Bad Opera

I went the Santa Fe Opera with my friend, Wilhelm, last night. (Elyn has given up on late nights and given her ticket to friends.) The work was a new opera, Adriana Mater by a young woman whose name escapes me now. The opera has a dramatic story line that I won’t go into here. The orchestral forces are huge—full symphony orchestra, large percussion section, and a chorus in the orchestra pit.

It amazed me that the composer could only get mud out of that huge ensemble. The “music” was stale mid-twentieth century atonalism, very academic and dull. The vocal lines were OK and the singers were first rate, as I’ve come to expect of the SFO. All in all, it was a lackluster evening. At the intermission, Wilhelm and I looked at each other and agreed that we had heard enough.

As we walked back to the parking lot I couldn’t help thinking what a Mahler or a Debussy could have elicited from that huge ensemble. People were blaming the atonalism for their lack of interest, but the musical style had nothing to do with it. I can remember performances of Wozzeck that had the audience spellbound for an entire evening.

My other observation is that 15 or 20 years ago, I would have felt constrained out of professional duty to remain through the entire performance. I would have been prepared to discuss every aspect of the work in learned terms. As it is now, I had no such compunctions and my “learned” observation was “What a pile of crap!”