A Note from the Guest Editor

Abstract

It is tempting to introduce this collection of essays on “Opera and the Avant-Garde” by way of Pierre Boulez's 1967 interview with Der Spiegel, the one in which he half-jokingly called for the opera houses of Europe to be bombed.1 Certainly there is enough material to choose from. Perhaps the passage in which he dreams of a theater so total that not only plot and language but even the conductor's gestures are radically integrated into the score?2 Or the moment when he warns against combining “jazz with western music”?3 And then there are the insults. Opera is “a musty old wardrobe,” “a relic, a well-cared-for museum […] full of dust and crap” and attended by “tourists [who] make me want to vomit.”4 Hans Werner Henze is a “hairdresser,” Franco Zeffirelli “the Henze among producers.”5 It is “unfortunate” that Bertolt Brecht “collaborated with such inconsequential musicians,” but perhaps that should come as no surprise.6 After all, even the composer of Parsifal authored only “a few other” operas worth producing.7