Hamish F.G. Swanston - In Defence of Opera

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Opera was once generally dismissed as an irrational and extravagant entertainment, exemplified in the excessively passionate noise of four fat folk along the footlights. But it is now of interest to more people in English-speaking countries than ever before. Professor Swantston has not attempted anything so comprehensive as Dent’s famous account of opera. In his consideration of half a dozen questions he is here directing attention to those elements of opera which, he thinks, have provoked this growing interest.

He has paid particular attention to the recurrence of the strange and wonderful among the subjects chosen for operas, and he demonstrates how such stories have seemed to many composers, and to their audience, to present our actual experience. At the singing of opera the member of the audience may recognize a sympathetic expression of those inward experiences which are generally unsaid, but because they are too personal. It is thus, Professor Swanston argues, that opera opens the real word.