Pablo Massa responds to Chris Webber and me:

>Sorry, I'll insist: I don't see why a "numbers" opera should be harder
>to write than an opera based on the "endless melody" wagnerian model.
>There are thousands easy ways of "faking" both models (being the result,
>of course, as cheap as the faking method).  A good faking method for
>numbers opera could be this: you can collect a number of previously
>written arias and duets (even written by another composer), adapt the
>words and change the keys.  After this, you will have only to write the
>recitative parts.  Isn't that easy?.

It's easy to write, it's also easy to tell that it isn't very good or
that it's a rehash.  In that sense, it's much harder to bring off than a
continuous opera.  Il mio tesoro forces from you an immediate judgement.
You get a little breathing room with Parsifal's Good Friday Spell.  It's
like Chesterton's comment about how much easier it is to be profound than
funny.  You can claim you're profound, and someone may agree or disagree.
But people instantly recognize when a joke hasn't come off (always
exceptions, of course).

>Concerning melody: aren't some leitmotive glorious melodies?.

Of course.  Has anyone claimed that they weren't? Chris can speak for
himself, but what I'm saying is that the symphonic opera is easier to fake.
It takes less effort to write a bad one.  It's truly difficult to come up
with a good melody, unless you're Gershwin or Berlin.  And how many tunes
does the average numbers opera have.  On the other hand, I can learn to
stitch together leitmotivs.  It's a craft.  Indeed, I've heard people (at
parties) improvise symphonic operas on any given subject without missing
a beat (or filling in with piano noodling, while they waited for
inspiration).

>If we agree that Wagner is the exception that confirms the rule, one
>may skip to Verdi's last production: aren't Falstaff and Othello full
>of great melodies?.

I happen to like both Falstaff and Otello.  I'm not of the party that
says they're a falling off, although I prefer Vaughan Williams's Sir
John in Love to Verdi's Falstaff, precisely because the tunes are so much
better.  I like to believe that Vaughan Williams beat Verdi at his best in
this case.  George Bernard Shaw, however, advanced the theory that Verdi
was no longer capable of writing a power-hit like "La donna mobile" and so
turned to this new method.  I respectfully disagree.  I think that Verdi
was influenced by Boito's understanding of Wagner, that Verdi had great
respect for Boito's judgement, and that the idea of absorbing some of
Wagner's method into his own excited him intellectually.

>Concerning formal coherence: some entire acts in wagnerian operas are
>globally builded from schemes like AAB, etc.  They are not divided in
>numbers, each of them with a formal unity, but they have indeed a global
>form.

Yes, but it's not song form and it hasn't the limits of song.  Stravinsky
once said (and I paraphrase from rotten memory) that art is a matter of
finding limits -- or definition, if you will.  The shapeless becomes a
clear shape.

>I would guess that the greatest difficulty at the "symphonic" model
>is to drive the music coherently during a large period, precisely because
>you don't have much formal boundaries or "milestones" that can help you.
>It takes a great musical maturity to write more than 25 minutes
>of coherent undivided music.

Well, as long as you include "coherent," I agree.  But I assure you that 25
minutes of noodling around ain't all that difficult.  What it mainly takes
is time, paper, and a sharp pencil.

Steve Schwartz