Preface to the Paperback Edition

We have only a few words to add to the precautions, homilies, and – heartfelt – thanks that appear in our original Preface. The world of opera has changed even in the three or so years that have passed since this book first appeared. At least one new opera house has opened: in Linz, and thus in the already super-saturated operatic climate of Austria. Another has been mooted, much mooted, in Perth, in Western Australia, but the design and the estimated $1.2bn cost have together conspired to put the project in limbo. New productions of hallowed classics have continued to astound and sometimes enrage the operatic faithful. We’ve attended many performances on two continents – I puritani, Les Vêpres siciliennes, Billy Budd and Parsifal stay especially in the mind – in which we encountered marvellous singing and orchestral playing, and immense directorial verve: cause for continued rejoicing. What is more, many new operatic works have been written and produced: often at great expense and with brief afterlives, but that has always been the case during opera’s long history. On the other hand, some opera houses have gone permanently dark, including the New York City Opera (1943–2013), while the situation in recession-plagued Italy seems to become ever more parlous. The general mood about opera’s theatrical future, at least in the US and Europe, has darkened in response. Some trends, though, point upwards: YouTube as a source of video and audio documentation for opera has grown again, and again, with recent statistics suggesting 1bn users for the site, and new material appearing at 100 hours per minute. A tiny proportion of this is operatic, of course, but a tiny proportion is still enormous by any previous standards of opera’s dissemination via mass media. In particular, the number of forgotten operatic rarities now restored and available to all has ascended, probably into the thousands. Our publisher’s generosity in allowing us to expand an already-long book has meant that we have been able to account for some of these very recent developments. In doing so we have recast our original final chapter as two, adding new material on opera and operatic culture in recent decades. We have also taken the opportunity to correct a few errors, with gratitude due to those who pointed them out. We are especially indebted to the meticulous work of our German translators, Karl Heinz Siber and Nikolaus de Palézieux, whose attentive reading of the original text often encouraged us to clarify our own thinking.

The passage of time has brought one loss that is immeasurable. Joseph Kerman, to whom we dedicated our book in 2012, died in March 2014. This new edition is re-dedicated, now to his memory.

Carolyn Abbate

Roger Parker