Modern Opera Research Articles

Gluck and the Birth of Modern Opera by Patricia Howard (Barrie and Rockliff, 30/-)

Gluck and the Birth of Modern Opera by Patricia Howard (Barrie and Rockliff, 30/-)

Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, And The Birth of Epic Opera

As ITS TITLE INDICATES, this paper is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of anti-Romantic and anti-Wagnerian tendencies in modern opera, but merely an attempt to evaluate certain affinities among Jean Cocteau's Le Coq et l’Arlequin, a collection of brilliant apercus about music and the theater, Stravinsky-Ramuz' Histoire du Soldat, Brecht-Weill's Dreigroschenoper, and the series of Anmerkungen which Brecht appended to the latter work. An historical outline of the epic trends on the musical stage of our day would necessarily entail consideration of such other key works as Erik Satie's Parade, Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toif, Cocteau's Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel, Milhaud's La Creation du Monde, Sitwell-Walton's Fagade, and Claudel-Milhaud's Christophe Colomb, whose authors, instead of wishing to place the audience at once in a "narcotic atmosphere," "wanted to show how the soul gradually reaches music."