This Sunday I attended, along with my good friend Bernat, the experimental opera "Concret" by Robert Ashley, at the Mama Theater. "The Wire" has credited Ashley for “taking opera into the multimedia age”. While the singers are logically on stage, the conductor sits behind the public where he is most comfortable working on the live music he produces with his Mac. The singers are entirely free of any obligation to bars and beats during the internal “discussions” they have among themselves. His computer program is mainly used by DJs. Quite a lesson for the rest of us who can't copy-paste a text taking when you think that Ashley is 76!
The work revolves around five internal "discussions" where the singers, through a heated debate, discuss curious issues such as why people keep secrets or why games are played counterclockwise. Interjected are five solo arias where each performer tells a story of a particular ordinary man. Therefore, the libretto is of the outmust importance: We were glued to our seats listening to the stories. The music seemed to be just a support for a wonderful experience of story telling.
This leads us to an interesting discussion. Paul Robinson, in his book "Opera, Sex and Other Vital Matters", postures that what is sung during an opera has no importance whatsoever. What matters is how it is sung; the operistic experience will result from it. To justify the non-importance of the libretto, he gives four specific reasons. The first one is that opera is song in a foreign language. Therefore, slime are the chances you will be understanding Wagner's German. As late as in the 1960s performances were song in the language of the singer. You could perfectly have a performance of Othello with Renata Tebaldi in which the soprano sang in Italian while the rest of the cast and chorus sang in German. Second, since opera is sung, it is very difficult to understand, specially the female voice. Third, ensemble singing makes the whole literary experience an impossible mess and fourth the orchestra is so powerful it is difficult to make out the voices.
Therefore, are words the necessary path to understanding the grandeur of opera? Beats me.
