Owing to the crunch-time pressure of work on the proofs of Opera as Opera/The State of the Art, I must delay my next post for one week, till Friday, April 13. I’ll be paying some close attention then to Act 1 (the actual Act 1, as indicated by the score) of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette—how the now-customary cuts undermine its function, and how the performed remainder is being staged, sung, and conducted. As with my earlier remarks on Massenet’s Thaïs, there will be reference to what sorts of voices were heard in the opera’s heyday, and how radically that affects the way we receive this work. Also to come over the next few weeks: two Verdi revivals (Trovatore and Luisa Miller); Montemezzi’s (potentially) gripping L’Amore dei tre re; and recent local exploits of Jonas Kaufmann and Anna Netrebko—always dependent, of course, on the real-life materialization of same.

Meanwhile, we are nearing the time when a firm publication date and specifics about ordering can be announced for the above-mentioned book, which is to the best of my knowledge the one-and-only effort to date to attempt a comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of operatic performance over the past couple of decades, and thus of where our artform stands in today’s society. All the considerations dealt with here in bi-weekly chunks, and more, are taken up at greater length, and in the context of some unifying themes, in this book. More detailed description will be forthcoming shortly.

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