V. OPERA AS A HUMAN INSTITUTION
These various works have long since been accepted by the musical world as the great masterpieces in operatic form. Many of them are practically out of the present repertoire of our opera houses. Were we to assert ourselves—were the general public given an opportunity to choose between good and bad—we should hear them often. And who shall say what results might not come from a small and properly managed opera house, with performances of fine works at reasonable prices?
Opera is controlled by a few rich men who think it a part of the life of a great city that there should be an opera house with a fine orchestra, fine scenery, and the greatest singers obtainable. It does not exist for the good of the whole city, but rather for those of plethoric purses. It does not make any attempt to become a sociological force; it does not even dimly see what possibilities it possesses in that direction. Opera houses and opera companies are sedulously protected against any sociological scrutiny. They are persistently reported to be hot-beds of intrigue; they trade on society and on the love of highly paid singing; they surround themselves with an exotic atmosphere in which the normal person finds difficulty in breathing, and which often turns the opera singer into a strange specimen of the genus man or woman; they go to ruin about once in so often, and are extricated by the unnecessarily rich; they are too little related to the community that supports them save in the mediums of money and social convention.
These artificial and false conditions are bound to bring evils in their train, but these conditions and these evils are chiefly the result of our own complacency. Were opera in any sense domestic; were opera singers to some extent, at least, human beings like ourselves, moving in a reasonable world; did we go to hear opera as we go to a symphony concert, or to an art museum,—to satisfy our love of beauty, and quicken our imagination by contact with beautiful objects; were the conditions of performance such as to enable us to hear the words, then would opera become a fine human institution, then would it take its place among the noble dreams of humanity.
In my endeavor to make some distinctions between good and bad opera I have drawn a somewhat arbitrary line. I do not wish to give the impression that I think all opera on one side of the line is bad and on the other good. I have tried to strike a just balance by applying certain admitted principles of artistic construction and expression. From these principles, which lie at the basis of life and, therefore, of art, opera has unjustly claimed immunity.
And finally we come to that point in our argument where reasoning must stop altogether. For opera is to many people a sort of fascination entirely outside reason. They refuse to admit it as a subject of discussion; they enjoy the spectacle on the stage and the spectacle of which they are a part; the sight of three thousand people well dressed like themselves comforts them; the fine singing, costumes, and stage-setting, the gorgeous orchestra throbbing with passion entirely unbridled—all these they enjoy in that mental lassitude which is dear to them. They are, perhaps, slightly uncomfortable at a symphony concert; here there are no obligations. Opera is, in short, to such people a slightly illicit æsthetic adventure.