No “buts”, just good opera

It is an undisputed fact that each time one sees an opera (or watches a film or reads a poem) the experience changes as a result of individual states of mind or collective events that affect the mindset of a generation. Feminism, one of the most obvious examples, has changed the way we see opera, helping us to focus upon the suffering of women and becoming aware of our chauvinistic biases. Now it would be very difficult to justify Carmen’s punishment, however much we might agree that she goads and knowingly humiliates Don Jose. Repeated operatic experience, often affected by the plethora of DVDs and sound recordings from the last 100 years, inevitably induces us to come up with idealised renditions of the operas we watch, often the result of collage. Alas, someone’s ideal Tosca might have Tebaldi in act 1, Callas in act 2 and Caballe in…