Several threads in the Opera Section have started edging towards this, and Stuart MacRae has very sensibly suggested that it's a subject which deserves its own thread. I'll try and split some of the relevant posts away from the other threads, but it isn't always easy to do this cleanly, as posts often address more than one facet of a topic, and removing them bodily can destroy the flow elsewhere. It's probably better if we copy relevant bits in: the easiest way to do this is probably to open two separate instances of The Radio 3 boards, one on this thread, the other on the one you want to copy from, and cut and paste quotes between (if that makes any sense).
Thus:
The thing is, if audiences in, say, 200 years' time are still listening to Verdi and Puccini and Janacek and Wagner and Strauss and Britten, they may well still be listening to MacMillan too, no doubt brought up to date for a modern audience by the directors of the 23rd century. The problem is whether the appetite for development of opera as an art form will have the same longevity. Contemporary opera (like other contemporary art music) already has a habit of drawing tiny audiences of musical buffs and academics, rather than finding the balance between artistic integrity and wider public appeal.
I am often asked, mainly by colleagues (I work for an electrical engineering company), which opera I would recommend to somebody who has never been to one before. My answer varies according to who's asking, and I'll generally pick something which is coming up in London (or the asker's locality) at the time. Often it's Boheme or Carmen or Tosca or Rigoletto or Zauberflote, though I've been known to suggest Jenufa, Peter Grimes and Albert Herring. That's as modern as it gets.
The only very recent operas which I'd be inclined to place into the "recommend to a newcomer" category (lack of opportunity being the only reason for not having already done so) are The Silver Tassie (Turnage), Ines de Castro (MacMillan), and I think now The Sacrifice. I'd recommend them to a complete novice, or indeed to somebody who's seen a bit of Puccini and Verdi and Bizet but who "doesn't like modern music". They are dramatic and melodic and they use a recognisably operatic idiom, while offering a clean slate to the listener: there's no "big well-known tune" to be waited for at the expense of focussing on the opera as a piece of theatre. And yet those three operas are far from the most original and interesting examples of the operas being produced at the time.
Large-scale new works, commissioned by the major houses, NEED public appeal, not just in order to balance the books, but in order to fulfil their duty to the future of opera and to justify public subsidy (where applicable). Can anybody think of an opera written in the last ten years that has genuine originality AND appeal/accessibility (I hate that word but can't think of a better one)?
This is all turning into a bit of a depressing stream of consciousness on the future of opera...
....From what I've heard of the output from currently active opera composers, I'm not convinced that opera hasn't run its course.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that there's a vast amount of mileage remaining for the performance, enjoyment and appreciation of the existing 400-year "catalogue" (one might say 350 years, based on how few of the last half-century's operas have survived in the standard repertoire) - and a reasonable amount of mileage remaining for the composition of not-terribly-original operas that people will go to see, and which have the potential to be revived and toured and performed around the world.
I also think that there's nothing inherently wrong with bringing the existing repertoire to an ever-increasing audience, developing young people's interest in art music and encouraging young singers and performers. It would not surprise me if in 200 years from now, there is still a thriving appetite among performers and audiences alike for an art form which hasn't developed much since the 1950s. Opera performance really has infinite potential still; opera composition, I suspect, does not.
It's not actually the job of James MacMillan (or indeed Turnage, Birtwistle, Ades, Dove, Holt, Maw etc) to reinvent opera. He is very good at what he does, which is composing opera within existing parameters; if he writes more, I'll be there. As I've already said, I welcome music in any genre which engages my heart and/or mind and/or soul. MacMillan is one of the few recent composers to achieve this, and he does so by taking ingredients which are known quantities and reassembling them.
I suppose I really WANT some opera composer to come out of the woodwork and start presenting me with work that challenges and develops the boundaries of the genre while being something which people (outside of the established musically-literate, often musico-intellectual, classical/modern art music fraternity) are inspired to engage with and explore further possibilities. I WANT to be convinced that there is still room for exploration within the operatic medium, rather than to resign myself to the likely fact that "writing successful opera" is quite a narrow discipline with little left to be done.
I WANT somebody to prove me wrong.
One of the big problems for opera is that, in purely theatrical terms, it's been left behind. Large-scale stage spectacle is virtually extinct in contemporary straight theatre: such stuff is really the preserve of the cinema now. The only other things that work along the same lines are musicals and ballet, and in both of them there's already a clear split between the large-scale, traditionally-biased productions and smaller-scale 'experimental' work. There's plenty of opera being written which is moving away from the painted-itself-into-a-corner traditional, but it no longer belongs in big houses (there are, to my certain knowledge, two composers on this board who have already worked in this newer tradition). Around forty years ago, Boulez was suggesting that opera houses should be blown up, yet despite the fact that he has made high profile appearances as an opera conductor, he has never written anything for the operatic stage at all, rather confirming the fact that he sees it as a 'dead' medium.
It's the most entrenched traditions which are the hardest to turn around, and I've a distinct suspicion that that's exactly what's happening to opera. By and large, its audiences want the old traditions to continue, even though they're incompatible with keeping the genre fresh and alive.
