Is The Golden Age of Opera Now?

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One of my favorite things to do, when cornered by an opera crazy who is telling me all the great singers are now dead and gone, and continues to tell a story about a performance he or she saw in 1970 is for me to reply, "I wish I could've been there. I was negative two."

For me, to regale on the bygone days of opera is to consign it to the grave, to make it a museum piece. Opera is not a museum piece. It is a living breathing art form that changes based on its audience (for better or for worse - see Pop Star to Opera Star below).

So imagine our joy when we came across this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer which asks if the "golden age"of opera is now. I'd like to think so, at least I'd like to believe that the "golden age" for me is now. It surely is an exciting time.

Of course none of this will prevent me from telling my brood of clones about that great performance of NABUCCO I saw in 2010....

Comments

Anonymous said…
The Golden Age of Opera in my opinion was 1900 to 1960 (or perhaps to 1975, the year Richard Tucker, last of the greats, died). Opera is dead; the singers today are awful. You say it lives on, I say the audiences don't get any more than they demand and that isn't much. For me it only lives on in old recordings and this isn't a problem. Cheaper to be thrilled with a recording than to leave an expensive performance disappointed.
December 18, 2010 at 4:03 AM
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