Yes but I was asking, if we expand the frame of reference a bit wider (to include the concept of opera-oratorio), is he really all that innovative? I don't have anything to back this up, but I feel that there are precedents for what he is doing despite what the history books would have us believe about erupting fully formed from the head of Zeus.

Ah, there isn't much of Malgoire's output that I've found of lasting value

I have the Pinnock TAMERLANO recording, which has the fun of being from a live performance (of Jonathan Miller's production in London in 2001), the cast is Bacelli/Randle/Norberg-Schulz/Pushee/Bonitatibus.  They are using the 1731 score, which takes a scalpel to the recitativo of the earlier version, but adds a nice aria for Leone (that also turns him more into a character and less of a cipher).  It's all complete without cuts, and quite nicely done, even though none of the vocalists would set the world alight.


BTW I learned from the booklet notes of the above that despite the attribution of the libretto exclusively to Haym, Handel radically rewrote the piece in the lead up to the premiere.  Apparently the original Bajazet (Borosini) arrived from Italy with the score of another opera on the Timur subject he'd previously sung - Gasparini's IL BAJAZET. He showed it to Handel who saw many superior moments in it, notably Bajazet's death... and rewrote his own opera to incorporate these, despite the fact that it was already in rehearsal.  So Bajazet's death might never have been there had Borosini not brought the score to London with him   (It seems there were also some other issues that caused Handel to rewrite..  he'd been given a rather optimistic write-up of Borosini's abilities and range, but when the singer finally turned-up it emerged that his range was more like a high baritone).

Hmmm, that's quite a glove you've thrown-down there, Richard! 

When you say "no more to be done in the opera-house", is it particularly the proscenium-arch/orchestra-pit/auditorium set-up that provokes your scepticism, or do you mean that you think the form of "opera" itself is dead, and some more innovative way of creating music-theatre will now emerge?

I am not convinced that opera has to be backed by "a whole orchestra"... in fact economic necessity makes the number of times one ever works with such a luxury as a "whole orchestra" a relative rarity.  What's your feeling about interactivity with the audience?  My own feeling is that theatre must inevitably develop further in that direction...  people are no longer content to sit back and "be entertained".

Thanks, Oz: that's exactly it. By the C19th, Oratorio had become an extreme concert form (Mendelssohn, Dvo?ak, Elgar) quite devoid of any stage associations. Big ranks of Victorians by the hundred (or thousand) in seried ranks in ornate halls recounting mainly biblical stories usually in a rather staid and undramatic fashion. Opera and oratorio had parted company completely and by the end of the century, opera was moving ever closer to realism (Italian verismo) or beyond it to psychological drama and thence expressionism.

At the time of writing Œdipus Rex, Stravinsky was still primarily a theatre composer, with not only the big three seminal ballets for the Ballets Russes, but the operas Le Rossignol and Mavra as well as two further ballets, Pulcinella and Les Noces and two hybrid stage works, one containing song and ballet (Renard), and the other spoken word and ballet (L'histoire du soldat) to his name. He'd been working almost constantly with the most celebrated choreographers and designers of the time, and was part of the leading modernist circle. From Petrushka onwards, nearly all his stage works push boundaries, sometimes in their choice of subject, and usually in their musical requirements too. Following the outbreak of WW1 and the physical impossibilty of mounting, let alone touring, vast productions, he starts creating pocket handkerchief drama, always looking for new ways of creating dramatic works. When there's more money available, the works start growing bigger again. The only possible precursor that comes to mind is Satie's Socrate, but even that's so very different in construction and concept that it's hardly closely related.

t_i_n  - are you thinking of the DVD with Langridge and Norman, conducted by Ozawa?

It all depends what one defines as 'opera' - is Feldman's Neither an 'opera', or Cage's Europeras? And if scale is the thing (and that is a relatively late development in the history of opera), where does that leave chamber operas? The medium went through quite major shifts at various points in its history (implementation of Gluck's reforms, development of grand opera in France in the late 1820s, Wagnerian developments, etc.) but we still group all the very diverse works under the term of 'opera'. But like with many other things in music, size seems to matter! And there seems to be a prestige attached to writing for a huge opera house that isn't matched by something that will be done by a small company, playing to a few hundred people, even when it entails quite radical approaches to the combination of text, theatre and music. Maybe it's more a case of certain 19th century ideals of opera (not least Wagnerian ones) having become outdated, rather than something more intrinsic to the medium?

I'm not really convinced about theatre as the ideal medium for communicating ideas, not least because of the inevitable stylisation of the medium (including in 'realist' theatre), the requirement of a certain degree of rhetorical declamation, and the requirement that things are contained in some sort of relatively self-contained dramatic structure. Of course there are various types of theatre that are very different to this, but they tend to be much more minority interests. Theatre can equally be an arena for the body, in a more abstracted form than dance. But 'theatre of ideas' (including a lot of 'political theatre') seems to serve an essentially cathartic rather than enlightening function. Brecht tried hard to surmount this, but was forced to simplify the ideas he put across in a way that might increase their communicability, but not their sophistication or viability.

It would be really pushing a point to describe that as an 'opera' - it involves three people (mezzo-soprano, pianist, cellist) with a few directions for the staging, lighting and make-up (also saying that the pianist should be a 'woman of beautiful features' (donna di bell'aspetto) and the cellist 'a young and pleasant man' (uomo giovane e piacente), though performances I've both seen and performed in have been rather flexible with respect to these things, not least in terms of the genders of the participants!). Kagel's Match or Schnebel's Visible Music series would have equal claims to be an 'opera' - but maybe the definition should be included to incorporate those types of works?

No, but on a pang of guilt I just plonked it into my Amazon Shopping-Basket before typing this reply

Unfortunately very few of the works you've listed have come my way, and as I rarely get to Germany I doubt there's much chance to see them "in performance".  Is there a particular reason you've preferred EINSTEIN to the rest of the Glass output?  I found it the most impenetrable of his pieces. I realise it was a list typed on-the-fly, so I am not picking holes...  but is the absence of PMD in the list intentional or accidental?  Or Sallinen? 

When you say the modern opera house can "stifle" innovation.. do you mean the technical set-up, or the institutionalised nature of the way such places are managed, or possibly that the public that patronises opera-theatres acts as a dead-weight in that respect?  Do you think it must always be so?   GADAFFI struck me as being a far more innovative project than one might have expected (I didn't see it unfortunately, the cost of flying to London "just to see an opera" is a bit excessive), and perhaps more innovative than the audience may have cared for?

Have you had a chance to see any of the work Graham Vick has done with Birmingham City Opera?  That probably represents "interactivity" at its most developed level.


This is very true on a practical level - I work a lot outside opera houses (and in fact outside conventional theatre venues of any kind), but as soon as you begin you realise all the things you haven't got, like adequate rehearsal studios with pianos in that actually work, workshops who can build anything you need, makeup, wardrobe, someone to answer your calls whilst you're in rehearsals... and this is before you reach the level of dramaturgs, publicity, marketing, etc.   It's all possible to do independently, but it becomes a travelling flea-circus with all the hired-in expertise. The shows I do which are in "proper" opera-theatres are blissfully happy events, mainly because the infrastructure is already in place to let you get on with the work itself

What about venues which are set-up especially to do modern opera pieces, like Almeida Opera...  do they offer a future avenue for developing music-theatre?

I think that Almeida is regularly beset by chronic funding problems?