There is one aspect of the Presentists’ protests that has to be granted validity, and that is that stylistic preferences in any artform, grounded in much broader societal mutations with regard to what is recognized as beautiful, as true, as emotionally and intellectually telling, do change. Those are the grounds on which a connoisseur of 1918 might, as some did, complain of a Caruso in place of a De Reszke, a Chaliapin instead of a Plançon, a debutant Ponselle instead of Eames or Destinn or Gadski. And yes, this may in some cases have had to do with the connoisseurs themselves, with their particular standards of elegance and refinement, passing out of fashion. Interestingly, similar considerations entered into some of my remarks about “the faults of ea.,” et al., and perhaps into Will’s grading of Tebaldi, Del Monaco, Bastianini, and Christoff at a 7, at times when neither of us was close to going out of fashion. Just listen! In relation to the Met singers of 1918, the Naples cast of 1958 is around 7 (maybe 7.5?). And by that standard, the 2017-18 contingent would have done well to get above that 4. ( I do hope it’s evident that this standard is derived from something beyond the standee wheezes and diva memoirs—which, however,  I don’t disavow.)

Since my purpose here is to define our current situation in the light of the post-WW2 quarter-century that saw the last flourishing of Verdian singing, I’m not going to devote much space to the post-WW1 period that began so auspiciously with that Met premiere, save to note that both here in the Americas and in Europe, many greatvoiced singers could in any given year have been mixed and matched for several Forza casts that would have met at least the basic requirements of visceral impact and overall aesthetic quality I cited in Part 1. It is also worth observing that this and the other late-middle Verdi masterworks, though known through their major arias and given occasional production, were items of scarcity in the international repertory in the decades preceding 1918, and that while the success of the Met’s production may have had some influence, the “Verdi Renascence” really got underway in Germany. The year was 1925, and the opera was Forza—or, rather, Die Macht des Schicksals, in a translation and adaptation by Franz Werfel. ^(I)