Believing in Opera

After a brief career as a countertenor, Sutcliffe settled into a 24-year stint as opera critic at the Guardian before moving on to the same position at the Evening Standard. Whatever is implied by the title, this is in fact an overlong homage to certain contemporary opera directors. Sutcliffe examines big names such as Peter Sellars, Ruth Berghaus and Graham Vick as well as Patrice Chereau, although the French director's career in opera has been intermittent at best. On the other hand, the Italians Luchino Visconti and Giorgio Strehler get short shrift, perhaps because he hasn't seen as many of their productions. Sutcliffe's musical judgments are sometimes inadequate, such as when he calls Olivier Messaien's musical language naive. Messaien, a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, was ponderous and abstruse but hardly naive. Sutcliffe does make a number of good points: for example, the sheer theatrical variety of opera means it can never be ideal for the small TV screen. But he also seems conflicted about the basic issue of making opera accessible. On the one hand, he overrates Peter Brook's abridged versions of Carmen and Pelleas and Melisande, which made mincemeat of the music (mainly because Sutcliffe appears to care more about drama than about music), and objects to the Paris Bastille Opera's hiring of Daniel Barenboim, ""an elitist career musician with no commitment to vernacular opera or egalitarian theater"" (without naming the paragon who might be the alternate choice). On the other hand, he claims that the installation of surtitles at the New York City Opera ""will surely prove a damaging development for the future of opera and singing in the U.S."" Better editing would have spared readers unhelpful digressions in what is otherwise a valid recounting of operagoing, with the stage director as key player. (Feb.)