Opera in the Twentieth Century

[Sid]

I'm just reading Norman Lebrecht's Companion to Twentieth Century Music, and in it he lists some of the landmarks in 20th century opera. I must admit that I haven't heard many of these in full, only the Berg, Schoenberg, Puccini and Bartok. The rest is pretty unknown to me. Looks like he has included some operetta and musical theatre as well.

Feel free to discuss your favourite C20th operas. Any ones to add? Bear in mind, this book was published in 1992. Ones I would add are by Ravel & Carter. Here is his list:

Debussy
- Pelleas at Melisande (1902)

Nielsen
- Saul and David (1902)

Puccini
- Madama Butterfly (1004)
- Turandot (1926)

Janacek
- Jenufa (1904)
- Cunning Little Vixen (1924)
- Katya Kabanova (1921)
- The Makropoulos Case (1926)
- From the House of the Dead (1930)

Lehar
- The Merry Widow (1905)

R. Strauss
- Salome (1905)
- Elektra (1909)
- Der Rosenkavalier (1911)
- Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919)
- Arabella (1933)
- Capriccio (1942)

Massenet
- Don Quichotte (1910)

Pfitzner
- Palestrina (1917)

Zemlinsky
- A Florentine Tragedy (1917)

Bartok
- Bluebeard's Castle (1918)

Prokofiev
- The Love for Three Oranges (1921)
- War and Peace (1946)
- The Fiery Angel (1954)

Busoni
- Doktor Faust (1924)

Berg
- Wozzeck (1925)
- Lulu (1936)

Szymanowski
- King Roger (1926)

Weill
- Threepenny Opera (1928)
- Street Scene (1947)

Shostakovich
- Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934)

Gershwin
- Porgy and Bess (1935)

Hindemith
- Mathis der Maler (1938)

Ullmann
- The Emperor of Atlantis (1943)

Britten
- Peter Grimes (1945)
- Billy Budd (1951)
- A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960)
- Death in Venice (1973)

Dallapiccola
- The Prisoner (1949)

Stravinsky
- The Rake's Progress (1951)

Schoenberg
- Moses und Aron (1954)

Bernstein
- West Side Story (1956)

Henze
- King Stag (1956)
- The Bassarids (1966)

Zimmermann
- The Soldiers (1965)

Penderecki
- The Devils of Loudun (1969)

Ligeti
- Le grand macabre (1978)

Reimann
- Lear (1978)

Stockhausen
- Donnerstag (beginning of the Licht cycle, 1981)

Messiaen
- St Francois d'Assise (1983)

Berio
- Un re in ascolto (1984)

Adams
- Nixon in China (1987)

Birtwistle
- The Mask of Orpheus (1986)
- Gawain (1991)

[mc ukrneal]

Britten's Turn of the Screw. Not usually a fan of this type of thing, but this is a fantastic opera, both on the musical side and the psychological side. I love the ambiguities here and the different aspects that can be brought out (as well as the interplay of story and music). There have been some very interesting productions over the years, not to mention the recording by the composer.

Others I would think about:
Rachmaninov's Miserly Knight and Franchesca di Rimini
Kabalevsky's Colos Breugnon

But really, Turn of the Screw is the one that just leaps out to me initially.

[Sid]

Here in Australia, we had Richard Meale (who died only last year). His operas Voss and Mer de Glace have been produced in this country, but I don't think that any international productions have occured. Both of his operas were quite tonal and (almost) traditional for the late twentieth century, the latter reminded me of Debussy a bit (I've only heard the suite in a program paying tribute to him last year, these don't get much airplay even here in Australia).

& yes, I want to get into some of the operas of Britten, I have only heard the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes. I have read a bit about him, and apparently he moved away from the almost Romantic lushness of his initial operas to a more pared down and astringent style later on.

[False_Dmitry]

I'm just reading Norman Lebrecht's Companion to Twentieth Century Music,

I use my copy to wedge the door open in warm weather.  The worst book on music ever written.

I was surprised you didn't know the Janacek operas?  They're regarded as standard repertoire now.  I'd strongly recommend all of those listed to you, they're stupendous pieces.  Start with CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN?

The list, though, is pretty standard, and I wouldn't challenge any of the inclusions (although WEST SIDE STORY is not an opera).  It's the omissions (notably of American music, which the puffed-up  pseudo-intellectual Lebrecht despises) which are my main gripe with this... but that would be a long list.

Menotti - THE MEDIUM, THE CONSUL, AMELIA GOES TO THE BALL (and others)

Floyd - BILBY'S DOLL, SUSANNAH, OF MICE & MEN

Ward - THE CRUCIBLE

Moore - THE DEVIL & DANIEL WEBSTER, THE BALLAD OF BABY DOE

Poulenc - DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES (surely Lebrecht's most doltish omission? a colossal work of the C20th)

Barber - VANESSA, ANTHONY & CLEOPATRA

Shostakovich - THE NOSE, CHERYIOMUSHKI

Sondheim - not a single work listed   SWEENEY TODD is ten times the "opera" that WEST SIDE STORY is.  PACIFIC OVERTURES, SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, etc - all missing.

Muraveli - THE GREAT FRIENDSHIP (shut-down by Stalin at the Dress Rehearsal - banned).

Tippett - KING PRIAM, THE KNOT GARDEN, THE MIDSUMMER MARRIAGE

Henze -  ELEGY FOR YOUNG LOVERS, WE COME TO THE RIVER, THE YOUNG LORD

Osborne - THE ELECTRIFICATION OF THE SOVIET UNION

Knussen - WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, HIGGLETY-PIGGLETY-POP

Of course there are lots of works which have premiered after the book was published in 1992 - it would be unfair to chide Lebrecht about those (even though the book was reissued and allegedly "edited" to remove the swathe of factual errors the first edition contained).

[mc ukrneal]

Poulenc - DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES (surely Lebrecht's most doltish omission? a colossal work of the C20th)

Sondheim - not a single work listed   SWEENEY TODD is ten times the "opera" that WEST SIDE STORY is.  PACIFIC OVERTURES, SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, etc - all missing.

Just a comment on two of your inclusions - Poulenc is not a favorite of mine, but that opera must absolutely be on the list! Good catch.

Sondheim - I don't understand why Sondheim or Bernstein is opera. These are all musicals (listening to opera singers sing any of these makes me want to puke). I love everything you listed, but have always been a bit mystified about this seemingly unclear classification, when it seems clear cut to me. Minor point, I'm know.

If one wants a more complete list, well there are many, many operas to be added (including several by Prokofiev, Britten, Shostakovich as you listed, and others).

[Sid]

Yes, False Dmitry, I agree that Lebrecht is quite opinionated at times. So I'm reading this book with a grain of salt. I have heard of (but not actually heard) most operas on his list, but the ones you list are mainly new to me. I did borrow Barber's Vanessa from the library a while back, but never got around to listening to it. & I am aware that Poulenc's Dialogues was a significant one as well...

[False_Dmitry]

Sondheim - I don't understand why Sondheim or Bernstein is opera. These are all musicals

I'd go along with you there - although for myself, I'm not bothered by the distinction between the genre-lines.  SWEENEY TODD needs the resources of an opera-house to stage it well, let's say    While you could equally say that RITA, DON PASQUALE and SONNAMBULA are the musicals of their age (by comparison to the late opera seria of Rossini, like TANCREDI, MOISE or WILLIAM TELL let's say?  Which are "serious operas")

Where I'm interested in the genre is how the show works on stage.  There is a tendency (in less-good musicals) for the action to stop for the big songs and ensembles... they're mostly an emotional reflection on the situation up-to-now.  In well-written opera, the arias and ensembles carry the action forwards.  It's why - for example - numbers like Si, vendetta! in RIGOLETTO work so well..  because within that number we see Rigoletto's latent hatred for his employer turn first to righteous anger, moral justification, trial, judgement, and finally... "sentence of death".  At the end of the piece the entire action of the opera has made a u-turn...  the upper hand now lies with the servant, rather than the master.  Good musicals achieve this too - Sondheim, Schwartz etc have the handle of this perfectly in their grasp.  "Try a bit of priest?" in SWEENEY - despite the jet-black humour - serves the same function as the Rigoletto/Gilda duet...  two people resolve to become killers to take revenge upon their enemy/ies.   More two-dimensional musicals like LES MIS lack this kind of musical development, and we know nothing more about the characters and their intentions at the ends of their solo numbers - pretty though they might be - than at the start...  the "action" of the show lies in the spoken dialogue.  It's usually because the authors are playwrights who view songs as a bit of decoration that fills up the time during scene-changes

[False_Dmitry]

Yes, False Dmitry, I agree that Lebrecht is quite opinionated at times. So I'm reading this book with a grain of salt. I have heard of (but not actually heard) most operas on his list, but the ones you list are mainly new to me. I did borrow Barber's Vanessa from the library a while back, but never got around to listening to it. & I am aware that Poulenc's Dialogues was a significant one as well...

If you get the chance, do give CARMELITES a shot, ideally on DVD if you can get hold of it - it's a strongly stage-based show.  I know almost no-one who has been disappointed by it, although it's a heavy emotional onslaught at the end.

Of course, it might not be about "what it's about".  Ostensibly it's about the execution of the nuns at Compiene during the French Revolution, of course.  4-5 years after the premiere, Poulenc was at a Press Conference, when a journalist popped him a very unexpected question - "But isn't your opera DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES an allegory of how Vichy France handed the jews over to the Nazis in WW2?".  "No comment" replied an obviously flustered Poulenc.  Even to this day, "no-one wants to talk about the Vichy collaboration" in France, and it's been swept under the carpet.

[Wendell_E]

Dialogues des Carmélites and the Ravel operas really are major omissions.  I'd also include Poulenc's two shorter operas, Les mamelles de Tirésias and La voix humaine, certainly before The Merry Widow.  It's also odd, given that six Strauss operas are listed, that Ariadne auf Naxos isn't included.  And Ariadne's title reminds me of Dukas' Ariane et Barbe-bleu.

[mjwal]

As regards the Vichy collaboration - the full details of all collaborators will be put online in the coming years. At last. (I don't have a link at hand, but read it in the news recently.) After the war even the members of the Resistance shut up; there's one in my village, and when I asked him what went on he advised me to read a book on the subject.
Lebrecht's list, like everything published by that egregious blah-artist, is very dodgy. Other omissions have been noted. No Ariadne auf Naxos?Where is Erwartung? I would add Dukas's Ariane et barbe-bleu, Weill's Mahagonny, Martinu's Juliette & Ariane, Lidholm's Ett Dromspel , Rihm's Die Eroberung von Mexico, and Henze's Phaedra off the top of my head.

[mc ukrneal]

I'd go along with you there - although for myself, I'm not bothered by the distinction between the genre-lines.  SWEENEY TODD needs the resources of an opera-house to stage it well, let's say    While you could equally say that RITA, DON PASQUALE and SONNAMBULA are the musicals of their age (by comparison to the late opera seria of Rossini, like TANCREDI, MOISE or WILLIAM TELL let's say?  Which are "serious operas")

Where I'm interested in the genre is how the show works on stage.  There is a tendency (in less-good musicals) for the action to stop for the big songs and ensembles... they're mostly an emotional reflection on the situation up-to-now.  In well-written opera, the arias and ensembles carry the action forwards.  It's why - for example - numbers like Si, vendetta! in RIGOLETTO work so well..  because within that number we see Rigoletto's latent hatred for his employer turn first to righteous anger, moral justification, trial, judgement, and finally... "sentence of death".  At the end of the piece the entire action of the opera has made a u-turn...  the upper hand now lies with the servant, rather than the master.  Good musicals achieve this too - Sondheim, Schwartz etc have the handle of this perfectly in their grasp.  "Try a bit of priest?" in SWEENEY - despite the jet-black humour - serves the same function as the Rigoletto/Gilda duet...  two people resolve to become killers to take revenge upon their enemy/ies.   More two-dimensional musicals like LES MIS lack this kind of musical development, and we know nothing more about the characters and their intentions at the ends of their solo numbers - pretty though they might be - than at the start...  the "action" of the show lies in the spoken dialogue.  It's usually because the authors are playwrights who view songs as a bit of decoration that fills up the time during scene-changes

Not to turn this into a musicals thread, but could not disagree more with you about Les Mis. The characterizations of the Thenardiers is brilliantly handled -their character, intentions, etc., well matched to the music (and the songs are clear about who they are, what they do, and how they do it). The same is true of Jean Valjean when he's going to steal the priest's stuff, and the priest gives it to him. The song after that clearly shows how Jean Valjean decides to change from 'bad' guy to good guy, just like in your examples above. Les Mis, as it happens, is one of the best musicals ever written in my opinion. You never get the feeling that they are singing a song just because they want a big number there, but that each song/action is propelling the action forward as you say.

On the other hand, this 'stopping of the action' doesn't have to be a negative. In fact, it gives you some 'out of time' moments to think about and delve into a character (or revel in their revenge/love/evil/whatever), like an aside to the audience in Shakespeare. Most operas though have strange stories and only a relatively few work cohesively from one end to the other (Otello springs to mind) with no real weakness.

[Mandryka]

. . . the Ravel operas really are major omissions. 

Really -- I've only ever seen L'heure Espagnole. Fun yes. But  it seemed a bit trivial.

Have I missed something? Is the other one good?

Some of the operas in the list seem pretty dire to me.  I can't see myself that Donersag aus Licht is a major landmark, for example. I heard it once and was surprised how sub-Wagnerian it sounded.

Nor Death in Venice neither (Turn of the screw is a real landmark though.)

I think he's been a bit generous to Janacek too. And Prokofiev's Fiery Angel? A landmark? No!

I would add Poulenc's Carmelites, Weil's Mahogony, Orf's Carmina Burana,  Strauss's Intermezzo and Birtwistle's Punch and Judy. Probably delete Gawain though, which seemed a bit boring. And add Tippett's King Priam (the rest, like Knot Garden, seem spoilt by crappy mystic psychobabble . At least in Priam all that twaddle only comes at the end of the opera. You just leave before the final act.)

Maybe that's unfair though -- Midsummer Marriage is probaby a landmark in terms of gay politics.

Does anyone here think that  Thérèse (Tavener) should be on the list? Or The Tempest (Ades.) Or The Sacrifice (MacMillan)

[False_Dmitry]

I think he's been a bit generous to Janacek too. And Prokofiev's Fiery Angel? A landmark? No!

Hardly! The Janacek operas listed are mainstream and performed all over the world - something one can't say about 50% of the operas on the list.  Each of the Janacek operas deserves its listing, IMHO    As does FIERY ANGEL, as far as being a landmark - it's a huge step forward in Prokofiev's output, although it's something of an orphan... a work that didn't give birth to further progeny in that line.  (The libretto itself is astonishing as a piece of literature, too).

If we are looking to topple works already in Lebrecht's list, then I'd really question Nielsen's SAUL & DAVID there.  If any Nielsen piece should be on the list then MASKERAD is probably the candidate.  But a landmark piece?  I couldn't say so! 

And where is JONNY SPIELT AUF, I'd like to know?   And DIE TOTE STADT?  Now they are landmark operas!  And not a thing by PMD in the list either - the enfant terrible of music-theatre of the 1960s-70s?

[Wendell_E]

Really -- I've only ever seen L'heure Espagnole. Fun yes. But  it seemed a bit trivial.

Have I missed something? Is the other one good?

I like L'enfant et les sortilèges a lot more than L'heure espagnole, which does seem a bit trivial, not that there's anything wrong with that. 

Midsummer Marriage is probaby a landmark in terms of gay politics.

How so?  Or were you thinking of The Knot Garden, which features a gay couple?

[Mandryka]

I like L'enfant et les sortilèges a lot more than L'heure espagnole, which does seem a bit trivial, not that there's anything wrong with that. 

How so?  Or were you thinking of The Knot Garden, which features a gay couple?

Oh yes -- getting them confused.


The Covent Garden performance of L'heure Espagnole was great fun -- especially a bit where he's hiding in a grandfather clock.

[mamascarlatti]

Among my favourites on the original list is War and Peace - I love the grand sweep of it.

Not on the list are other operas I enjoy very much, Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (1910) and Glass's Akhnaten (1983). The first is certainly performed regularly enough to qualify.

[Guido]

I was surprised you didn't know the Janacek operas?  They're regarded as standard repertoire now.  I'd strongly recommend all of those listed to you, they're stupendous pieces.  Start with CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN?

Vixen first, really? Much as I adore the music, and especially the glorious third act (I'm going to have to listen to it today now!), its one of the weirdest operas I know and probably the least involving of his mature output. I'd recommend Jenufa or Katya as a starting point.

[False_Dmitry]

Vixen first, really? Much as I adore the music, and especially the glorious third act (I'm going to have to listen to it today now!), its one of the weirdest operas I know and probably the least involving of his mature output. I'd recommend Jenufa or Katya as a starting point.

Well of course, they are all superb   So the one to start with is whichever you can most easily find being performed live in a theatre near where you live    The theme of the cycle of death and rebirth is one of Janacek's private obsessions...  and at its most overtly visible in VIXEN, of course   (Strongly present in HOUSE OF THE DEAD - the eternal prison life goes on, broken up by the arrival and departure of Goryanchikov...  in JENUFA, where the possibility of love suggests she'll have another baby in place of her murdered child...  and of course in MAKROPOULOS, where reincarnation has become a nightmare from which Elina tries to escape).

I have to admit to a soft spot for VIXEN, not only for its philsophical pantheist message, but for the heartmelting delicacy of the orchestration - especially in Act One for the woodland creatures. 

The other Janacek opera for which I have a strange admiration is OSUD.  It is, perhaps, a flawed work in some ways - but the idea is astounding...  telescoping the emotional range of a full-scale piece into just over an hour of music.  Although it's not easy to stage, it can be done - although you need a fully set-up theatre (with the ability to fly scenery in and out swifty) to do the filmic scene-changes from the main street at the Marianske Lazny spa, to Zhivny's cramped apartment, to the rehearsal-room at the Music Academy.   In that respect, it would merit "landmark" status on Mr Lebrecht's list    

Of course,  HOUSE OF THE DEAD is the most compelling of his operas, and the largest-scale too - written when he'd become successful, and could be certain of full-scale productions for his works.  But the private domestic tragedy of OSUD can be just as commanding

[Guido]

Well of course, they are all superb   So the one to start with is whichever you can most easily find being performed live in a theatre near where you live    The theme of the cycle of death and rebirth is one of Janacek's private obsessions...  and at its most overtly visible in VIXEN, of course   (Strongly present in HOUSE OF THE DEAD - the eternal prison life goes on, broken up by the arrival and departure of Goryanchikov...  in JENUFA, where the possibility of love suggests she'll have another baby in place of her murdered child...  and of course in MAKROPOULOS, where reincarnation has become a nightmare from which Elina tries to escape).

I have to admit to a soft spot for VIXEN, not only for its philsophical pantheist message, but for the heartmelting delicacy of the orchestration - especially in Act One for the woodland creatures. 

The other Janacek opera for which I have a strange admiration is OSUD.  It is, perhaps, a flawed work in some ways - but the idea is astounding...  telescoping the emotional range of a full-scale piece into just over an hour of music.  Although it's not easy to stage, it can be done - although you need a fully set-up theatre (with the ability to fly scenery in and out swifty) to do the filmic scene-changes from the main street at the Marianske Lazny spa, to Zhivny's cramped apartment, to the rehearsal-room at the Music Academy.   In that respect, it would merit "landmark" status on Mr Lebrecht's list    

Of course,  HOUSE OF THE DEAD is the most compelling of his operas, and the largest-scale too - written when he'd become successful, and could be certain of full-scale productions for his works.  But the private domestic tragedy of OSUD can be just as commanding

Also love Osud - recently got the English langauge recording - such spectacular music. I love the layers of the story too - how many opera composers and operas are being depicted here? Is Živný Janacek portraying himself in music, or is Janacek in relation to Živný as Živný is in relation to Lensky? Or is Živný's chracter Lensky Janacek?! The same could be said for the child character, perhaps even more poignantly because of Olgha's fate. This self referentiality and layers of existence/art is a theme I love also in Strauss' Ariadne, Intermezzo and then most perfectly in Capriccio.

I should ask - have you seen it staged then? What could it be coupled with I wonder? Bluebeard?

[False_Dmitry]

how many opera composers and operas are being depicted here? Is Živný Janacek portraying himself in music, or is Janacek in relation to Živný as Živný is in relation to Lensky? Or is Živný's chracter Lensky Janacek?!

Oh yes... all those questions, and more besides!   I'd be hesitant personally to see too many direct parallels between LJ and Zivny...   perhaps there had been a time when Janacek dearly loved his young wife, but mainly he seems to have seen her as a closed-minded harridan who failed to recognise her husband's latter-life celebrity?  But OSUD is written (IIRC?) before the fateful meeting with his muse, Kamilla Stosslova, so it's not one of those pieces.  In fact in the cases where we know for certain of specific parallels between Janacek's life and his works (such as the Stosslova instances - which he spelled out in one of the last letters to her, naming the roles she'd inspired) those parallels are very indirect. He seems to have been more interested in some latent quality of character or personal behaviour, rather than direct personal circumstances.  No such event as his wife falling out of a window ever happened to Janacek (although he may have wished it had happened...) instead he seems more interested in the dilemma of being an artist amid the sausage-and-beer banality of Mr Broucek's rather philistine world.   Zivny and his young wife may be living in a garret, but they are making a go of bringing up young Doubek despite their lack of money... what wrecks things is the interfering and ghastly mother-in-law (a prototype for the Kostelnicka later, of course).   Interesting this dragonly matron doesn't even have a name!  She's just "the mother-in-law", and that's more than sufficient.

I should ask - have you seen it staged then?

My former boss, David Pountney, staged it during my time at ENO in London.  I'm not sure he had the measure of the piece, and it didn't stay in repertoire - I think he'd mainly staged it as part of his cycle of "all Janacek's operas", many of which were extremely successful as productions.   It was paired-up with a production of Weill's SEVEN DEADLY SINS, staged by another director brought in from West End theatre - but this was a particularly lacklustre event and utter misery for everyone involved in it.  The choice of piece wasn't a bad one, I'd say (the Marketing people were in despair about selling a Janacek piece no-one had heard of, so a popular Weill work was seen as the way of filling the house - they threw money at the publicity) but it was just done in a thoroughly rotten and silly way.  It's a super piece for a chanteuse, but they wasted the chance.   Of course on disk OSUD neatly fills one disk without needing a pairing, so the question doesn't arise.   BLUEBEARD would be another good potential pairing, but in this case the OSUD set (requiring as it does three different locales) was too large to accommodate any other sizeable show on the same evening...  the ENO management rashly believed that SEVEN DEADLY SINS could be done in a light set in a cabaret kind of style - it was envisaged as a curtain-raiser, and not a fully-fledged production.  But the best-laid plans of mice and men...

By the way, talking of exceptionally successful Janacek productions, I was lucky enough to see the Bastille producion of VIXEN two years ago, and it's a remarkable achievement.  I can understand how grown-up people might initially be wary of an opera about badgers and chickens, but the whole forest world came to vibrant life in this production.  With astonishing generosity they put a stream of the entire opera on their website, free-to-view for a month   Sadly it's now expired - perhaps they might one day make it available again?   Magical stuff, in the very best sense   There is a bit of the same production available on YouTube, but illicitly filmed at waist height on a jerky handheld camera in a balcony miles above the stage...  which plays such havoc with the results that they are barely worth watching.  The Bastille's marketing clip is better filmed, using material from the internet video stream, and at least gives an idea of what the show looked like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqCYGsa8Km8