traviatas and Bohemes. Companies and singers have the capacity to lead the audiences into a wider repertoire. Come on, look at the bel-canto and early Verdi revivals starting in the 50’s. Look at the Janacek and Prokofiev operas being mounted more and more often these days.
Yes, but those revivals all started in Europe with its subsidized houses and its government-run radio stations. You need a solid institutional foundation for that sort of musical entrepreneurship, and the for-profit sector can’t provide it alone. That’s why the United States has always been a bit slow on the uptake with repertory revivals.
squirrel, which was the Mozart opera that bombed in Vienna but was a big hit in Prague the next year or two years later? I’d read about it but don’t remember the specific one — and I don’t have my history books in front of me (if you or anyone else doesn’t know, I’ll consult the books tonight). This one is now a standard. Is it Cosi?