Challenge to opera

In Wong Karwai's new film, My Blueberry Nights, Rachel Weisz has a monologue that could almost be an opera aria. When I saw the film, and Weisz quiets down outside a bar where she's just thrown a fit (with Norah Jones sitting by quietly, ready to listen to anything Weisz says), I thought, "If this was an opera, now we'd get Rachel Weisz's aria."

But I couldn't have known how musical Weisz's monologue would be. For one thing, she often spoke in musical phrases, with pitches - musical  notes - I could just about have written down in musical notation. But she also made music in a higher sense, gripping my attention simply with the sound of her voice, quite beyond the meaning of her words. Up to a point, this happened as her voice was pushed and shattered by her feelings, but as I listened - maybe because I'm a musician - the sound took on a force that was completely musical (understanding here a wider definition of music, which goes beyond the notes and chords of traditional music, and enters the wider world of pure sound.)

Listen to the monologue, and see what you think.

This, I thought, posed a challenge to opera - to new operas, that is. (And don't forget, in what follows, that I've written some myself.) The simple way to put the challenge might be, "Who needs opera, when a movie monologue carries this much musical conviction?" But that's too simple. Maybe a broader way to make a richer point would be something like this: in past centuries, when opera was a truly current art form, people understood (instinctively; this hardly had to be discussed, though perhaps it sometimes was) that opera created drama by stylizing it, embedding it in well-known forms of music.

As time went on, and as musical language developed, singing in opera could become less stylized - less dependent on full-fledged melodies, with a purely musical form of their own - and more realistic, more like the ways people actually speak. (Wagner of course had a lot to do with that.) But let's not forget that stage acting (and public speaking of any sort) was much more stylized in those days than it is now. So realism of the Blueberry Nights sort - music closely imitating speech - wouldn't bring dramatic music where pure drama is today.

I'll skip over the rest of operatic history (and especially Janacek, who tried harder than any other composer to render speech in music precisely as it's spoken), and simply observe that new operas these days tend to emphasize full-throated operatic singing. Which leaves them largely in the dust if you compare them to Rachel Weisz, who also outflanks them musically.

Which isn't to say that new operas are impossible. I tend to feel, though, that they work best when they're deliberately stylized. And since I think that, it can't be coincidence that Philip Glass's Satyagraha (stylized from beginning to end) knocked me out more than any new opera I've ever seen on stage, and that I wrote my own favorite among my operas, Frankenstein, deliberately as an affectionate (well, loving, really) and stylized take on Italian opera in the 19th century (which itself is stylized). If I wanted to write a realistic work - which really would appeal to me - I'd listen again, and very carefully, to Rachel Weisz, and be afraid.

May 5, 2008 4:14 PM | | Comments (2)

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This certainly is moving, rather like Ophelia in Hamlet or other mad scenes from Shakespeare's works.

But operatically, isn't this a "recitative," something we all suffer through 'til it's aria time? And being on stage, she'd project just enough to the audience at her kneecaps. Next thing, the singers will ALL be miked. (Which soprano recently threw a little fit when she bashed the current crop of TV/pop opera singers who weren't the real deal cause they wore microphones?)

I'd see this more as an improvement on rap or hiphop, where to my ears, the songs' poetry all sounds the same whether the song promises murder or extols the virtues of his Moma. Thirty years or more of this with little development of the form. Let's move music forward by issuing a moratorium on 4/4 time and lame same rhyme.


I'm sure you've listened to a great deal of hip-hop in coming up with that opinion, too.

When hip-hop fans tell me that all orchestral music sounds the same to them, I just smile and nod, in the same way I am now smiling and (mentally) nodding.

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Age of the French classical audience 
From time to time, people have mentioned in comments here a French government study that supposedly shows that the French classical music audience is very young, with a median age of 38.

I've never been able to find the source for this number. From some of what's been said, I get the idea that it's on a flyer handed out at concerts.

But the French Ministry of Culture tells a different story. You can go here to see the results of their 2008 study of French concert attendance, made available as a PDF file. Or go here if you'd like the numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. (Or here for an overview page, from which you can find out more about the study.)

The numbers are expressed in absolute terms -- the number of people (in hundreds) in various age groups who attended classical concerts in the year the survey covered. And they're broken down by age groups.

From that, it's easy to find what percentage of the French classical music audience falls into the age groups the study specifies:

15-19               4%
20-24               4%
25-34             10%
35-44             18%
45-54             15%
55-64             24%
65 and over    26%
So this median age of 38 seems to be a myth. If we believe the French Ministry of Culture (which has been conducting these surveys for years), fully one-quarter of the French classical music audience is 65 or above. And exactly half of it -- 50% -- is 55 or older.

That means its median age is something around 55. (Since the median would be the point at which half the population in the study is older, and half is younger.)

This should advance the discussion that's erupted here in comments from time to time, about the age of the classical music audience in Europe. Some people think it's lower than it is in the US. But not in France, apparently.

Can anyone point me toward figures for other countries?

(Many thanks to Claudine Verdier- Dievochka for the links to these numbers. Here's her website.)


Age of the audience 
Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Reality: It used to be younger -- dramatically younger, in fact. Here's some evidence -- primary sources (actual texts of old studies, links to NEA studies) -- plus two of my blog posts on this subject, and some anecdotal data.
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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Sandow published on May 5, 2008 4:14 PM.

Molly speaks was the previous entry in this blog.

Orchestras as museums? is the next entry in this blog.

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