Header image: a still from the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Poulenc’s Dialogue of the Carmelites.
The year is 1600 or something. All music is church music. You can only write music for God. That’s the rule. What this one dude named Monteverdi supposes is… what if we didn’t? So he writes an OPERA. And everyone’s like cool why didn’t I think of that. He writes Orfeo which is a fancy way of saying Orpheus. Lovely.
Some other stuff happens. G.F. Handel writes some operas. They often include parts for dudes who got their bits nicked off, but today those roles are sung by countertenors. Julius Caesar is a lovely one, bits ornot.
Handel lived at the same time as a guy named Bach. Did Bach write opera? No. His son did. J.C. Not C.P.E.
Vivaldi sort of slacked off in the opera department. Claimed he wrote 90, but we’ve only found 50. Nevertheless, people ignore them so they play The Four Seasons for the four billionth time.
Joseph Haydn! That guy was prolific. Did he write opera? He sure did, but no one cares about them. Ok, let’s get back on track.
If you like Baroque opera, I think the real cool place to hang out is France. Rameau. Charpentier. Jacques Lully. Lully kicked the whole thing off I think. Then, when he was pounding a staff on the stage to keep time during a performance, he hit himself in the foot, got gangrene, and died. Sucks. His sons also wrote music.
Ok, back to the German-speaking world. That Mozart kid? Joseph “my operas suck” Haydn’s student? Oh he wrote opera. You want funny ones in Italian? I.e. opera buffa? He’s got those (Cosi fan tutte!). Serious Italian? Opera seria? He’s got those too (Don Giovanni!). German ones? Yes (Die Zauberflöte). Swedish ones? Don’t be silly.
Mozart died. He was resurrected as Beethoven, or maybe not, I forget. Anyway, Beethoven is not known for his operas. Beethoven had a nasty habit of treating vocalists like instrumentalists, which is to say he didn’t care if they had a chance to take a breath or not. Sure, he wrote an opera. You can check it out if you want. You’re gonna want to go to a secret party on the outskirts of New York City. Wear a cape and a mask. The password is-
Ok, now we’re getting into the 19th century. A time of romance! This is when opera goes absolutely nutso because people started chilling out a heck of a lot more about the whole sacred music thing – not that they weren’t before, but Enlightenment takes a bit to really seep through the cheesecloth, ya know? Since no one was allowed to go see movies (they did not exist) they went to see opera.
Berlioz is one of my favorite “bridge” composers into the Romantic era (even though Beethoven is by far the most important to bridge the classical/romantic period divide) and he wrote two operas. Two whole operas! They don’t get performed very often because they’re sort of tricky to pull off. You may be able to trick some Greeks into performing one if you know any ways of sneaking into heavily fortified Greek cities. I don’t know why I brought up Berlioz. He’s not that important in the world of opera. Whatever. I like him. Terry Gilliam directed a production of Damnation of Faust once.
Back to the important stuff. Rossini! Rossini, like so many people today, got crazy rich from writing opera. The reason everyone who writes operas is so goshdarn flush with cash is because of Rossini. Fine, maybe not everyone. Just you, Philip Glass (seriously. Bro’s loaded). But Rossini got so wealthy writing The Barber of Seville, William Tell, Cinderella, The Thieving Magpie, and a bunch of other operas, he retired young and wealthy. Fuck you, Rossini. I want your life.
Opera started to change. It became GRAND. A bunch of French dudes got involved. Typical! The most famous opera from this group is definitely Carmen by Georges Bizet. That’s one of the three most performed operas OF ALL TIME but nowadays they try to tweak the story so it isn’t so sexist/racist. I think they do the same with Verdi’s Aida, one of the other most performed all time. Can you guess the third? It’s La Boheme, the Puccini opera that lives rent-free in everyone’s head. We’ll get there.
Anyway. The French. Bizet! Jules Massenet! Offenbach! Gluck! Hey wait a second, some of those dudes aren’t French. Ya know what, who cares. It’s more about staying in a stylistic tradition than whatever’s printed on your passport. Gluck was Bohemian but his operatic style is Italian and French. Whatever pays the bills. Offenbach made bank cranking out roughly one hundred operettas (that’s like a normal opera but it fits in your pocket). Charles Gounod sure did some shit. He wrote the more famous Faust as well as that Ave Maria that sits on top of Bach Prelude no. 1.
These grand 19th century French operas. So fun! So flighty! Even the serious ones are like catching the latest Marvel movie on a Friday afternoon while blowing off your shift at the smithy. Then along comes Wagner, a righteous and humble soul if ever there was one. For him, opera wasn’t enough. Music wasn’t enough. Drama wasn’t enough. It had to be COSMIC AND ALL ENCOMPASSING, GODDAMMIT. Gesamtkunstwerk. Let’s go baby. Now we’re cooking.
This bro wrote operas about pagan Germany and Christian Germany – a little something for both sides of the aisle. Speaking of aisles, his operas were so special, he built his own special opera house where they could be performed. Around it sprung up a little town to hang out in while you wait between operas. Please don’t look at the guest list ca. 1935.
Pagan Germany: the Ring cycle! Norse shit, basically. But German. But also Norse. But mostly German. But very Norse. With German in it. Very long. Whenever I go to these operas, I bring snacks for one of the many intermissions. I’m usually broken into several emotional pieces by the end. Seriously. He’s that good.
Christian Germany: Tannhaüser! Beautiful music. A story of redemption. Some other ones. I forget. Most movie composers in the early days of film scoring take from Wagner’s ideas of leitmotif: come up with a theme for each character or object and, when that character or object is on screen, you hear the theme! Oooh. Very cool.
Ok back to Italy. Puccini is a real badass motherfucker when it comes to writing gorgeous music that’s beautifully orchestrated. Maybe not as insane an orchestrator as Wagner but he had different goals, don’t ya know. He wrote some really glorious melodies in his opera’s arias.
And what is an aria you ask? Well, most opera is divided between recitative and arias. Recitative is what moves the plot forward and arias are like the soliloquies or, if this were Broadway, where the star is trying to bring the house down. Almost all opera is separated out this way UNTIL you get to Wagner, who sort of shatters every norm there was and simply does things that no one else was capable of doing.
The 20th century begins. People start to get lightbulbs in their houses. One day, a lightbulb went on in their heads and they realized hey music can be lots of things, honestly. Dudes like Debussy started listening to music outside of this very European, very white tradition that I’ve spent several thousand words talking about just now. This resulted in some very cool pieces like Peleas et Melisande. It’s a shame Ravel didn’t write more notable operas, but do explore as much of his music as you can. He’s rad as hell.
As Wagner had basically put tonality out of its misery, and as the French were starting to do wild cool shit, and as Puccini was bringing the house down in Italy with his gorgeous dramas, and as the British composers were eating paste out of a jar (I kid, I kid), the prime was pumped for some major changes in the idea of how we make music – not just how we organize pitches but how we conceive of the large, long forms themselves. It called for new hierarchies! Or in some cases, an abolition of all hierarchy. Richard Strauss was basically already doing this in his operas: Elektra, Salome, Der Rosenkavalier – he really pushed the boundaries! Arnold Schoenberg decided to formalize this by making all pitches equal, a musical theory called Serialism (Booooooo! calm down, calm down). But before he did that, he wrote some wild post-romantic music that’s sort of Wagnerian, like Gurre-lieder, for three choirs, orchestra, a million soloists, a narrator, a thief his wife her cook and his lover, friends, romans, countrymen, alcoholics, angry loners, the 1995 Vancouver Canucks, and a partridge in a pair tree. Huge stuff. It’s not an opera. It’s an oratorio. More on that later.
Schoenberg had two students: Anton Webern, who was accidentally shot to death in the mountains, and Alban Berg, who died of blood poisoning. Before they died, they both wrote music. Berg wrote two operas. While they are Serialist, anyone can tell that there’s lots of traditional harmonies in there. Berg is just crazy like that! One of the operas is called Wozzeck, based on a play by Büchner, about a socially isolated soldier who descends into madness. The other is called Lulu, about a femme fatale of the late 19th century. Berg did not finish Lulu before he died. His wife forbade anyone from touching the score or having anything to do with it. She failed. Once completed, from Berg’s copious notes, it was hailed as one of the great achievements of opera in the 20th century.
Time marched on. World War II ended. The Soviets killed a dog in space. Postwar music got wild. Igor Stravinsky, the other titan of European art music, besides Schoenberg, decided to try his hand at opera. While Schoenberg was at UCLA, Stravinsky was over at USC. Go Spartans! He wrote The Rake’s Progress, about a dude who sucks. It’s a great piece! Behind the Iron Curtain, Prokofiev composed The Love of Three Oranges. He died and his funeral was poorly attended because it was held the same day as Stalin’s. Khachaturian showed up at least.
Not only did postwar music get wild, it also got really eclectic. This is where you can’t really trace one movement or time period anymore, because, by god, let freedom ring!
Remember how I said British composers ate paste out of a jar? Well, from Henry Purcell till Benjamin Britten, that was basically true, give or take an Edward Elgar here or there. (Don’t talk to me about Vaughan-Williams. I don’t care about Vaughan-Williams). Britten arrived on the scene in all his gay glory and wrote the shit out of some fucking bomb ass operas. I got a chance to play in the pit for Rape of Lucretia and it was pretty cool. But that’s not his best one! Maybe Death in Venice. Eh no, probably Peter Grimes. Too many to choose from!
Getting back to the diversity of style post-WWII, people started incorporating electronics in their music. Also, chance (hi Cage!). Also, helicopters. Stockhausen thought Wagner’s operas were too short and decided to compose a series of seven operas, one for each day of the week, with absolutely nuts requirements. I don’t know if he finished them. I don’t know if anyone performs them. Frankly, we don’t want to know. Ok, sure. We do. The series is called Der Licht. They’re so complicated to pull off, it’s no wonder they rarely get performed. The same is true of Olivier Messiaen’s opera St. Francis of Assisi but that one enjoys a better reputation.
Over in America, Gian Carlo Menotti wrote tons of opera! Many are still performed today but if you’ve heard one, you’ve heard Amahl… uh, Amahl and the Night Visitors.
Some Americans decided new music didn’t need to be academic or off-putting. Maybe it could be fun! Maybe we could stay up all night doing drugs and playing the same three notes over and over again! Terry Riley thought so. Philip Glass did too. All of the sudden, it was cool to have vibrant rhythms, traditional harmonies, and lots of repetition. Minimalism was born! Glass wrote a couple of behemoth operas, most notably Akhnaten and Einstein on the Beach. Run, don’t walk, to the opera box office whenever these are staged.
Minimalism gave birth to a sort-of postminimalism with the jazz-influenced composer John Adams. He wrote the topical, ripped from some headlines operas Nixon on the Beach, Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic.
The 20th century came and went. Enron. 9/11. Maroon 5. Eventually, we let women do things. Missy Mazzoli wrote an opera. Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Higdon wrote an opera. Pulitzer Prize winner Augusta Read Thomas wrote an opera. (Notice how I don’t remember the names. We let them do things but we don’t let them do things very often and we make excuses, like “opera’s too expensive!” because basically we were only woke to check a box. To be fair, Higdon at least has enough commissions to last a lifetime, but yeah, opera is maybe a 5 year commitment to get a new work out. This shit is hard and not always worth it, especially if no one is gonna program it. More on that in a bit). Hey, Du Yun won a Pulitzer in 2017 for her opera Angel’s Bone. She kicks major ass.
So I mentioned opera is expensive. It really is. Go look at all the living composers’ outputs. It’s mostly chamber music, i.e. one of the most cost-effective forms of collaborative classical music. Opera costs lots of money, dude! You want sets that look cool? Money. When fucking Air Force One is on stage for Adams’ Nixon in China, that shit ain’t cheap! You want to stage the complete Ring cycle? Or basically anything by Strauss or Wagner? Well, you’re gonna have to pay a premium to get one of the maybe 20 soloists in the world capable of performing that shit. I think in 2018, Lyric Opera reported a deficit of $300m in their operating costs. Thank god for donors, huh? Those box seat dwelling furcoats may be the first place necks I go for when the revolution happens, but at least they’re keeping a major city art form afloat.
I’ve spent a lot of time giving a snarky historical overview of opera, and I contemplated making a “listening list,” something to the effect of “101 Operas to see before you die!” but you can make that yourself. Pick out the names of composers I’ve listed, google their most popular operas, and that’s pretty much it. If you live near a major opera house, they’ll do at least one Puccini and at least one Mozart a year. They’ll do at least one “daring” program choice too, like a new work by a person of color for instance. They’re probably going to mix in Night at the Opera with John Mellencamp or some shit. If you live in a not-major city, they might do one opera a year and it’s always gonna be Mozart, Puccini, Aida, or Carmen. Them’s the breaks. Invent an app that kills people, sell it for $100m, and start donating.
Ok so opera has been around for 400+ years, it’s super expensive, it’s a dying art form, it’s highly elitist for a variety of reasons, and it doesn’t escape many of the racist or sexist allegations that dog Western classical music in this day and age. But what the fuck even is it? Isn’t it just a musical that’s a little weird? Is it theater off its meds?
Yes!
This is a fun question. All these category designations are pretty blurry, as you might have guessed. Musicals are definitely opera’s rebellious gay son who moved to New York and got robbed on the C train. What’s the difference? My gut reaction is that most musicals aren’t through-sung the way operas are. Operas usually have a highly formalized divide between the recit and arias – but not all operas do (we already discussed Wagner). Musicals have a similar divide between their songs and everything else. Umbrellas of Cherbourg is through-sung but no one calls it an opera. Perhaps because it’s a film, not staged.
Speaking of staging, what about oratorios? Handel’s Messiah is kind of an opera, right? But it’s not staged dramatically like an opera – but I’ve seen it staged dramatically before. Like I said, the lines are blurry. I think the Supreme Court knows opera when they see it but it doesn’t have any money to give them, so they don’t care.
Coming up with a strict definition isn’t that interesting to me, and I don’t think I fully know why I find opera to be so powerful. Even when the staging is kind of lame, like the Lyric’s 2008 production of Tristan und Isolde, the music remains very powerful. In 2012, I saw La Cenerentola at Glyndebourne, perhaps one of the most special places in the world you can enjoy an opera outside of Bayreuth, and, even though it was a trite 15 minutes of plot spread over 3 hours, I was still tremendously moved.
Perhaps this next bit of advice means nothing to you, because you’ve already applied it to theater, film, dance, or pottery, but try this out: go to an opera and choose to accept as absolutely true and necessary what you see and hear and how you see and hear it. Accept that the best way to hear a short tale with an ending as predictable as the sunrise is sung throughout in a foreign language by trained professionals in stuffy clothes, in a dim room surrounded by the elderly. This goes beyond suspension of disbelief. Lose yourself to a different time period where witnessing this work was the most groundbreaking encounter with art you may ever experience before you died of typhus fighting for Napoleon. Heck, you might even like it.
Ok, now please sound off in the comments about what I missed or got wrong. I didn’t fact check anything here except spelling, basically, and I skipped over tons of stuff.