So, onward and upward. But upward means onto the stage itself. That’s why I took the liberty of italicizing some of Will’s words above. We’ll never have the kind of plasticity, the give and take, the stage/pit call-and-response interchange that will make music and drama inseparable, unless singers learn to generate it. A new creative independence must precede a fertile interdependence.

But that’s a large topic, for another time.

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NEXT TIME: In two weeks (Aug. 24), I’ll take us all back to the 1940s and ’50s by a serendipitous route—the revival of Carmen Jones and a chance second-hand purchase that sparked a reconsideration of the postwar Brecht/Weill florescence here in New York.

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