18
PARTISAN REVIEW
that, in listening to song (as distinct from chant), we hear, not
words, but syllables, that I am violently hostile to the performances
01
operas in translation. Wagner in Italian or Verdi in English sounds
intolerable, and would still sound so if the poetic merits of the transla–
tion were greater than those of the original, because the new
syllable~
have no apt relation to the pitch and tempo of the notes with which
they are associated. The poetic value of the words may provoke a
composer's imagination, but it
is
their syllabic values which deter–
mine the kind of vocal line he writes. In song, poetry
is
expendable,
syllables are not.
•
The golden age of opera, from Mozart to Verdi, coincided with
the golden age of liberal humanism, of unquestioning belief in
freedom and progress.
If
good operas are rarer today, this may be
because, not only have we learned that we are less free than nine–
teenth-century humanism imagined, but also have become less cer–
tain that freedom is an unequivocal blessing, that the free are neces–
sarily the good. To say that operas are more difficult to write does
not mean that they are impossible. That would only follow if we
should cease to believe in free will and personality altogether. Every
high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the ir–
responsible puppets of fate or chance.
