Recently, I’ve been hearing and seeing a lot about a “flourishing American repertory,” or even an “American canon.” Some of it comes from sources dedicated to advocacy, and thus predisposed to an enthusiast leaning (notably, Opera America—see below), and some from reviewers influenced by local civic pride, a genuine wish to be supportive of an imperiled art, or a relationship to it that is essentially a fan’s. They are naturally reluctant to apply a meaningful critical standard, to whatever extent they are capable of doing so. But some of the clamor also comes from knowledgeable, engaged professionals and established critics. I tend to discount these claims, partly because they are to one side of my own preoccupation with the salvation of the operatic canon, but mostly because of a skepticism born of long, ever-hopeful experience with just this subject. (For a rundown of that experience, see “Florencia” and ‘The New Opera Problem’ Redux,” 12/15/23.)  Still, it’s true that there is a creative churning in the field, and my curiosity remains active. Might the churning be turning up something we could call a repertory?

A work doesn’t join “the repertory” just by virtue of having been done, or even of having made the rounds once. For it to attain that status, it must be repeatable and renewable. Both artists and their audiences must find it interesting enough to invest in on multiple occasions, over time. True, it’s not necessary to think of operas in repertory terms at all. We can simply take them as we do many other transitory events we enjoy to a greater or lesser degree and then release into our ever-receding rotation of momentarily relevant occurrences. That’s especially so—indeed, welcome—for all who believe we must live only in the present. But it is not so for anyone who looks forward to a future. That person is located on a timeline, and a timeline necessarily includes a past. The signal virtue of a repertory, especially when its repetitions and renewals bring forth a canon, is that it binds people together along the timeline, bringing the understandings and values of its origins with it. That enables us to separate what continues to nourish us from what doesn’t, and lends our own efforts a perspective that is not accessible to us in the present dimension, no matter how far we reach out into it. It also suggests that this process will continue into the future, taking our own understandings with it. So a repertory and the institutions that maintain it become forces for social continuity, identity, and stability, all of which I believe we sorely need. I decided to challenge my skepticism with a sampling of well-received 21st-Century American operas via recordings, asking myself as I went along: having heard the music, am I eager to hear it again? Do I want to see the opera? Can I imagine wanting to see or hear it repeatedly, in different productions with different casts? Is it, in other words, a serious candidate for a repertory, or better yet, a canon?