REFLECTIONS ON MUSIC AND OPERA
13
art from beginning to end. The paradox implicit in all drama, namely,
that emotions and situations which in real life would be sad or
painful are on the stage a source of pleasure becomes, in opera,
quite explicit. The singer may be playing the role of a deserted bride
who is about to kill herself, but we feel quite certain as we listen that
not only we but also she is having a wonderful time. In a sense,
there can be no tragic opera because whatever errors the characters
make and whatever they suffer, they are doing exactly what they
wish. Hence the feeling that
opera seria
should not employ a con–
temporary subject, but confine itself to mythical situations, that is,
situations which as human beings we are all of us necessarily in and
must, therefore, accept, however tragic they may be. A contemporary
tragic situation like that in Menotti's
The Consul
is too actual,
that is, too clearly a situation some people are in and others, in–
cluding the audience, are not in, for the latter to forget this and see
it as a symbol of, say, man's existential estrangement. Consequently
the pleasure we and the singers are obviously enjoying strikes the
conscience as frivolous.
•
On the other hand, its pure artifice renders opera the ideal
dramatic medium for a tragic myth. I once went in the same week to
a perfonnance of
Tristan und Isolde
and a showing of
L'Eternel
Retour,
Jean Cocteau's movie version of the same story. During the
fonner two souls, weighing over two hundred pounds apiece, were
transfigured by a transcendent power, in the latter a handsome boy
met a beautiful girl and they had an affair. This loss of value was
due not to any lack of skill on Cocteau's part but to the nature of
the cinema as a medium. Had he used a fat middle-aged couple the
effect would have been ridiculous because the snatches of language
which are all the movie pennits have not sufficient power to tran–
scend their physical appearance. Yet if the lovers are young and
beautiful, the cause of their love looks 'natur.al,' a consequence of
their beauty, and the whole meaning of the myth is gone.
•
The man who wrote the Eighth Symphony has a right to rebuke the
man who put his raptures of elation, tenderness, and nobility into the
mouths of a drunken libertine, a silly peasant girl, and a conventional
