Coincidentally, as I was beginning my listening to L’Invisible, a report appeared in The New York Times on a recent uptick of interest in the operas of John Adams in Germany.^(I) According to Goldmann’s article, the number of Adams stagings in Germany between 2006 and 2014 has equaled the total of the preceding quarter-century (since the premiere of Nixon in China), and more are coming up. Some of this, surely, is due to convenient political circumstance (the “relevance” factor), and some to the ever-increasing hunger for repertory that doesn’t require world-class singers, particularly in the smaller houses where most of the increased attention to Adams has been paid. (The recent Stuttgart production of Nixon, Goldmann states, is the first of an Adams opera by a major German house since Frankfurt’s presentation of the same work, thirty years ago.) But much of it, the article suggests, is owed to a combination of familiarization with tonal and minimalist style through TV and movie uses (with “the kind of electronic pulse of our society . . . [operagoers] have images in their mind with this music,” says Laura Berman, the artistic director at Hannover) and an easing off from the dictates of (quoting Stuttgart conductor André de Ridder) “Germany’s modern music history, with Darmstadt and Donaueschingen”—in other words, from any and all of the High Modern and Postmodern styles that have followed from the atonal movements of the last century.

The almost complete lack of edification I have been able to draw from the Met’s productions of Adams operas of late (Dr. Atomic and The Death of Klinghoffer—Act 1 only in both cases, by choice) has to do with several factors, including the plonky librettos (has there been a worse one than Dr. Atomic‘s?) and the feebleness of the writing for the voice. It doesn’t have to do, though, with the musical language per se, but rather with the seldom-relieved generic quality of the writing, its failure to come to grips (except for a choral passage or two) with characters or events in any memorable way.^(II)If German audiences wish to escape Darmstadt and Donaueschingen, Adams will certainly open the gate and indicate a path. But where will it lead? If the sensibility gap is narrowed from the American side, will it lead to something fresh over there?