The recent tangent to the "greatest aria" thread has thrown up some
stimulating opinions, not least Peter Goldstein's excellently lucid essay
in defence of the Mozartian or Handelian Number Opera which an earlier
correspondent had teasingly called "silly".

Mr Goldstein's comments on Verdi's not entirely successful struggles
to spin the through-written web in "Otello" are spot-on.  Although he
finally achieved the grail in "Falstaff", it is silly to suggest that
this delectable final fruit is manifestly superior to Verdi's middle
period masterpieces such as "Rigoletto" and "Il Trovatore" - only
different, in so far as it was written first and foremost to please
himself.

Goldstein's argument mainly concerned Mozart - unquestionably the most
significant operatic composer in the Western tradition - but his reminders
of the advantages of the Numbers structure hold equally true for Mozart's
greatest mentor, Handel, whose finest operas offer equally astounding
miracles of musical organisation.

Handel's pattern of intense, sometimes frantic, recitative action succeeded
by deeply contemplative or energetic lyric reaction to it gives his work a
psychological and dramatic depth - as well as a variety - missing from,
say, "Moses und Aaron", where the psychology is primitive and philosophical
'significance' all too close to the surface.  I add that, for me, and
despite its monolithic blandness, "Moses" remains an absorbing work -
albeit one about as modern as Brahms.

I hesitate to suggest this, but compared with the best of Handel
and Mozart, even Wagner and Strauss's theatre works can seem obvious,
long-winded and inflexible - this quite aside from their musical
"longeurs", which to be fair tend to vanish in theatrical production.  Only
an insensitive critic would seek to prove that there was anything in, say,
"Gotterdamerung" to surpass the powerful musical and dramatic impact of
Bajazet's death scene in "Tamerlano".  Wagner and Handel are pursuing
different goals, and that sort of prize-fight approach to music is
pointless.

The special qualities of the best pre-romantic operas, of course, are only
apparent once we have the courage to drop any preconceived notions that
somehow through-written romantic music drama is an "improvement" on the
classical model.

That earlier correspondent (whose name unfortunately escapes me) was I
think jovially contrasting the bad, old recitative-aria structures with
the modern, progressive through-written kind.  That's fine as a matter
of personal taste, but it won't do as an artistic prescription.

First, it enshrines a traditional notion of Artistic Progress which I
thought had been exploded a long time ago.  Second, it displays a limited
understanding of what has been happening on the operatic stage since
Teutonic hegemony was broken, even before the early years of the last
century.

Like it or not, the Numbers Opera is back (even in Germany) and co-existing
happily with its younger sibling.  Did it ever really go away? "Wozzeck";
"The Rakes Progress"; Orff's "Antigone"; "L'Enfant et les Sortileges";
"The Turn of the Screw" and "The Rape of Lucretia" are just a few of
the established repertory pieces in the classical mould that come to
mind, but there are plenty more.  Berg, like his operatic heir Britten,
needed to utilize the swift-moving flexibility and contrast which the
through-written model could not provide, and reacted accordingly.

The 20th century even produced new forms which don't quite fit either
the romantic or pre/post-romantic models - Tippett's film-cut or musical
collage techniques in "King Priam" and "The Knot Garden" come to mind, as
does the Glass/Wilson "Einstein on the Beach".

Progress is a chimera.  Different solutions suggest themselves for
different times and places.  For us, in the fast-forward early years of the
21st Century, the quick-witted, fluid music drama of Mozart is perhaps most
congenial to the majority of thinking listeners; closer to us, more easily
assimilated than the leisurely gravity of the German romantics.  Its
popularity does not mean it is more superficial or trivial, either
musically or dramatically.

Most of us are only too happy to be able to use our imaginations to revel
in the best of a huge range of operatic work across time and place, rather
than to glorify one temporal set of techniques at the expense of another.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"