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The Ultimate Art: Essays Around and About Opera
Anyone who cares about opera will find The Ultimate Art a thoroughly engaging book. David Littlejohn's essays are exciting, provocative, sometimes even outrageous. They reflect his deep love of opera—that exotic, extravagant, and perpetually popular hybrid performing art form—and his fascination with the many worlds from which it sprang.
From its seventeenth-century beginnings, opera has been decried by its detractors for its elitism, its artifice, its absurd costliness, and its social irrelevance. But Littlejohn makes us see that opera embraces an extraordinary amount of intense human emotion and experience, Western culture, and individual psychology. It is also the most complex, challenging, and demanding form of public performance ever developed—at its most spectacular it pulls together in one evening a play, a concert, a ballet, and a pageant, not to mention an exhibition of painting and sculpture. Every opera is a veritable piece of cultural history.
The book begins with "The Difference Is They Sing," a potentially controversial essay on the nature of opera and its place in modern culture. From there Littlejohn goes on to consider everything from "Sex and Religion in French Opera" to "What Peter Sellars Did to Mozart." He tells us about every major staging of Wagner's Ring cycle since 1876, the troubled fate (in legend, history, and opera) of the city of Nuremberg, and the volatile collaboration of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Littlejohn presents these and many other fascinating moments in the history of opera with conviction and flair. By the end of the book the reader may very well be persuaded that opera is indeed the ultimate art.
From its seventeenth-century beginnings, opera has been decried by its detractors for its elitism, its artifice, its absurd costliness, and its social irrelevance. But Littlejohn makes us see that opera embraces an extraordinary amount of intense human emotion and experience, Western culture, and individual psychology. It is also the most complex, challenging, and demanding form of public performance ever developed—at its most spectacular it pulls together in one evening a play, a concert, a ballet, and a pageant, not to mention an exhibition of painting and sculpture. Every opera is a veritable piece of cultural history.
The book begins with "The Difference Is They Sing," a potentially controversial essay on the nature of opera and its place in modern culture. From there Littlejohn goes on to consider everything from "Sex and Religion in French Opera" to "What Peter Sellars Did to Mozart." He tells us about every major staging of Wagner's Ring cycle since 1876, the troubled fate (in legend, history, and opera) of the city of Nuremberg, and the volatile collaboration of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Littlejohn presents these and many other fascinating moments in the history of opera with conviction and flair. By the end of the book the reader may very well be persuaded that opera is indeed the ultimate art.
- GenresMusic
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
28 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 21, 2022
The book was published 30 years ago, but any aficionado of the opera, or any novice operagoer for that matter, will appreciate the chapter(s) on any of the opera(s) treated herein that they've either had the good fortune to have attended in person, or at least seen on broadcast tv or via streaming services. e.g. There's a good chapter on "Don Giovanni: The Impossible Opera" which is widely hailed as one of the top 5 most accessible operas. Only after reading Littlejohn's chapters on your favorite opera(s) would I take up the author's lengthy introduction.
The most entertaining, and revelatory, chapter in the book is chapter 6 "What Peter Sellars Did to Mozart". Sellars (b.1957), the "notoriously imperial" (p.57) American theatre director, is accused of doing a disservice to opera, staging Mozart in what can only be described as "antimusical redactions" (p.155), or at best "cheeky revisionism" (p.35). The problem starts with Sellars indulging in his personal predilection "to editorialize—to force the opera to serve as a vehicle for some urgent personal message of his own." (p.63) e.g. The character "Don Giovanni, in Peter Sellars's 1989 version, is a feared and brutal young drug addict/rapist in a run-down New York neighborhood, identified by some critics as Spanish Harlem." (p.138) With the degree of "sublime arrogance involved", whether in Sellars productions of either a Mozart or a Wagner opera:
His versions are "not simply 'updatings' " rather:
And in his embrace of "highly gestural branch of modern theatre...Sellars reveals himself as a citizen less of the world of opera than of the Western theatrical avant-garde." (p.136) As a result, the poor singers under his control must perform "circuslike tricks," (p.136) the sort of thing that is not germane to good singing at all.
But that's not the worst thing about such post-modern productions, because as a result of his "strained directorial conceits" (p.148), what results are "dark and narrow visions of the Mozart-Da Ponte worlds" (p.142). Sellars will elide any of the text in the libretto that goes contrary to these visions of his, including deep cuts of entire passages, in order "to force, an unrelievedly dark interpretation" or to maintain a "harrowing, neurotic style" (p.150), however foreign to the music. The main problem with this "modern directorial acid solution" (or is it, opera on acid?), is that Sellars winds up "ignoring many of the clear and explicit meanings of the score." (pp.154-5) As Littlejohn put it, writing in 1990, the mismatch between opera and this producer results in Peter Sellars's antimusical redactions of Mozart's scores:
As bad as Littlejohn makes Sellars out to be, he's apparently part of a whole new breed of "tyrant-producers" (p.54).
By the by, the book title, The Ultimate Art, is an attempt at an English equivalent term of the German Gesamtkunstwerk (usually transliterated with some awkward phrase, such as a 'total work of art') that Wagner was so concerned to achieve, ostensibly for the "dramatic truths" this it's supposed to afford. Ironically, Littlejohn argues that Wagner's accomplishments towards this goal of his were limited, although not due to any fault of his own:
Also, in comparison to others working together in the opera world since Wagner's day, and working in a more thorough collaboration than did Wagner, there are 20th-century combinations on the operatic stage that can claim to have achieved more than Wagner did in reaching for the goal of the "work of total art" (although he has everyone beat for sheer length, with his Ring cycle). See the last chapter, "Chapter Seventeen—Artists on the Opera Stage" for a discussion.
The most entertaining, and revelatory, chapter in the book is chapter 6 "What Peter Sellars Did to Mozart". Sellars (b.1957), the "notoriously imperial" (p.57) American theatre director, is accused of doing a disservice to opera, staging Mozart in what can only be described as "antimusical redactions" (p.155), or at best "cheeky revisionism" (p.35). The problem starts with Sellars indulging in his personal predilection "to editorialize—to force the opera to serve as a vehicle for some urgent personal message of his own." (p.63) e.g. The character "Don Giovanni, in Peter Sellars's 1989 version, is a feared and brutal young drug addict/rapist in a run-down New York neighborhood, identified by some critics as Spanish Harlem." (p.138) With the degree of "sublime arrogance involved", whether in Sellars productions of either a Mozart or a Wagner opera:
the words and music of a long-established work are turned into a plastic, pliable vehicle for a producer-king's late-twentieth-century ideas; the ideas of a producer-king who appears to regard himself as a creator, a maker of symbolic statements equal or superior to those of the original creators. ... he attacks the composer and his values in the course of producing his work. (pp.63-4)
His versions are "not simply 'updatings' " rather:
Peter Sellars introduces a great many individual modern-world artifacts and ideas, usually by way of costumes, props, or dances, ... Lipsticks, machine guns, ballpoint pens, plastic toys, jeeps, Big Macs, and other bits of the detritus of contemporary civilization take on, in Peter Sellars's operas, a heightened symbolic importance. Characters in kinky-current clothes perform modern chorus-line steps, twitchy rock dances, or vaudeville buck-and-wings to eighteenth-century music.
(p.135)
And in his embrace of "highly gestural branch of modern theatre...Sellars reveals himself as a citizen less of the world of opera than of the Western theatrical avant-garde." (p.136) As a result, the poor singers under his control must perform "circuslike tricks," (p.136) the sort of thing that is not germane to good singing at all.
Sellars, who has expressed his disdain for traditional, beautiful showcase arias (and who rarely works with singers who could do them total justice in any case), often seems eager to contradict or "de-beautify" such arias by having the singers spit out their words in a spitefully ironic fashion [or] by forcing them through weird and wild movements during their songs... (p.149)
But that's not the worst thing about such post-modern productions, because as a result of his "strained directorial conceits" (p.148), what results are "dark and narrow visions of the Mozart-Da Ponte worlds" (p.142). Sellars will elide any of the text in the libretto that goes contrary to these visions of his, including deep cuts of entire passages, in order "to force, an unrelievedly dark interpretation" or to maintain a "harrowing, neurotic style" (p.150), however foreign to the music. The main problem with this "modern directorial acid solution" (or is it, opera on acid?), is that Sellars winds up "ignoring many of the clear and explicit meanings of the score." (pp.154-5) As Littlejohn put it, writing in 1990, the mismatch between opera and this producer results in Peter Sellars's antimusical redactions of Mozart's scores:
Ignore or deny the positive, redemptive attitudes so tightly woven into the texts and scores of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas—as Peter Sellars has done—and you will end up by shrinking them painfully, turning them into something much smaller than they are.
(p.155)
As bad as Littlejohn makes Sellars out to be, he's apparently part of a whole new breed of "tyrant-producers" (p.54).
By the by, the book title, The Ultimate Art, is an attempt at an English equivalent term of the German Gesamtkunstwerk (usually transliterated with some awkward phrase, such as a 'total work of art') that Wagner was so concerned to achieve, ostensibly for the "dramatic truths" this it's supposed to afford. Ironically, Littlejohn argues that Wagner's accomplishments towards this goal of his were limited, although not due to any fault of his own:
[Wagner] never really got beyond his private vision of words and music united. Productions of Wagner's music dramas during his lifetime were limited by the abilities of available singers and musicians, by traditional nineteenth-century theatre practice, and by set and costume designs—the "art and architecture" of opera—of the most conventional romantic-realistic style, which lagged far behind the Wagnerian visions they were supposed to help audiences see.
(p.265)
Also, in comparison to others working together in the opera world since Wagner's day, and working in a more thorough collaboration than did Wagner, there are 20th-century combinations on the operatic stage that can claim to have achieved more than Wagner did in reaching for the goal of the "work of total art" (although he has everyone beat for sheer length, with his Ring cycle). See the last chapter, "Chapter Seventeen—Artists on the Opera Stage" for a discussion.
May 30, 2023
I'm troubled by this. 30 years on, several of Littlejohn's "essays" read more like extended blog posts.
I came to the book having recently watched Peter Sellars' three iconoclastic productions of the Mozart-DaPonte operas, which caused a stir in the late '80s, were filmed for television, and earn an entire chapter of Littlejohn's ire here. Yet the chapter feels more like an extended diatribe against directorial modernising and updating of operas (some points valid, some less so) than a useful contribution to the debate.
Perhaps a product of its moment.
I came to the book having recently watched Peter Sellars' three iconoclastic productions of the Mozart-DaPonte operas, which caused a stir in the late '80s, were filmed for television, and earn an entire chapter of Littlejohn's ire here. Yet the chapter feels more like an extended diatribe against directorial modernising and updating of operas (some points valid, some less so) than a useful contribution to the debate.
Perhaps a product of its moment.
November 15, 2022
This book collects together essays Littlejohn wrote for an opera magazine, and they are aimed at the opera fan rather than the scholarly music community. Each one tackles an aspect or subset of opera. I especially enjoyed the essays about why we tolerate dumb plots, the portrayal of the city of Nuremberg in opera, and Don Giovanni. I found his takes interesting and well thought out, even when I didn't entirely agree.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews