Fantasy Opera: the first two seasons

When I should have been at work on a frightening number of other things, I came across Lisa Hirsch’s latest Fantasy Opera season from her blog, ‘Iron Tongue of Midnight’. Over the past day or so, when again I should have been etc., I found myself from time to time thinking about what I should like to hear in an imaginary opera season, for instance when the call came for a new regime at a major opera house. For the sake of argument, there were to be sixteen productions: it seemed a reasonable number, though I hankered after more. I set myself an arbitrary but not unreasonable rule: no more than one work per composer. Still, it was far too difficult, so I allowed myself two seasons; the rule of one work still applied over the two-year span. There are more than sixteen works in each season, since there is a pair of double-bills in both. Though I did not make this a rule, I steered clear of works that were very often performed, not really in order to make a point, but just to make choice a little, and I stress a little, easier. I started off assigning conductors to the works, but left that particular project on one side, since it was complicated enough simply to select the works. (I was quite proud of a few opera-and-conductor pairings, though, and even started thinking about stage directors and some casting.) One choice is an oratorio, but it is an oratorio that in many respects cries out to be staged - or at the very least would not be harmed by doing so.

There can of course be no claim to any particular validity to these imaginary seasons, and I am well aware that, ‘in the real world’ – though surely if opera is anywhere, it should not be there! – it would be necessary to revive earlier productions and so on, but let us leave such mundane concerns aside for the moment. (For what it is worth, a new broom such as Gérard Mortier managed to accomplish a great deal without resorting to existing productions.) What undoubtedly came across, though, was how, without the slightest effort whatsoever, programmes that would be fresh and appealing could be constructed. Had we to declare a moratorium upon beloved works such as Figaro and Tristan, we might not only survive but flourish. And that was all before even beginning to consider what is perhaps most necessary of all: newly-commissioned works…

Season One

Birtwistle, The Mask of Orpheus
Monteverdi, L’incoronazione di Poppea
Rameau, Les Boréades
Henze, König Hirsch
Ravel, L’enfant et les sortilèges and Stravinsky, The Nightingale
Davies, Taverner
Mozart, Lucio Silla
Busoni, Doktor Faust
Britten, The Turn of the Screw
Gluck, Armide
Weber, Euryanthe
Mussorgsky, Khovanschina
Prokofiev, The Fiery Angel
Weill, Aufstieg and Fall der Stadt Mahagonny
Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande
Schoenberg, Die glückliche Hand, and Nono, Intolleranza 1960

Season Two

Stockhausen, Donnerstag
Handel, Saul
Wagner, Rienzi
Dusapin, Faustus, the Last Night
Haydn, Armida
Purcell, Dido and Aeneas, and Benjamin, Into the Little Hill
Goehr, Arden Must Die
Szymanowski, King Roger
Schumann, Genoveva
Dallapiccola, Ulisse
Hindemith, Cardillac
Berio, Cronaca del Luogo
Charpentier, Actéon, and Strauss, Daphne
Janáček, From the House of the Dead
Berlioz, Benvenuto Cellini
Messiaen, St François d’Assise

I was surprised by the number of works by English composers: perhaps I am possessed of a greater national bias than I should ever have suspected, though I suspect that it is more that my country's musical culture is far richer than I sometimes allow. More to the point, there was so much else I should have loved to include. There are no works by Zemlinsky, Cavalli, Schreker, Rossini, Lully, Schubert, Puccini, Meyerbeer, and so many others – and not for any good reason: there simply was not enough space. I was especially sorry to lose Cerha’s Baal, again for no good reason whatsoever, other than perhaps to allot a place to a work from another era. Pelléas was perhaps an indulgence – though who could ever resist that particular indulgence? – but I managed to steer clear of the more frequently performed works of Mozart and Wagner. Fidelio and the Berg operas would have to wait too, likewise anything by Tchaikovsky, perhaps until the third and fourth seasons, when a new Ring would be mounted...