Agreed, this Guardian piece is something of a stunt, along the lines of Gene Weingarten’s Pulitzer-winning “Doe-Eyed Fiddle Star Dissed in Metro!” story for the WaPo last year. (Why did The Guardian not ask the writer to cover a production like, for example, Opera Omnia’s nightclub Poppea? Do such not exist in London?) Still: Laura Barton makes points. To WiFi ears, most standard operas are too long. (Ahem: new operas, often, less so.) Excessive repetition can immobilize a libretto, though here we’re really talking about the difference between dramatic music and any pop music you can dance to (that is, virtually all of it,) which thrives on pulse and refrain. This, though, is tricky:
“I just cannot find a friend in this music. I can see it is beautiful. I can tell they are singing magnificently, but it stirs nothing in my belly, conjures nothing in my heart.”
Here’s one problem that can’t be solved by better writing and a sexier venue. In an amplified world, in which we are so used to singers speaking or whispering or growling or wailing into our iEars—that is, singing with a kind of immediacy that only a microphone makes possible—is acoustic singing itself a kind of cultural firewall? As a musician, I’m torn. It’s a staggering luxury to be able to write precisely and intricately for the limitless virtuoso that is the contemporary opera singer. But in a world when so many listeners hear a woman’s head voice as, a priori, an affectation, can writing bridge the divide? Can singing? If singers and writers work together, I think so: but I write this as a heads-up to those inside and outside the opera house who think that all you need for the form to thrive is great singing: great traditional singing. One listener’s breath of life is Laura Barton’s kiss of death.
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