Five Excerpts from Operratics

Abstract

One day, as I deplored the declining state of bullfighting, Picasso mocked me, saying that people have always complained that the corrida was in decline, that the bulls of the past had been bigger, more powerful, etc. While bullfighting has admittedly evolved, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is in decline (or only in the sense that an art can be termed “in decline” when the incidental supplants the essential: in this case, the increasingly brillant play of the cape and muleta, the deathblow no longer being the climax, but merely the conclusion). People frequently talk about the decline of opera. But, taking a good look at it, where is this so called decline? As far as the interpreters are concerned, if they don’t sing as well as in the past (which has yet to be proven, of course), they act better and generally have a more acceptable physique. As far as the works are concerned, a great number of more than notable operas has been composed in the first half of the twentieth century: Puccini, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, Falla, Alban Berg, Kurt Weill, Charpentier, Stravinsky, these names alone bear witness to that fact. There is no doubt that in today’s opera the libretto is more important than before; but does that mean the music is any less important? And even if it were, we could see this as an evolution, a displacement of the center of interest, and not a state of decline. In a letter dating (I believe) from 1867, Verdi already describes a number of problems with the Paris Opera that are still true today.