The New Opera on CD: Music Is Still the Message

While multimedia may be radically changing the nature of opera, music--however changed--still remains its essence. Moreover, the best new opera can offer just as fulfilling a listening experience as the best of all opera, and an encouraging amount of it is turning up on compact discs.

It may be some time before Louis Andriessen’s “Rosa” is recorded, but the Dutch master’s first opera, “Materie,” a collaboration with Robert Wilson five years ago, will be released on Nonesuch early next year. Already one section from it, “De Stijl”--along with music Andreissen wrote for a television film by Peter Greenaway, “M Is for Man, Music, Mozart”--was recently issued by Nonesuch.

A large representation of Philip Glass’ opera and music theater is available on CD from Sony Classics and Nonesuch, and the latter will be issuing a recording of “La Belle et la Bete” in the spring. After a little practice with the pause buttons of video and CD machines, it should then be possible at home to synchronize it with a video of the Cocteau film.

With the new release, on Lovely Music, of “eL/Aficionado,” two of the four short operas of Robert Ashley’s “Now Eleanor’s Idea” are on CD (the first in the series, “Improvement,” is on Nonesuch). Also available from Lovely Music are both CD and video versions of “Perfect Lives,” the seven episodes of the central work in Ashley’s epic operatic trilogy. The first part, “Atalanta,” was issued on LP by Lovely in the ‘80s but still awaits CD transfer.

John Moran’s “Mathew in the School of Life” will be released shortly on Sony (not, however, by the classical division but as popular music), while Moran’s most controversial earlier opera, “The Manson Family,” is available on Point Music.

(By the way, Moran is not to be confused with Robert Moran, a onetime avant-gardist now turned minimalist opera composer, whose hugely entertaining “The Dracula Diary” has just been released on Catalyst.)

Tod Machover’s futuristic first opera, “Valis,” can be found on a recording produced by Bridge Records, which has also released a number of his technologically venturesome instrumental works.