On an old question, Holland of the NY Times has a provocative
article today at:

 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/new-opera-notebook.html

  (Free)Registration required to read there.

It opens with this:

"September 28, 1999

   CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
   A New Opera, Dead on the Vine? Trusting the Audience
   By BERNARD HOLLAND

   Why do new operas, after the hoopla of their premieres, suffer
   such short shelf lives thereafter? Composers, the principal
   sufferers, are consulted in a recent article in these pages, part
   of a series on the birth of a new opera. Consulted too are
   intendants, music publishers and artist managers.

   The responses to that question, distilled, come down to this:
   People can be persuaded to see these operas once but will not pay
   to see them again. Certainly genius must lurk in all this spurned
   creativity, so a culprit must be found, and it can only be the
   audience: ignorant, lazy, reactionary, devoid of imagination and
   most of all, not yet educated.

   How can wronged composers fail to rage when this rabble will not
   break down box-office gates to get at their great works? Ah,
   creators -- suffering the present but belonging to the future. By
   the time we are understood, alas, we shall be in our graves.
   Posterity worked for Beethoven, why not us?

   May I offer a proposition? It is that by and large the American
   operas that have trouble living beyond their premieres are not
   much good, and that audiences know it."

And closes with this:

   "Certainly all listeners need to know more and to hear more, but
   the proposition that audiences must be educated in order to
   appreciate what is put before them is vaguely offensive, and not
   a little self-serving. The public is smarter than most people
   think, which is why a lot of new operas aren't getting second
   performances. "

By the way, I saw on tv the most horrendous ad for the one-remaining
classical music station we have left in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It promises that music you tune into any hour of the day/night will be
"soothing and comfortable."

Auuuggggh.  And I am one not crazy for most modern music that was
commissioned for us when I sang with our symphony.

Andrys Basten
<[log in to unmask]>