Popera

There was an interesting article in the LA Times about the whole rock-opera genre and various excursions of pop musicians into classical music and vice versa. I’ve often thought the best attributes of many pop composers get lost when they try to write “classical” music. Paul McCartney, an excellent miniaturist, sounds bloated and slightly ridiculous when he assumes the mantle of seriousness in his symphonic works. Most ambitious pop composers should think about churning out song cycles or concept albums where small pieces add up to form a cohesive whole. Elvis Costello has done this a few times, most notably with The Juliet Letters. His North, one of my favourite albums, is really closer in feeling to a song cycle. The albums of Sufjan Stevens are also song cycle-ish.

All-in-all I thought Mark Swed made good points. I did have some issues with this paragraph though:

In the end, pop musicians are songsmiths, and songwriters typically have not had an easy time with opera. Many of the great composers of song in the classical world -- Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Fauré, Bernstein, Rorem -- are not nearly so celebrated for their attempts at opera. All the great opera composers wrote songs, of course, but that was a small sideline for Mozart, Rossini, Berlioz, Wagner, Verdi, Berg, Janácek, Berio, Rimsky-Korsakov and the rest. Gershwin and Poulenc may be the only two who managed to be major successes in both areas.

As I’ve said before, I’m not sure I’d call Gershwin’s excursion into opera wholly successful. Also where are Strauss and Britten on his list of successes? Debussy? Weill? They all wrote terrific operas and songs. Granted, Strauss’s songs often sound like they could be on the opera stage, but he still made a major contribution to the genre.

Also this is for Inky music columnist Peter Dobrin who, it seems, does not seem to be much of a cat person (read the bio on the right part of his page):