Opera Workshops in the United States

Extract

Observers of the American musical scene tend to decry the commercialization of the musical life in the United States, its subservience to the mass entertainment media (radio, television, and the cinema), and its excessive centralization along a Hollywood-New York axis of monolithic agencies and frenetic publicity bureau. All this is true; but it represents only one side of the picture. Statistics may not in themselves prove very much, but they show a tremendous and healthy growth in the volume of musical activity throughout the United States—symphony orchestras in scores of communities, approximately three hundred music schools scattered throughout the nation, and increasing attention to serious music in the schools, colleges, and universities.