[Dixielandjazz] OPERA Celebrates a 400th Anniversary - Will OKOM do the same someday?

[Steve Barbone]

Opera's roots, some claim, go back several thousand years. They claim the
camerata in Florence Italy, late in the 16th Century, sought to re create
early Greek Theater.

This article is not for everyone, but there are several parallels to OKOM
such as the need to renew the audience and the music to keep the art form
viable for more than a few cognoscenti, or relegating it to museums.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


NY TIMES - February 26, 2007 - By ALAN RIDING

How Can Opera Carry On? For Some Clues, Look to Where It Started Out

MANTUA, Italy, Feb. 25 ‹ The world of culture loves anniversaries, but rare
is the occasion when an entire art form can celebrate a major birthday as
opera did this weekend, exactly four centuries after Monteverdi¹s pioneering
work, ³L¹Orfeo,² was performed in this medieval Italian city.

Naturally enough ³L¹Orfeo² was again presented here, albeit not in the
Palace of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga, where it had its premiere on Feb. 24,
1607, but in the 18th-century Teatro Bibiena. Further, compared with the
premiere¹s hand-painted décor and daring ³flying² machines, this was a more
modest semi-staged affair.

Still, for opera sentimentalists, it was a moment to reflect on the origins
of this genre of music theater ‹ one later described by Samuel Johnson as
³exotick and irrational entertainment² ‹ which soon spread from Mantua to
Venice and by the end of the 17th century had conquered much of Europe.

The ³Orfeo² anniversary has also been an occasion for more topical debate
about the present and future of an art form that to many, both inside and
outside this cultish world, is seemingly constantly in crisis. Ten days ago
European opera managers and directors gathered in Paris to address the
central question: What is opera¹s place in the 21st century?

The crowds attending two performances of ³L¹Orfeo² here this weekend
suggested that opera¹s appeal is far from waning. And, thinking of the
future as well as the past, the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana, which
organized this production, picked the cast of ³L¹Orfeo² from among 245
international singers under the age of 40 who competed for the 17 roles.

With Roberto Gini conducting the Ensemble Concerto and Concerto Palatino,
the director Gianfranco de Bosio compensated for the lack of décor and
costumes with lively dancing and some persuasive acting, notably from the
young Portuguese tenor Fernando Guimarães as Orfeo. The Spanish soprano Eva
Juárez sang Euridice, Pretty Yende from South Africa was Musica, and Yang
Shen of China was an impressive Caronte.

Given the way Mantuans welcomed back Monteverdi on Saturday evening, it was
easy to forget that this city¹s relationship with opera more or less ended
with ³L¹Orfeo.²

The true cradle of opera was Florence, where in the 1580s and 1590s a group
of poets, artists and musicians known as the camerata sought to recreate
³authentic² Greek theater. Convinced that this theater had included singing,
they borrowed from Greek mythology and began composing vocal roles designed
to imitate speech. The result was ³a work in music,² an ³opera in musica.²

The first composer to finesse this new hybrid of music, drama and ballet was
Jacopo Peri, whose ³Dafne² premiered in Florence a decade before ³L¹Orfeo.²
This was followed in 1600 by ³Euridice,² with competing scores by Peri and
Emilio Caccini. But while the score of ³Dafne² is lost, and ³Euridice² had
little influence beyond Florence, Monteverdi¹s masterpiece served as a
template for future operas.

Thus it is as the composer of the oldest opera in today¹s repertory that
Monteverdi has earned the title of father of opera ‹ and this weekend the
symbolic anniversary of opera¹s birth.

Mantua¹s role in all this, however, was somewhat accidental. When Monteverdi
joined Duke Vincenzo¹s court musicians as a string player in 1590, Mantua
was a quintessential Renaissance city, one where artists (Rubens was hired
by the duke in 1600), composers, poets and scientists rubbed shoulders. As
music director to the court from 1602, Monteverdi was expected to compose.

Yet in its day ³L¹Orfeo² was not significant enough for surviving records to
show how it was received or even where in the sprawling Palazzo Ducale it
was performed. Even after extensive research Paola Besutti, a Monteverdi
expert, still mentions several grand halls ‹ the Manto, Specchi, Fiumi and
Imperiale ‹ as possible sites.

In 1613, apparently tired of life in Mantua, Monteverdi became music
director at St. Mark¹s in Venice. There he concentrated on religious music
before returning to opera with two final masterpieces, ³Il Ritorno d¹Ulisse
in Patria² in 1540 and ³L¹incoronazione di Poppea² in 1543.

Meanwhile Mantua appears to have forgotten him until now. This city¹s
considerable claim to fame lies in literature (Virgil was born nearby),
painting (Mantegna, Pisanello and Giulio Romano all worked here) and
Renaissance architecture. A statue of Dante Alighieri stands beside the
Teatro Bibiena, but no bust or statue of Monteverdi can be found here.

Yet it is from ³L¹Orfeo² in Mantua four centuries ago that a line can be
drawn ‹ through the monumental works of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner ‹ to the
operas being composed today. How to bridge that past and the present was one
topic worrying European opera managers in Paris earlier this month.

If opera is not to become a ³museum art,² it must renew its repertory. Yet
while new works are routinely commissioned, many opera lovers resist
experimental contemporary scores, preferring the evergreens of Mozart, Verdi
and Puccini. The principal novelty of recent seasons has been the revival of
Baroque composers, notably Handel.

Nonetheless, boosted in the 1990s by stadium-filling shows by the so-called
Three Tenors (Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras), opera
continues to grow in popularity, so much so that its traditional
19th-century homes have now been joined by new opera houses in Copenhagen,
Valencia, the Canary Islands, Tokyo, Shanghai and, in 2008, Beijing.

On the other hand, with opera by far the most expensive performing art to
produce, even with houses receiving enormous subsidies from governments in
Europe and private sponsors in the United States, the high cost of opera
seats in most cities tends to put off young music lovers and inevitably
reinforces the image of opera as somehow elitist.

At the center of the Paris debate, then, was the need to win over younger
audiences.

Peter Gelb, the new general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, was invited
to share his strategy, which has so far included offering reduced-price
tickets on weekends, adding glamour to the season¹s opening night and
organizing high-definition transmissions of live performances to movie
theaters around the United States.

But to survive opera also needs exciting singers and, encouragingly, a
generational change is already well underway. Appropriately, then, the fine
young singers performing ³L¹Orfeo² here this weekend were celebrating
opera¹s past just as they were representing its future.