I love what one of my favorite writers, William Gibson, said recently to Salon:
"I basically agree with Mr. Bigend in "Pattern Recognition" when he argues that our present has become so unutterably brief and ever-changing that we have no ground upon which we can stand and project a future historical arc as H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein were able to. The short form of that is, none of us know what the hell is going to happen next."
And also: "somewhere now there's a team of people working on something that's going to profoundly impact your life in the next 10 years and change everything. You don't know what it is and they don't know how it's going to change your life because usually these things don't go as predicted."
...A challenging environment when trying to figure out where opera fits in. Perhaps our old stuff provides stability and comfort. Or perhaps its so day-before-yesterday.
For example, what if the two major opera houses in New York start doing "regietheater" How do we react to that? I mean, the professional theater in Memphis is doing Jerry Springer, the opera.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, opera a cappella now available at Albany Records
I don't think JS:TO is likely to cause any massive upheaval in the legit opera world. First, it's ultimately a slight entertainment. Second, while generally well-performed at Playhouse, it's not a very well-written piece: The second act is especially good at treading water.
ReplyDeleteInteresting article. After reading this, I'm surprised that New Yorker critic Alex Ross reviewed the Bavarian State Opera's production of Alice in Wonderland as favorably as he did.
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