This week’s canard is contributed by the artistic director of Gotham Chamber Opera, Neal Goren. He writes, “Reviews for non-narrative operas (4 Saints in 3 Acts, Maria de Buenos Aires, Einstein on the Beach, etc.) often, if not always, comment that they are not operas, in spite of the composers calling them operas.”  

The question, then, is a non-narrative staged work an opera, or not an opera, and who decides?