Spirituality in Post‐War British Opera

Extract

Opera is currently enjoying a great deal of public interest. In its popular understanding, as the most lavish, the most spectacular, the most luxuriant of art forms, it might not seem an obvious form for religious exploration, or the working out of spiritual problems. That, one might think, is rather the preserve of more private and introspective art forms: to be left to writers, poets, and workers in the plastic arts. Yet, in the operatic works produced by British composers in the last fifty or so years, many do take this apparently private subject-matter into this most public of artistic domains. This article is an attempt to draw together some of the more notable examples of this tendency, to compare them in their diversity, and to draw attention to this phenomenon among the non-opera-going public. (In all that follows, dates after opera titles refer to the year of their first production.)

Bishop Richard Harries has recently remarked, ‘All works of art, whatever their content, have a spiritual dimension’, in that they can be a source of comfort and solace. He goes on to distinguish ‘a distinctive tradition of ostensibly spiritual art’, which ‘seeks to indicate through symbols the eternal reality behind, beyond and within this world’. In this article, the term ‘spirituality’ is used quite loosely, usually to refer to the use by composers and their librettists of material from sources acknowledged to be of spiritual significance. I have also drawn attention to composers’ uses of myths and legends, since these may be said to have a spiritual content in Harries’ sense, insofar as they consciously direct their hearers to levels of understanding beyond the simple level of the story being told.