A New Philosophy of Opera, by Yuval Sharon

Opera houses will have been shuttered or repurposed, a dwindling population of wizened opera lovers will cling to their precious recordings while probably blaming the demise of opera on the Robert Wilson staging of Lohengrin). Have no fear, Sharon believes that opera can be reborn and if we follow his guidance perhaps we don’t have to wait for opera to be cancelled before it can be fixed.

His book is a bold manifesto on the challenges facing opera as an art form and you definitely should read it. Like any manifesto, it is provocative, enlightening and infuriating. (Why does every “genius” opera director have nothing but stupid things to say about Il trovatore?) It also has a playlist! It is the perfect book club book because it’s the kind of read that you need to discuss at length with an impassioned book group. And like the best book-club books, you can participate in the discussion even if you haven’t finished it.

Doomsayers have been predicting the demise of opera for decades, probably longer. However, the present moment does feel different, especially in the US where the incipient, full-bore culture war will certainly claim many arts institutions as victims. Arts subsidies are shrinking worldwide; production costs are skyrocketing; the donor class is largely disinterested in subsidizing opera; the repertoire has calcified.

Most significantly, opera has disappeared from the cultural conversation. Sharon acknowledges all the challenges for opera as an art form but he puts special emphasis on the unwelcoming ritualistic nature of the opera experience, likening a newbie operagoer to the befuddled Parsifal attending the Grail Ceremony for the first time and trying to figure out the purpose of the confusing ceremony that appears to run on autopilot. As Sharon notes, “It’s all too common to enter an opera house and see a work born of intense inspiration that’s been lobotomized by routine.”  

While trying to broaden the appeal of opera, opera houses must contend with the fact that their mainstay audience is there for the social pleasure of attending familiar works in familiar, if despised productions. The typical audience member, in the US, at least, does not want to be challenged. Sharon writes that we need to find a way to “shake up” the traditional work and the complacent opera-goers. He famously staged La bohème with the Acts in reverse order.  (Adorno made him do it.) He asserts that the novelty of this approach brought in an audience where half the members were attending an opera for the first time. 

Is this because the traditionalists stayed away? Was it because of the notoriety? Did these first-time opera attendees attend a second or third opera? I’m all for creating a buzz about an opera production, but opera companies can’t chase novelty like it’s a cure-all. What does Detroit Opera do the next time it wants to stage La bohème? Do the same backwards production again? Use the same sets and do the opera in the other direction? Or do another new production? 

The Detroit Opera only does four operas a season, so it might not have to wrestle with this problem for a while; bigger companies don’t have that luxury. Sure, it would be great if an opera production were only seen once, but that seems better suited to a festival than to an opera company trying to present 15 or more operas in a season.

A potentially better way for opera companies to pursue novelty is to emphasize new works in their seasons. The shift towards more new works has certainly been welcome at the Met even if it means that there are fewer revivals for me to hate-watch each season. Sharon has devoted an admirable portion of his career towards the creation of new works that both stretch our conceptions of an opera production and deal with challenging contemporary topics.

The discussions of Hopscotch and Invisible Cities made me really wish that I had travelled to see these works and wonder if they are revivable in some way. Perhaps some AV wizard will find a way to capture the experience of these operas in virtual reality. Congestion pricing could make a staging of Hopscotch in NYC possible.  

One of the more surprising aspects of Sharon’s book is his dislike of Regietheater. He finds it too focused on Konsequenz – devising a production with the rigor of a moral argument. For him, this sucks all the ambiguity, nuance, and poetry out of a work. In effect, it turns a performance into a pedantic lecture. Sharon strives, for his part, to emphasize ambiguity and poetic allusion in his productions. Now, I have to take his word for that because I am embarrassed to admit that I have never seen a Yuval Sharon production. His Lohengrin from Bayreuth is findable online, but that was a production that was largely designed and built when he was asked to take over.  

This all has me excited to see how his ideas manifest themselves in Tristan und Isolde next season. And if he is waiting for opera to die so that he can resurrect it, there is no better Ringside seat for witnessing the death of opera than at the Met.