Page 181 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2019. Vloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletju - The Role of National Opera Houses in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 3
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“spectacular” challenges of opera in the 21st century
for any order whatsoever. And this question of money is not fortuitous. One
just has to quote the famous book by Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: The
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism27.
With globalization, it seems that the U.S.A., themselves archetypes of
this “late capitalism”, imposed a model of “musical success”. And they re-
discovered this model (well after Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini), at home,
from “inside”, perhaps, with Phil Glass.
An example (of this new global model of career) seems particularly
convincing. Kaija Saariaho’s first opera, L’amour de loin (2000), was a land-
mark. However, did the new millenium finally allow a woman composer to
compete – or even surpass – most of her male colleagues in notoriety? Did
the idea of t he year 2000, in itself futuristic, progressive, allow this advance?
Created at the Salzburg Festival on August 15 (firstly commissioned by this
high authority, here is the “feminist” breakthrough apparently impossible
before), the work had, beyond and better still, a worldwide and lasting im-
pact, a rare phenomenon for a contemporary opera. More: New York Times
named it “Best New Work of the Year 2000”. It was re-programmed at the
Metropolitan Opera of New York in 2016, after receiving the Grawemeyer
Award in 2003, and the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 2011.
Saariaho finally became “Musician of the Year 2008” for Musical Ameri-
ca because “among the few contemporary composers to achieve public ac-
claim as well as universal critical respect”. And this brilliant, spectacular,
almost “Hollywood” success, in any case American, so global, was allowed,
precisely, by an opera, a show. The historical breakthrough of a female com-
poser’s career28 was allowed by an opera.
We will not develop the famous case of Peter Eötvös here. Other com-
posers, such as the latter, are now famous, in large part, for their operas. Pas-
cal Dusapin, nowadays, is the living French composer most played abroad.
Now, this is also an opera that undoubtedly allowed him international ce-
27 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press), 1991.
28 Lili Boulanger was the first female composer to win the Prix de Rome in 1913. Howe-
ver, she could not have dreamed of such a “worldview” (as Saariaho’s), neither Ger-
maine Taillefer, Michèle Reverdi, Betsy Jolas, nor even the Korean Unsuk Chin much
more recently despite the noticeable attraction of her own opera Alice in wonderland
(2007). What about Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Elisabeth Jacquet de la
Guerre, Barbara Strozzi, and their sisters that we could almost all quote here, as the
history of music has sheltered few in his pantheon? It was discovered only very re-
cently, around the 1990s, that Hildegarde de Bingen, in her Songs of ecstasy (twelfth
century), surpassed in melodic freedom her male colleagues of the time.
179
for any order whatsoever. And this question of money is not fortuitous. One
just has to quote the famous book by Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: The
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism27.
With globalization, it seems that the U.S.A., themselves archetypes of
this “late capitalism”, imposed a model of “musical success”. And they re-
discovered this model (well after Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini), at home,
from “inside”, perhaps, with Phil Glass.
An example (of this new global model of career) seems particularly
convincing. Kaija Saariaho’s first opera, L’amour de loin (2000), was a land-
mark. However, did the new millenium finally allow a woman composer to
compete – or even surpass – most of her male colleagues in notoriety? Did
the idea of t he year 2000, in itself futuristic, progressive, allow this advance?
Created at the Salzburg Festival on August 15 (firstly commissioned by this
high authority, here is the “feminist” breakthrough apparently impossible
before), the work had, beyond and better still, a worldwide and lasting im-
pact, a rare phenomenon for a contemporary opera. More: New York Times
named it “Best New Work of the Year 2000”. It was re-programmed at the
Metropolitan Opera of New York in 2016, after receiving the Grawemeyer
Award in 2003, and the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 2011.
Saariaho finally became “Musician of the Year 2008” for Musical Ameri-
ca because “among the few contemporary composers to achieve public ac-
claim as well as universal critical respect”. And this brilliant, spectacular,
almost “Hollywood” success, in any case American, so global, was allowed,
precisely, by an opera, a show. The historical breakthrough of a female com-
poser’s career28 was allowed by an opera.
We will not develop the famous case of Peter Eötvös here. Other com-
posers, such as the latter, are now famous, in large part, for their operas. Pas-
cal Dusapin, nowadays, is the living French composer most played abroad.
Now, this is also an opera that undoubtedly allowed him international ce-
27 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press), 1991.
28 Lili Boulanger was the first female composer to win the Prix de Rome in 1913. Howe-
ver, she could not have dreamed of such a “worldview” (as Saariaho’s), neither Ger-
maine Taillefer, Michèle Reverdi, Betsy Jolas, nor even the Korean Unsuk Chin much
more recently despite the noticeable attraction of her own opera Alice in wonderland
(2007). What about Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Elisabeth Jacquet de la
Guerre, Barbara Strozzi, and their sisters that we could almost all quote here, as the
history of music has sheltered few in his pantheon? It was discovered only very re-
cently, around the 1990s, that Hildegarde de Bingen, in her Songs of ecstasy (twelfth
century), surpassed in melodic freedom her male colleagues of the time.
179
