ABSTRACT
Opera remains a perfectly valid and viable form in our time. There are no longer Maecenases or ballet-founders of genius like Diaghilev, whereas the merited success in opera of a composer of Henze's stature. But and the author think this should be apparent to all those creating operas today we must find a practical means of adjusting ourselves to the demands of a public which has been psychologically conditioned by the lively dynamics of the cinema. Debussy sensed this in Pelleas; and Berg, in his operatic version of Wozzeck, made a successful innovation in keeping the drama in many short, fragmentary scenes, with changes of set and atmosphere corresponding to the varying 'states of soul' of the central character. The collaboration between Strauss and von Hoffmansthal produced such rich results. The author's latest work is a setting of the Office of Tenebrae, scheduled for first performance at the new Lincoln Center in New York during Holy Week 1962.
