New Opera, New Audiences, New Ways of Working

Have you ever noticed that when a new opera season is announced—on a company’s website, in a brochure, or in a season announcement—the composer is sometimes the only author whose name appears?

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This may seem unremarkable. After all, opera has a long tradition of identifying a work primarily by its composer. But what happens when a contemporary playwright writes the libretto—the words, characters, scenes and dramatic structure of the opera? Shouldn’t the playwright be named as well?

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The answer would seem obvious. Yet the librettist’s name is still frequently absent, or given far less prominence than the composer’s.

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This is an especially curious practice at a time when the landscape of opera is changing rapidly. Over the past twenty years, American opera companies have commissioned and produced an extraordinary number of new works. Playwrights, poets, novelists, lyricists and composers from outside the traditional opera world have entered the field, bringing new approaches to storytelling, language, dramatic structure and music.

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These changes did not go unnoticed by the Dramatists Guild, the largest professional organization in the United States representing playwrights, lyricists and theater composers. And yet, when dramatists began entering the world of opera with greater frequency, they found a world of inconsistency and confusion—but more about that in a moment.

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First, it is worth asking why so many dramatists are drawn to opera in the first place.

 

The Dramatists are Coming.

In musical theater, the playwright who creates the dramatic structure and dialogue of a musical is generally called the book writer. The term may be unfamiliar to opera audiences, but the job is closely related to that of the librettist: creating the story, characters, scenes and dramatic architecture that give the music a theatrical world in which to live.

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In a musical, those writing responsibilities may be divided between a book writer, who creates the dialogue and dramatic scenes, and a lyricist, who writes the words that are sung. In opera, those functions are generally encompassed by the librettist.

For generations, playwrights have been drawn to musical theater because music can do things that spoken drama cannot. A song can compress time, expose a character’s inner life, shift a scene into another emotional register or transform the way an audience experiences a story.

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But the contemporary commercial musical-theater landscape presents its own challenges. The cost of producing a Broadway musical has risen dramatically, making the financial stakes of a new production enormous. Producers understandably look for properties with a built-in audience: familiar films, television shows, novels and other recognizable titles that can be transformed into musicals. The results can be inspired, but the economics can also make it increasingly difficult to take risks on unfamiliar or formally adventurous musical theater.

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That hasn’t diminished playwrights’ desire to explore musical forms. If anything, it has given some writers another reason to look beyond the commercial musical-theater marketplace.

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And opera has something important to offer them.

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Contemporary opera has shown itself remarkably willing to tackle subjects that are politically controversial, socially challenging or simply difficult to package for the broadest possible commercial audience. Today’s opera stages stories about politics, war, race, sexuality, history, religion and the complexities of contemporary life—often with a freedom that can be difficult to find in commercial musical theater.

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For dramatists, that freedom can be enormously attractive. Opera offers the opportunity to explore ambitious subjects without first asking whether the title has a built-in audience.

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And playwrights have noticed. Increasingly, they are crossing the boundary between spoken theater and opera, bringing with them the instincts of dramatists and discovering what can happen when those instincts meet music. The growing presence of dramatists in opera is not an intrusion into an established art form. It is part of a larger movement of artists crossing boundaries between forms—bringing theatrical experience into opera and discovering what can happen when the conventions of one art form meet those of another.

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That cross-pollination is one of the most exciting things happening in new opera today.

It also raises a question: if dramatists are increasingly helping to create contemporary opera, why aren’t they always being presented to audiences as its creators?

 

When Tradition Meets New Opera

Opera companies have inherited ways of presenting their seasons and their repertory over many decades. Those conventions made sense in a world dominated by established works and familiar composers. But when companies are presenting new operas created by living composers and dramatists, some of those conventions may no longer serve the work—or the audience—as well as they once did.

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Consider the way contemporary operas are sometimes presented to the public. A company may commission a well-known playwright to create the libretto, perhaps even a writer whose name is more familiar to the general public than that of the composer. Yet when the opera is announced, the playwright’s name may be absent or minimized.

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Why?

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Part of the answer is simply tradition. Opera has historically been identified primarily through its composer. But new opera is not old opera.

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The circumstances under which a contemporary opera is created can be very different from those surrounding a work by Verdi, Puccini or Bizet. A contemporary opera may begin with a playwright and composer developing an idea together. The librettist may construct scenes, characters and dramatic arcs specifically for the composer. The composer, in turn, shapes the drama through music. The two may revise their work together throughout the development and rehearsal process.

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This is collaboration.

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Opera is, of course, a musical art form—but it is also theater. It is written, staged, acted, designed and performed through the collaboration of many artists. At the center of that collaboration are the composer and the dramatist, whose work together creates the opera.

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Why, then, shouldn’t the public be told who the collaborators are?

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Think about My Fair Lady. We would never describe it simply as “a Loewe musical,” leaving Alan Jay Lerner out of the picture. Lerner wrote both the book and lyrics, while Frederick Loewe wrote the music. Their contributions are different, but inseparable from the identity of the work.

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Opera can embrace the same understanding.

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Giving the dramatist proper credit is not simply a matter of courtesy. It reinforces for audiences what new opera actually is: a theatrical art form in which music and drama work together.

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Why Credit Matters Beyond the Program

This may sound like a relatively small issue. It isn’t. The way an opera company identifies its creators can influence the way the work itself is understood. If the composer is presented as the sole author, audiences may naturally assume that the opera is primarily a musical event. If the playwright is identified as a co-creator, audiences are reminded that they are also coming to experience a new work of theater.

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That can matter enormously when a company is trying to attract someone who has never before considered attending an opera.

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The name of a playwright may be the very thing that catches that person’s attention.

But the issue goes beyond publicity. New operas almost always require revision. A scene that seemed perfect on the page may not work once it is sung and staged. A singer may need a line adjusted for vocal reasons. A dramatic moment may need clarification. A transition may need to be shortened or expanded. The person who wrote the words and helped construct the drama should be part of that conversation.

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When the dramatist is treated as a secondary figure, that can affect not only billing but also the extent to which the writer is included in rehearsals and invited to participate in the evolution of the work.

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There is a ripple effect, too. When opera companies consistently give greater visibility to composers than librettists, journalists may follow the same model in their reviews and articles. The convention reinforces itself.  Changing the convention can help change the perception.

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A Committee for a New Century of Opera

These were among the issues that led to the formation of the Dramatists Guild Opera Committee.

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In 2016, Michael Korie and Mark Campbell formed the committee to address the issues librettists and composers were encountering in this burgeoning field. Among its concerns were proper credit, parity in commission fees and greater artistic control.

The committee has since grown to more than 60 librettists and composers, including many of the country’s leading artists. Korie and Deborah Brevoort now serve as its co-chairs.

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The committee’s purpose, however, is not to create an adversarial relationship between writers and opera companies.

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Quite the opposite.

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The goal is to help establish a common understanding between the artists who create new operas and the companies that commission, produce and present them. That led to the creation of Best Practices for Opera which is available for review on the Dramatists Guild website.