“You can’t sing that character prettily,” Honeywell insists. Contemporary operas have seldom enjoyed such widespread exposure. But then Dead Man Walking, Heggie’s career breakthrough opera, has now had a remarkable 60 productions (I even saw it staged in Dresden). Something is obviously changing. What is changing is the musical language used by many of today’s composers, moving away from the aggressive dissonances of the recent past toward more singable, tonally rooted music.

Source: thestar February 03, 2018 12:33 UTC