Each of these devices is two-faced. Under given production conditions or from subtly shifted viewpoints, each can be seen as an “improvement.” Indeed, their genius is to “improve” and distance at the same time. For distancing is their cumulative effect. They conspire to reduce emotional immediacy and visceral impact, while interposing layers of intellectualization. It is not that intellectualizing has no place. The question is how an audience receives a performance. These works fulfill their artistic mission when an auditor has been thrilled, moved, transported, then left to think about it afterward. In current performance practice, we are tyrannized into analyzing, decoding, objectifying on the spot. Since we have not had the relevant experience, we are left with nothing worth thinking about.

Sophisticated argument hangs about our “progressive” operatic scene. Some years back, the theories of Brecht and Grotowski drifted into operatic ken, their theatrical meanings scarcely half-apprehended, let alone their political or spiritual implications. More recently, a whiff of poststructuralist linguistics, of post-mod art- and lit-crit, is detectable, carring the aroma of a fresh-baked batch of challenges to the very concepts of “author,” “performance,” “interpretation,” “individual.” With respect to E-19, their appropriation is truly a case of flinging wide the gates for wooden equine entry. Contemplating even the strongest work of our operatic intelligentsia (the Sellars/Smith Mozart collaborations will do), one realizes that it shares a depressing characteristic with other contemporary productions and recordings: it portrays a world from which free will is absent. It does this by presenting behavior (both vocal and physical) that cannot conceivably have been arrived at through the free actions of characters pursuing their objectives, but only through an effort to represent ideas of meaning imposed from without.

The result is curiously deterministic. Sometimes it is achieved (as with many of Mr. Sellars’ witticisms) through the idea itself, which falls outside the character’s arc. At other moments it occurs through a shift in the behavioral code, as when Figaro suddenly executes a backflip in the midst of the Act II finale, or a character moves from the realistic plane to the odd metalanguage—sort of a cross between Sumo wrestling and Expressionist mimetics—devised for the soliloquies. Such behavioral shifts must be ordained from above. And herein lies the key to what often seems the schizoid nature of contemporary performance (enslavement to the musical text, emancipation from the dramatic text). There really is no schism. There is perfect agreement: both musically and dramatically, the characters must obey. It is not the composer to whom the performers are asked to be faithful—it is the conductor, with the critical edition of the score as authority. And the director has not declared theatrical independence for the performers, but for himself. Simultaneously, the performers are asked to obey but to appear autonomous, so the final impression is of individuals moving through theatrical space and singing through musical time as if by free choice, but periodically shown clearly to be under close supervision. A sad end to E-19’s individualism—nearly as sad as our own discovery that there is evidently nothing left to sing about. This is not to suggest that our discoveries and our perceptions about ourselves are invalid, or necessarily inferior to those of E-19. If nothing else, we have created a searching critique. There is every reason why E-19 should be an object of criticism—of redefinition, even. That this should take place in the course of performance, however, seems both self-serving and cowardly. The performance has been canceled, but the audience must not be informed.