Tobias Picker thinks it began in earnest with John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles at the Metropolitan Opera in 1991.
"The opera was a huge sell-out. Opera companies realised that producing a new work would give them tremendous attention and bring in an audience. I don't want to take credit away from [John Adams's 1987 opera] Nixon in China or other new operas given in Houston. Nixon was a real event. But the resurgence really began with the Met."
Opera in America may lag behind Europe in innovative stagings or revivals of neglected works, but it holds its own in generating new works.
It might almost be possible for an American to make a living as an opera composer, as 18th- and 19th-century Italians did. If anyone comes close, it is probably Picker, whose fourth opera, An American Tragedy, has its world premiere at the Met tonight. Although the 51-year-old composer has several instrumental compositions to his credit, his work in opera currently leaveslittle time for much else.
We met at the Met, before a piano rehearsal on the main stage. Rehearsals were going well, he says. "This is a very smooth-running opera house."
Picker's opera career unfolded quickly. Emmeline, an Oedipal tale set in 19th- century New England, met with much success at its 1996 premiere in Santa Fe. Fantastic Mr Fox, which he calls "a family opera", followed two years later in Los Angeles. For Dallas in 2001 he returned to stormy passions with Thérèse Raquin, based on Emile Zola's novel of murder and remorse.
An American Tragedy continues in the same vein, as those familiar with its source would expect. "The novel [by Theodore Dreiser] is highly operatic in every way, with all the ingredients I want in an opera: political, social and religious dimensions, desire and passion, loss and grief." The plot works two stories into a love triangle. A poor boy from the Midwest moves east and rises socially to become involved with an upper-class girl, only to discover that a pregnant factory girl is carrying his child. "The world of America as I see it exists in this story - social ambition and fall from grace."
An American Tragedy, like other recent American operas such as John Harbison's The Great Gatsby and William Bolcom's A View from the Bridge, touts not just the good health of opera against naysayers who think the art form is a spent force, but also the viability of representational opera. Dabbling in experimental theatre is foreign to the way these operas work. "Maybe some day I'll write an abstract opera where nobody knows what's going on," says Picker, "but it isn't going to be soon." An American Tragedy has a "great libretto" (by Gene Scheer) that is "clearly delineated, like a good story. It hasaria, duets, trios and other set pieces. Many traditions have stayed around for a reason."
As for the oft-made assertion that the societal function of opera has been supplanted by cinema, Picker does not think it holds water.
"As the new art form of the 20th century, cinema has had an effect on opera. The audience for opera has shrunk, like the audience for all classical music. But don't blame that on the movies. It's because of a breakdown in education that is scandalous and disgraceful. And it's because America's leaders take orders from corporations that believe culture need play only a small role, just enough to give their workers something to do."
An American Tragedy also promises to resemble other recent American operas in the comprehensibility of its musical style. The Wall Street Journal called Picker "our finest composer for the lyric stage", yet his present style is the product of evolution. "People speak of early and late Strauss, and the same applies to Picker." A native of New York City, he studied with three giants of American musical modernism, Charles Wuorinen, Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter.
"I admired their music so much. When I was 17 years old, I thought Wuorinen was the greatest thing since discovering Beethoven. But I never wanted just to imitate my teachers. The uptown school was dominant, but I was never really a 12-tone composer. I could derive descendants from a tone row so that even my most severe early works were full of tonality. I broke every rule in the book. Over time my music has moved to where I feel it should be at any given moment."
Not everyone is optimistic about the long-term prospects for new American operas. John Adams, for example, argues that many new American operas have "no legs", the implication being that they are artificial constructs, created for celebrity performers, with no independent life. On the other hand, important opera composers from the past also wrote for celebrities, typically with little if any concern for posterity.
"I wanted to write an opera with real emotions people identify with," says Picker, "with music that is expressive, emotional, passionate. Major operas are being written today that will survive."
