Can we really write off ‘modern opera’?
It’s sad that the Almeida will no longer stage new operas, but even more so that its director blames their composers
Andrew Mellor 10:34am GMT 8th August 2012
The news that the Almeida Theatre in north London will no longer stage its summer opera festival is pretty saddening. But it was Michael Attenborough’s parting shot at the art form that really stuck in my throat. Attenborough told The Telegraph that ‘modern opera studiously avoids anything so old-fashioned as melody or emotion’.
Which reminded me of an extraordinary night of melodic, emotion-filled opera that left me pole-axed and delighted a few years ago. It was the canny two-hander Love Counts by Michael Nyman – a deeply moving portrayal of an unlikely London romance in its world premiere performance. As a composer Nyman enchants and infuriates me in equal measure, but he scored Love Counts with heartfelt, diligent skill and the theatre staged it with cutting brilliance. Now which theatre was it again…ah yes, that’s right, it was the Almeida.
There are plenty of talented composers who Attenborough could call if he wanted to commission a new opera in a tonal, tuneful style – not least Nyman, but also Jonathan Dove, who was associated with the Almeida for a number of years and wrote his involving and dramatic opera Siren Song for it.
If Attenborough’s beef is with the big houses who commission large-scale and predominantly atonal pieces from the more prominent names in contemporary music – and yes, they happen to have commissioned a string of duffs over the past two years – then he’d be ideally placed to ratchet-up Almeida Opera as an alternative. It always was a nimble little festival, and with the profusion of non-line-towing opera being sung above the pubs on Upper Street he’d be on just the right patch.
In a sense, though, that’s not the point. I’ve no idea which operas Attenborough has seen recently, but the fact is, to many ears plenty of ‘modern’ and ‘modernist’ operas harbour the emotion Attenborough craves despite having a complicated relationship with melody. Western art music (for want of a better pigeonhole) began to fracture its relationship with melody a century ago, and since then plenty of operatic masterpieces have been born. Many have an ambiguous relationship with melody rather than presenting it straight as Mozart and Puccini’s operas might, but hey, that’s where large parts of our musical tradition have gone and it has proved very stimulating and involving for a large number of people while also reflecting the jarring magnificence of modern life.
The point being, Attenborough’s claim that music is ‘all about’ melody is questionable: there’s stuff called rhythm and harmony, too, and when those things begin to obscure our traditional neurological relationship with a good tune, it can be a compelling artistic and human experience. Complaining that music is emotionally defunct because it doesn’t offer you a tune you can instantly whistle is a little like berating contemporary verse because it doesn’t always employ rhyming couplets.
The real reason for the Almeida shutting its opera festival, which The Telegraph journalist understandably chose to reference a good few lines below the ‘modern opera is rubbish’ line, is that it divides the Almeida audience. In these straitened times the theatre wants to focus on its core punters for spoken plays, which is fair enough. But if the Almeida hasn’t been able to wed spoken theatre and opera in the way that, say, the Young Vic has, it’s a little disingenuous to go pointing the finger at opera in general.
On September 5 I’ll be taking my seat at the Royal Albert Hall to watch one of the greatest ‘modern’ operas get a 25th-birthday concert performance. Nixon in China by John Adams is an intensely modern work because at the time of writing it locked into a narrative that was bang-on the zeitgeist and used complex music that was recognisably born of a dialogue with the changing world around it. It’s one of the most performed of 20th-century operas, and it also has some of the most exquisite melodies I know. I’ve got a spare ticket, too, so if you want to come along, Michael, do get in touch.
Comments
The depressing thing about this debate is not so much what Attenborough Jr said - although anyone choosing to write off an entire art form can expect nothing less than a public drubbing - it's that, and how typical is this, someone from the arts establishment is revealed as lacking the basic background knowledge, and the basic vocab, to even engage in a debate about current musical trends. It's all very Richard Littlejohn or Toby Young. Anyone who can reduce the debate to 'melody' or 'emotion' clearly doesn't know what those words really mean i.e, how composers can use one to knock back on the other, or what might be symbolised by their avoidance. And I wonder what Attenborough thinks about such questions as whither operatic narrative post-Beckett, and the challenges to theatrical artifice thrown up by film?
The "melody" and the "emotion" are the core issues in music in terms of how you get into the piece or work of music in question. Mr. M. Attenborough is right in the sense that, you need the basic ingredient before you go to the more complex ones (harmony, rhythmic progression, form, etc.) and the side issues (orchestration, vocal lines, sonorities, etc.).
A good old professor used to tell me : "The melody is the face of the work; its social passport. The more beautiful or attractive, the more you'll get involved with the work of music". Without the melody or with "ugly", deformed, fractured or whatever else of "melodies", any work is doomed to have at least hard time, including the effect on the emotional impact on the unsuspected audience. We should not judge by ourselves, who might give chances to any modern work even out of curiosity. I've listened, for years, extensively Classical Music and I've been exposed to all kinds of its expression (concerts, production line, personal contacts and relationship with musicians and people of music). I never felt any particular attraction with the "modern" or "contemporary" works and composers.
The worse thing is that there are composers outside the stricto sensu Classical (?) contemporary realm, writing extremely beautiful melodies all these years, but, unfortunately, nobody (or very few) think to include them in the process. I'm talking about the gorgeous melodies one can find in almost every single work of Astor Piazzolla (the hymn theme from Addios Nonino and the slow hymn-theme from the Invierno Porteno are some of the most glorious, memorable, strongly hearfelt and immensely emotional melodies of the 20th century). You may realize the difference when you see the musicians involved performing these works; how they fly with the music and how the audience follow them in almost an ecstatic journey. But Piazzolla is a tango composer, most of you would claim. So what? His music, within minutes, speaks more than hours of complex sonorities which communicate in a language which only the "insiders" or the privies can possibly understand.
Besides, there is also the musical theatre, which all these years have produced some monumental melodies, memorable tunes and very emotional moments of substantive music. A work like West Side Story can touch plenty of any sort of audience, because its "face", the melodies, is so unique, memorable, directly emotional, full of ingenuity.
Anyhow, if Mr. M. Attenborough is wrong, the audience will correct him. Otherwise, maybe, he corrected an ill-fated, stillborn situation.
Parla
It reads to me like Mr. Attenborough is saying that the emotive aspect comes from the melody. While none of us would argue against the idea that a great melody does register emotively in the listener, you are right in saying that is an over-simplification of the case against modern opera, and that it is possible to have an emotive experience even if a contemporary opera isn't full of sing-a-longa tunes. A recorded tv performance I once watched of Where the Wild Things Are was quite exciting to me, and I have the recording too. Now I would love to see The Devils of Loudun...not exactly contemporary either of these two I know, but modern. Just checked - apparently the 1974 British premiere of Penderecki's opera was not altogether well-received...and was accused elsewhere of lacking melody.
I'm not sure, in the 21st century and in the vibrant stage of cultural cross-fertilisation that we're in, that we can say melody is the 'face' of the music. OK, it was for centuries in the west, but for certain types of 'classical' and vernacular music from other traditions, it never was.
If you're born in the UK these days, you can be raised in so many different musical traditions - that's the wonder of it. To use the horrible phrase 'going forward', I don't think we can say with any certainty that rhythm and harmony (the latter in the loosest sense) are secondary to melody in our current musical culture - 'art' or 'popular'. I would say rhythm, for many (though not me) takes precedence.
Mr. Mellor, check the blog above yours (the newcomer from your own Mr. March) and you'll see whether in 21th century melody is or at least can still be the "face" of the music work.
By the way, I never said or implied that rhythm or harmony are "secondary" to melody. I just said harmony, rhythm plus any other aspect of the work cannot function that well without a solid, substantive sort of melody. Besides, I'm also in favour of "going forward", but without ignoring what happened in our "back". Going forward is a very healthy approach in the Arts, provided one doesn't forget History (and its lessons).
Parla
Leave it to the box office (people who pay for their seats). If they like American pop-operas by people such as Michael Nyman or John Adams, they will fill the house year after year. If, like me, they prefer Wagner, Puccini, Verdi, Handel, Mozart or Bellini (especially Bellini) they will go elsewhere. Over the long view, it has always been thus. Who now advocates the operas of Hans Pfizner, avant-garde in his day?
Of course melody 'can be' the face of the music - it most often is - I was simply saying that we can't automatically assume that it is for everybody in this country.
As for the comment about American pop-operas...I think the point is that the audience isn't divided thus; a piece like Nixon in China has reams of muscial value (academic, structural, emotional) and the term 'pop-opera' is actually pretty insulting. My main operatic diet is Wagner, Mozart, Handel, Janacek, Britten - I see NIC as a part of that, not an alternative to it. So to the opera houses who programme them together (and, I'm afraid, the audiences who subsrcibe to both - there's your proof).