Expectations and Compacts in the Beckwith-Reaney Operas: A Case Study

Abstract

In Art and Illusion, his celebrated investigation of aesthetic experience, E.H. Gombrich discusses the role that the viewer's expectations play in deciphering a work of art: "All culture and all communication depend on the interplay between expectation and observation, the waves of fulfillment, disappointment, right guesses, and wrong moves that make up our daily life. ... The experience of art is not exempt from this general rule. A style, like a culture or climate of opinion, sets up a horizon of expectation, a mental set, which registers deviations and modifications with exaggerated sensitivity." To think in terms of a 'horizon of expectation' is to focus critical attention not only upon the work of art but also upon the process of interaction that takes place between the work and its audience. Such an approach has a long history in literary circles and it is from a literary theorist, Hans Robert Jauss, that I have appropriated a scheme which seems to offer some insights into that irrational art we call opera. My scheme attempts to simplify the great variety of ways in which audiences interact with operas by suggesting three different modes of behaviour: ceremonial/ritual, realistic, and ironic.