L’impronta archetipica sul divenire dell’opera nel secondo Novecento. (In margine a Un re in ascolto di Luciano Berio e a Prometeo di Luigi Nono)

Although twentieth-century opera witnessed the birth of several masterpieces that have remained in the repertoire, opera as a genre lost its centrality within society. Instrumental music became a laboratory of new, advanced languages, while modern opera obviously appears to gaze backward. The post-Second World War avant-garde at first frowned upon opera, but the form was then allowed into the fold by such composers as Henze, Berio, Nono, Zimmermann, Ligeti, Pousseur, Cage, Maderna, Bussotti, Stockhausen and others, in ways that reflect opera’s original matrix – that is, focused on themes in which high-profile characters predominate (like the mythological characters who dominated opera at its birth), with a tendency to take place in unreal, fantastical settings. In addition, the text continues to be entirely sung, which makes it overly expressive in comparison with spoken language. This essay will also consider the role of opera as an institution that represents societal power, definitively recognized as part of a conservative order, even by composers of radical tendencies.