Relevance in Opera
RELEVANCE IN OPERA
Many opera people today talk about "relevance" as if it were the holy grail. But many don't know what the word means. Here's what a wise opera observer, Fred Plotkin, has to say: "Opera lives on an emotional plane rather than a literal plane... it allows us to be emotional, more human." The great operas are on universal themes: love, jealousy, loss, ambition, struggle, and other aspects of human nature, both tragic and comic. I recently had an impresario say he wasn't going to produce one of my operas because it was not relevant." This stung me, and the more I thought about it the more angry I became at his ignorance. So angry that I wrote a little paragraph about the 'relevancy" of each of my four operas:
TARTUFFE
Hypocrites are always with us, whether scamming the devout, groping the innocent or betraying the trust of a nation. Molière’s play and my opera show a scoundrel who uses those first two cons, but in the opera’s final scene, when he is caught, Tartuffe’s excuse is that of some famous presidents: in the 1980s it was “I am not a crook”; in the 90’s it was changed to “I did not have sex with that woman.” Today the old charlatan might plead, “There was no collusion!” As one Viennese critic put it, “What a joy to watch the wise wife reveal the pious Tartuffe as a lecherous seducer.” #MeToo, indeed!
JOHN BROWN
“The story of John Brown is an immortal legend—perhaps the only one in our history.” So wrote a twentieth-century historian, but Brown is even more relevant today. His story is the battle for survival of the American vision—increasingly crucial to those who still must struggle for simple justice in a time of rampant inequality. Brown’s message was this: you cannot have both injustice and peace. When were either injustice or peace not relevant?
THE RIVALS
“There’s nothing old-fashioned about it,” wrote one critic; “we’re just a costume change away from something right out of Real Housewives of Newport.” Another predicted this “fresh, classical work will be a significant factor to the art’s future.” The lighthearted score runs the gamut from Rossini to ragtime to popular songs. I have changed the original Lydia Languish into Lydia Larkspur, a modern young woman who must fight her own battles against her overbearing aunt, the hilarious Mrs. Malaprop, whose every word reminds us of the folly of trying to appear more learned than we are (“I demand a full expiration.”)
PRIDE & PREJUDICE
“Jane Austen wrote not of war and peace, but of men, money, and marriage, the battlefield for women of her day and, surely, of our own,” wrote Anna Quindlen, who herself has written much about contemporary women and their lives. The novel, the films, the television versions and the dozens of recent prequels and sequels on Pride & Prejudice all attest to its universality. Because of its characters, its humor, and its opportunities for dances and for passionate music, it is the ideal story for opera.