Can Opera Be Reborn?

Peter Kazaras reviews Yuval Sharon’s “A New Philosophy of Opera.”

By Peter KazarasOctober 23, 2024

• Music

• Philosophy & Religion

WE MIGHT AS WELL state the unavoidable up front: opera is indeed an “impossible art,” as composer/conductor/author Matthew Aucoin dubbed it in his eponymous 2021 book. Opera in theory and practice is riddled with improbabilities, inconsistencies, and seemingly insurmountable difficulties; it never makes a profit; and it is constantly reviled in popular culture as an elitist and overblown waste of time—and those who deride it also seem to think that white tie and tails or designer wear are mandatory attire at a performance, preferably with extravagantly expensive accessorizing. An overstatement to be sure, but the prevailing winds have decidedly not favored this art form over the past few decades.

The industry itself has had its share of #MeToo moments, and has tried (successfully in some cases, less so in others) to implement changes in diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, spurred on by the Black Lives Matter movement and We See You, White American Theater. Opera companies, at least in the United States, are struggling to include best practices of intimacy and consent direction, attempting to ensure a harassment-free workspace so that vulnerable singers (and others) are not prey to those who seem not to have gotten the memo about what is and what is not professional behavior. One cannot help but wonder just how motivated a general director of an opera company must be in order to even want the job, let alone succeed at it.

Just as the new opera season is upon us, MacArthur Fellow and maverick opera director Yuval Sharon is releasing A New Philosophy of Opera. Full disclosure: I have known Sharon as a brilliant colleague for over 20 years. During that time, I have attended many of his projects for his company the Industry and have also seen some of his work online during the pandemic. I have never seen any of his productions while physically present in a traditional venue. There is no doubt that Sharon has a brilliant and inquiring mind, and this book gives ample evidence that he knows how to construct his case convincingly and with care. He takes the reader step-by-step through his delineation of how he thinks opera creators and companies can try to broaden their approach in order to appeal to more audience members (and, presumably, to ensure that, while inevitably “impossible,” there might be something called “opera” in the future). He does not pull punches: “All diamantine, frozen views of opera, widely on display most anywhere you look, are what need to stop ‘dying’ and actually die—Die, so that opera can be reborn.”

This is an appropriately Wagnerian goal for Sharon, who has been recently announced as the stage director not only for the Metropolitan’s upcoming Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle but also for their new Tristan und Isolde. So why and how should this operatic Twilight of the Gods occur?

Sharon structures his text as an overture followed by 10 chapters, interspersed with “Time-Curves” that elucidate a timeline of what was happening during the history of opera. A partial list of topics includes “Origin Stories,” “A Populist vs. Elitist Entertainment,” “The Libretto,” “Tradition & Innovation,” “Opera & Politics,” “Production as a Temporary Art Work,” and the Wagner-centered “The Artwork of the Future.” The device is interesting and works well. Also helpful is the inclusion of a QR code to the book’s website, which includes a link to a Spotify playlist illustrating various points the author makes along the way. The chapters themselves deal with such topics as an audience member’s first time attending an opera; the importance of singing actors; narrative, ambiguity, and directorial authorship; the economics of opera; the push towards an anti-elite opera; opera productions outside the opera house; and the spiritual possibilities inherent in the art form. Interspersed are various case studies of the author’s own productions.

Sharon espouses an approach that he promises will remove the elitist factor from opera performance and creation, changing the power dynamic from a “top-down” dictation of taste and status to a collaboration among creators, performers, and audience. Each constituency is therefore required to bring their best game not only to the creation and performance but also to the reception of operatic work, both old and new.

His view of a “typical” opera audience in a “typical” routine opera performance is that they bask in a self-satisfied expectation that is deadly to creativity. Audiences for his usual work at the Industry have been trained to expect the unexpected, for which he deserves justified kudos. But even though we have all suffered through routine and even disappointing evenings of The Marriage of Figaro, La bohème, Rigoletto, and Die Walküre, has any of us not also experienced evenings at the opera that were truly transcendent even though the production followed the storyline outlined in the original conception, with a comprehensible narrative and with singers who were more than able to blow us away with the excellence of their performance? He justifiably praises the ability of certain performers to “forge a bridge connecting the music to what’s inside them and to the audience. The potential for a direct empathic connection between humans from different times and circumstances,” he argues, “is one of the most profound reasons for pursuing opera in the first place. The igniting of that empathy at operatic scale has the power to overwhelm our hearts, to open our minds, and to manufacture a sense of astonishment.” I agree wholeheartedly and have witnessed the results of such incandescent performances.

But Sharon’s suggested “cure” for the malignant influence of mediocre performance goes much further than merely making sure the performers are all talented, skillful, and committed to the task at hand. He wishes to put less emphasis on sheer narrative, to decentralize it, because he asserts that “when the narrative is the main event, and everything else follows from it, the mechanics of the art form appear clunky and old-fashioned.” I do not find this line of reasoning either convincing or helpful. My own experience, both as audience member and as content creator, has proved otherwise. If the onstage relationships are lucidly delineated, and the motivations and humanity convincingly portrayed, then the narrative (which includes the emotional life of the character and is not just “the plot”) will transcend what Sharon deems clunky and old-fashioned.

He proposes “poetic” readings as the most rewarding path for exploration—differentiating these from realistic and symbolic interpretations of the pieces. Why could this not also be defined as a richly characterized investigation of the work, encouraging the audience to participate in a shared give-and-take experience? Indeed, Sharon notes that the crucial element of audience participation is always necessary to complete a live theatrical experience, a concept he attributes to Marcel Duchamp.

The solution, according to Sharon,

[is to] use the narrative as needed and cast it off as quickly as possible to explore complexities and paradoxes as only opera can. Then the narrow narrative may no longer obstruct an audience’s meaningful encounter [my emphasis], and an openness to the genre’s multiplicity is much easier to accept.

Sharon apparently does not trust his audience to unshackle their spirits on their own in order to embrace what they are experiencing. It is as if he feels compelled to lecture them on the importance of letting go, as opposed to providing an environment in which they can do just that and appreciate the piece on their own terms, instead of on his. And herein lies one of the supreme contradictions not only in the practice of opera production but also of this book: in struggling to make the experience less “elite,” for example by eschewing narrative, does he not also run the risk of making the entire experience impossibly esoteric; difficult to comprehend on an intuitive, emotional, or analytical level; and ultimately, therefore, more elitist? It may be that Sharon was bored the first time he saw an opera—La traviata in Berlin, to which he was taken by his father as a youngster—and perhaps he might have enjoyed the narrative-free Einstein on the Beach much more. But that does not mean that the latter work, essential though some find it, would be the best introduction to opera for others.

Sharon rightly points out that, since there are “two stable, document-based entities (a music score and a libretto)” involved in an opera production, they perforce “require this anarchic, transient third element (a production) for life, [and] the three tracks should receive equal weight.” Well said, but aside from the standard practice of cutting portions of scores and libretti, do we fundamentally alter the score and the libretto with each production? We do not. Should we? Sharon believes in the value of changing both the score and the narrative. His landmark 2022 rethinking of Puccini’s La bohème, at the Detroit Opera, presented the opera in reverse order, starting with the fourth act and ending with the first. To help the audience cope with the confusion of reverse-time narrative, he introduced a character—named the Wanderer, perhaps in conscious reference to the annoyingly inquisitive wanderer Wotan in the first act of Wagner’s Siegfried—who delivers spoken narration at various times. And indeed, why should we not embrace these kinds of changes, at least for works that have passed into the public domain? La bohème has endured for 128 years and will endure for many more, and Sharon’s production caused a sensation and was well received by many audience members.

Sharon recounts a story about an important donor bringing her granddaughter to that show for her first-ever opera experience. The granddaughter loved it. I wonder if she might not also have felt equally thrilled had she experienced a well-directed and convincingly performed production without narration and performed starting with Act One and ending with Act Four. I suppose we will never know. And whatever the answer, it is a testament to Puccini and his librettists, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, that a piece almost 130 years old still moves us to tears today, in whatever order it is performed—and, I must add, however it may be orchestrated. Having experienced productions as disparate as Joe Papp’s 1984 staging at the Public Theater (directed by Wilford Leach, starring Linda Ronstadt singing in the appropriate keys and in the usual octave) and Baz Luhrmann’s extravagant 2002 Broadway production, with singers switching off night by night as part of an ensemble cast, not to mention numerous big-house and even workshop-style productions, I know that the piece can always have a shattering impact.

Lest there be any doubt, I’m not only convinced by but have also been on board for many years with Sharon’s suggestion that the audience should be encouraged to embrace ambiguity more readily. He suggests calling it “enchantment,” believing that theater’s “true capacity for magic consists in its ability to hold multiple realities at once, to make a paradox visible.”

And it is after his delineation of this magic that he describes an important moment in his life as an artist—his initially reviled yet eventually successful 2019 production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Berlin State Opera. His case study of this production is fascinating, heartfelt, humble, and piercingly intelligent, showing how even the most thoroughly planned collaboration can go off the rails and might profit from being revisited in future seasons. The reader roots for him and his work throughout this compelling narrative, even as he acknowledges that he did not quite get it right the first time around. Lucky indeed that the general director of that opera house invited Sharon back to try again a few years later. His discussion is honest and written from the soul. I found it supremely human and moving—and I was charmed by the way he solved the initial problem.

Sharon provides further case studies of various productions he not only directed but also produced and wrangled and sometimes throttled into submission. The hoops he had to jump through for the Industry’s Sweet Land in 2020 were fearful, and the production was ultimately shut down before it even opened, due to pandemic restrictions. Luckily, a filmed version exists and was streamed at the time.

The logistics alone for Hopscotch (2015), another production of the Industry, were truly daunting. This magnum opus was composed by six Los Angeles composers, to libretti by six writers, performed in 24 limousines driving three separate routes throughout Los Angeles. Would-be audience members could purchase a ticket to sit in one of the limos, choosing one of three routes for their operatic voyage. They could also revisit the production following different routes on subsequent outings. The Industry also provided a Central Hub constructed for those who preferred to watch from there for free and forgo the experience of traveling along a route. My husband and I chose the Central Hub, mostly because I was not a fan of being held captive in a car for an unspecified length of time. The experience at the Central Hub was exhilarating at first—many folks showed up exclaiming how cool it was, only to leave within a few minutes. We stayed for hours, dutifully checking in on the audio and video feeds from all the limos, finding the headphones occasionally out of order, or being frustrated by a failed video feed.

None of that really mattered—this was clearly a once-in-a-lifetime event, and even though I watched dry-eyed as the various limos returned to the Hub, it was interesting to see their occupants emerge into the light, some of them stunned, some smiling, some with tears in their eyes as the performers sounded crotales, finger cymbals that, in this instance, were struck by a small mallet held by the performers. These reverberations, compelling in themselves as a sort of call to action and filled with overtones (both acoustic and artistic), certainly added to the communal experience. As a group, we all held space for it in the moment, albeit in our own inevitably idiosyncratic ways. The plot of Hopscotch as Sharon outlines it in his book is not that complicated, but as experienced, I found it truly confusing, and not in the “disruption begets transformation” way. Therein lies the paradox mentioned above about decentering narrative—in achieving his stated goal of opening up the process in order to make the audience’s experience more disorienting so that they are “forced” to encounter something unexpected, I for one certainly felt left out, simply not comprehending what seemed so compelling and moving to others.

The dichotomy most evident to me, both in the book and in observing several of Sharon’s projects over the years, has manifested as dual aspects of his artistic persona. On the one hand, his deep commitment to the work and to the process renders him a kind of Jeremiah of opera—filled with prophetic fervor, preaching impending doom should we not heed his warnings. On the other hand, he tries continually to be pragmatic while pursuing his vision. Considering that the United States does not have anything approaching the government subsidies available in Europe (and even those subventions have been changing recently), it still seems that it will be daunting if not impossible for him to achieve his stated principles. I have included them in their entirety because they are an essential part of Sharon’s radical, utopian, anti-elite, but extremely judgmental (and privileged?) view of what opera must become:

· Exclusivity is not a virtue; inclusivity is.

· Acknowledging that conventional spectatorship breeds acceptance of the status quo, newer works must challenge and avoid well-known musical and dramatic conventions in favor of new directions, new sounds, and new voices.

· “Dumbing down” insults the audience. The opera’s creators and producers don’t rely on any assumed knowledge of the spectator.

· In classic works, historical indecencies are not relativized or apologized for but actively called out and revised.

· In newer works, the opera’s subject matter originates from “the ground up.” No celebration of privilege or power.

· Translation and engagement are encouraged; condescension and arrogance—toward the artists and members of the audience—are shamed.

· Rather than schooling the audience on correct and incorrect modes of spectatorship, the opera house is hospitable and inviting, encouraging the spectator to make the experience their own.

· In the lobbies and on the stage, opera is actively decoupled from fantasies of economic advancement. Instead, the possibility of social and spiritual advancement—accessible to everyone—can once again become opera’s true aspirational character.

· A mindfulness around the use of natural resources must inform every choice, from the audience experience to the rehearsal conditions to the material creation of a production. Where can our taking be offset by giving?

· Perform opera outside the opera house. In parking garages, in escalator corridors, in park grounds, and in automobiles. Opera can happen anywhere.

I appreciate Sharon’s elucidation of the rules of his practice. Reading through this list, I find several things I agree with wholeheartedly, and several that I find wrongheaded, to put it gently. For example, I do not care how used to being in an opera house you may or may not be, but during the final act of a performance I’m attending, I do not want to hear your iPhone discussion with your babysitter about how you will be running late. And yes, that has happened. I find it certainly problematic to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to finding “new directions” and “new sounds.” Composers who figured out how to write for the human voice so that text could be understood as it is sung discovered gold, whether in 1643, 1786, 1893, 1945, or 2024. Why should we ignore the lessons they could teach us?

Sharon also explains why he feels certain venues are “elitist” and others are not. He notes that Lincoln Center was built on land from which over 1,000 working-class Puerto Rican families were displaced (but does not mention that this neighborhood, San Juan Hill, was also renowned as a cauldron of Black creativity and was one of the most integrated neighborhoods in the city). That problematic and often-criticized exercise in urban renewal does not correlate convincingly with his notion that, therefore, “exclusion remained the dominant tone of the resulting venues. […] The complex seems to be looking down its nose at the city’s riffraff and offering sanctuary to an arts-initiated elite.” Sharon goes one step further, comparing those venues with Carnegie Hall, located “right in the heart of New York’s bustle” where “there’s a natural energy and vitality […] that’s much more difficult to muster within the travertined compound of Lincoln Center.” Does it make a difference if we consider that Andrew Carnegie may have funded the building of Carnegie Hall as part of a public relations campaign to burnish his image after the horrific Johnstown Flood, when the waters of Lake Conemaugh broke through the South Fork Dam, causing immense destruction and resulting in the loss of thousands of lives? The original dam had been altered and been made less safe because Carnegie and his cronies (including Henry Clay Frick) wanted to form the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Does the knowledge of this grim history affect our enjoyment of what happens nowadays in that wonderful auditorium on West 57th Street? I doubt it. Whether it should is another matter. Sharon’s generalized assertion that performances at the Metropolitan Opera are somehow more sterile and unemotional than those at Carnegie Hall, located seven blocks further south, are ultimately specious. As someone who has had the supreme joy of experiencing life-changing moments both in the audience and onstage in both venues, I know that, if it’s a great performance, it doesn’t matter where you are—you will cherish the moment forever.

Yuval Sharon has written a manifesto that is by turns polemical, prophetic, poetic, prescriptive, and practical. All of it bespeaks a brain that is constantly seeking to tease out a particular thread of artistic truth. The fact that some of his goals appear hopelessly idealistic does not matter; it is inspiring to see them set in stone, even though one suspects that these may be akin to Mosaic tablets. One hopes that his upcoming experience at the Metropolitan Opera as he mounts five huge Wagner productions over the next decade does not result in a shattering either of those tablets or of his inspiration. I, for one, look forward to witnessing his forthcoming achievements with great anticipation.