Scores that inspire love; the thrill of the human voice; drama able to embody itself first and foremost in sounds; memorable melody; some alchemical balance of the accessible and the challenging – those seem to be the key ingredients that animated the genre during a very long period of flourishing. It gave rise to works that continue to become meaningful and necessary for thousands of new adherents in each generation. If it can give rise in the future to just as many, that is what we would want it to do. If it can’t – what do we want then?

—W. C.

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NEXT TIME: As promised in my last post, I’ll be offering some thoughts on Turandot—not so much on this season’s Met revival (though that will receive some attention) as on the vocal and dramatic requirements of the main roles (with reference to earlier singers of them, and not always as we tend to assume them to be), and to the interpretive problems posed by the ethical contradictions in the work itself. That will be a mere two weeks hence, on Dec. 31—call it New Year’s lagniappe.

—C. L. O.

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