Essays on Opera – Egon Wellesz

Essays on Opera – Egon Wellesz

Essays on Opera – Egon Wellesz

‘I think it is a mistake to underrate the social strength of opera. Wherever operas are performed care must be taken that the performances do not take place in isolation from the life of the town, and that the whole complex, the opera house as an institution, the works performed, and the artists who perform them, should not be regarded as an occasional luxury. Given this, only a few years are needed for opera to become an essential part of a town’s, or even of a nation’s, artistic life, and this is doubly true to-day when the wireless provides a means of enormously increasing the sphere of influence.’

This quote from the book is very admirable and a lot of why Germany still has so many opera houses in comparison to other parts of the world. Seems the argument of Opera being able to survive has been around for a while – ‘wireless provides a means…’ – it’s really been around for longer than that and I refer to another quote to give a better answer for the future than I can:

‘Now, I should like to try to give some kind of answer to the question which must have occurred to many. Opera has been a living thing in the past and is living to-day, but has it really a future? In spite of the activity of composers and the efforts of theatre managers are we not at the end of a development? If I have been able to express what I wanted to express you will know that I believe. Opera, I think, is not in its nature a narrow and limited field. A glance at its history shows that it’s whole nature and form is, and always has been, extremely flexible. Whenever in the past external or internal circumstances have brought it to the end of a particular line of development, a path has always been found which has led to a new flowering. Even in its most modern developments the path of opera has branched in several directions, some of which may well prove blind alleys, but one of which may become the high road of the future. Another point which I hope I have made clear is that opera cannot play the role of a casual visitor in the life of a nation. Wherever opera has flourished, it has been accepted as an important factor in the nation’s spiritual life. Every effort has been made to give it a permanent place among the activities of the human spirit which are the justification of our civilization. Another thing I hope to have made clear is that the action on the stage in an opera must be intelligible to the public, or the music will fail to hold their interest. Opera in England, therefore, must be sung in English. Only then will it be possible for the whole audience to be united in the action, and to experience, as in the theatre, the emotions of the drama. But opera as an institution cannot hope to arouse real interest unless it is concerned with the works of living men. In every place where opera was and is an essential element of the spiritual atmosphere, there is a line of connection between the past and the present. But it is the present which fulfils the promise of the past and in the works of the present resides the vitality of opera.’

So there is always hope for the future, as long as there are people willing to work on it. I enjoyed reading this book and it gave me some nice new insights into the history of opera and anyone wanting to see a different perspective would do well to read this book. I would add that the last 2 chapters on his own works, didn’t interest me much and not sure they really added much to this collection.

To round off with a lovely quote on composition ideals:

‘A comparison with painting will make this clear. Poussin, speaking of the artist’s task, says that in the first place it depends on the choice of a fitting subject, in the second on the composition, in the third on the way in which the material is treated, and last of all on the colours. The same order holds for opera, but it often seems as if composers relied above all on the colours, the scoring, as if they made no fundamental distinction between the treatment of a serious and a comic subject, as if the principles of structure were almost unknown to them, and they were mainly concerned with the choice of the most effective rather than the most suitable subject.’