Mark D. Lew wrote:
Traditional opera today is an antique art, at least in America. The typical opera fan wants to see and hear opera "as it was" (or so they think; in reality, operatic tradition is tied more directly to the Met of the 1940s and 1950s than to the eras in which the works were written). Contemporary opera is practically a separate genre, which until recently was dominated by orchestral-minded composers whose primary experience is not in theater nor even with voice.
In many minds (the general public - the people who watch TV and occasionally go to movies, not the people who go to the opera), "Opera" is something big and grand and expensive that the 'hoity-toity' upper classes go to, or something the Marx Brothers might spoof, but real knowledge of opera is very limited. Even fairly well educated people can rarely name a half-dozen operas.
And opera "as it was" is little like what is played today. Advances/changes in instruments, halls, and voice training (not to mention amplification) have changed the art so much that Mozart and Verdi and the like would be astonished by it.
Contemporary opera, such as it is, is informed by its cultural roots, which include musicals, rock and roll, and American Idol, among other things.
Nothing is monolithic. cd -- http://www.livejournal.com/users/dershem/# http://members.cox.net/dershem _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
