“Let’s start thinking of opera as evolutionary rather than decaying,” writes Yuval Sharon in the introduction (he calls it an “overture”) to A New Philosophy of Opera. Part cultural history, part aesthetic manifesto, it’s a shrewdly provocative book that envisions a future for the art form profoundly rooted in a radical past. And it’s inextricable from Sharon’s own experience with opera, both as an audience member and as a creator.
Hailed by the New York Times Magazine as “the most visionary opera director of his generation,” Sharon is a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and the founder and co-Artistic Director of The Industry, an experimental opera company in Los Angeles. He has myriad works-in-progress, including a production of Tristan und Isolde that will mark his debut at The Metropolitan Opera in the 2025-26 season. But his home is the Detroit Opera, where he became Artistic Director in 2020, famously responding to pandemic restrictions with a version of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung staged in a downtown parking structure.
Sharon spoke recently with WRTI from his office at Detroit Opera — talking about the animating ideas in his book, the resistance he still faces from connoisseurs, and the practice of “interdependence” that he sees as opera’s highest ideal. He also talked specifically about The Comet / Poppea, which had its world premiere earlier this year at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles.
An intentional collision of W.E.B. Du Bois’ sci-fi story The Comet (1920) and Claudio Monteverdi’s palace thriller L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643), this new production — which has its east coast premiere courtesy of Curtis Opera Theatre, in three sold-out performances — introduces new music by George Lewis and a libretto by Douglas Kearney. It features a cast of Curtis singers led by conductor Marc Lowenstein. By Sharon’s light, it speaks directly to some of the most pressing issues of our time.
Here is video of our conversation. Scroll down for a lightly edited transcript.
This is such a fascinating book. I really appreciate the balance you strike of history and analysis and — I don’t know if I’d call it memoir, but personal history.
I think that’s very fair, those terms.
At any point it could teeter too far in one direction or another, but you really balance a lot of elements here, in the service of this larger argument. I guess if I were to boil it down, I’d say it’s about a realignment of opera’s relationship with the public…
That’s nice.
…and to sort of ask “What is this, really? What is this art form?”
That’s exactly right. When I wrote the book, I really wanted to write something that would feel like a 360-degree perspective. That it was not the kind of monolith that we often are told that opera is — where the producing of an opera, the work itself, the experience of opera, is all completely fused together. But instead, to take all of those elements apart and realize that those are a lot of different aspects of what opera is. So the experience of opera is something I talk about quite a bit, in terms of my first time going to the opera, or the experience of seeing an opera in a moving vehicle, for example. So that’s one aspect of it. Then there’s the practical side of the making of an opera, and the interpretation of opera: what goes along with that? And then also the social and political ramifications of what it means to represent people onstage, and where opera fits on that continuum.
And in each and every one of those questions, there’s an assumed knowledge of what opera is that, I think, is contrary to what the potential opera can be, or what the future of the art form really might look like. So in some respects the book, by talking about all those different elements, I hope it offers readers a language for really understanding what opera might be, as opposed to what they might imagine opera is. Because I think we know that opera is stuck with a lot of baggage, in terms of what the expectations are.
Yeah. When I think about your methodology with the book, I almost envision that you’re holding this thing and flaking the crust off of our understanding. Because you really bring us, early in the book, to the origins of this art form and remind the reader what a radical tradition this is.
Absolutely.
And how outlandish the ambitions are at its core, and put that in opposition to centuries of received wisdom and orthodoxy and convention. Has that raised hackles in the operatic world?
I’m always having the hardest time connecting with people who are really deep-in-the-wool opera lovers. Because they tend to have decided what opera is for them, and often it can be something that to me feels somewhat partial. So it’s like the thing that they really love the most is just the music — and so they’ll say they go to the opera, but they close their eyes and just listen to the music. And I think “Well, that’s not really what opera is about.” Or people that love going to the opera because they kind of imagine it as a throwback to an old era, and an opportunity to experience the world the way it was in the 18th century. That also for me feels pretty antithetical to the notion that opera is constantly being reborn each and every time that you do it, and so it carries with it the fingerprints of our own time. And I think instead of trying to hide those fingerprints, those fingerprints need to be very apparent in the making of the opera. So again, the people that really feel like they have opera figured out for them, I think that’s great. I have no issue with that other than to say, you know, this book might require a little bit of an open mind. I’m really trying to write for people who might be interested in what opera could be about, and are looking for a way in. In which case I hope the book offers many, many ways in.
Within the last decade or so, within the world of opera, has it been bending towards this vision? Do you think this is a really receptive moment for this message?
I do, mostly because of COVID. I get the sense that COVID has required all of us to really make the case for opera each and every time we produce it — as opposed to kind of taking it for granted. So I think it’s a really opportune moment to think about the essentials of opera. What do we think opera is based on: handed-down ideas, versus what could it really be? Certainly the work I’ve been doing here in Detroit has been really trying to push that dialogue further. I’ve been here for four years now; I’m just at the beginning of my fifth season. And it’s really great to see how that’s a process, and that the audience is really evolving into appreciating a different kind of opera. I had somebody come to see our Traviata, which is actually probably the first production since I’ve been artistic director that is more on the traditional side, in terms of storytelling. I mean, it’s not in reverse order. It’s not in another time period. It’s not cut up. In that sense, it’s pretty traditional. But since we haven’t done something like this, it’s really refreshing for a lot of people, instead of it just being taken for granted. One of our staff members came up to me, and they said, “Well, you know, we’re really Yuval opera people, so this took us a little bit of getting used to.” I was like, oh, that’s very cool. [laughs]
Right.
So it’s been exciting to see that in a city like Detroit, where the operatic diet’s been pretty narrow. It’s been great to see that it just takes a commitment to a different way of doing things to really bring people on board. I’m sure Anthony in Philadelphia is going to achieve similar results. And you know, I look at what The Met is doing now, with so much emphasis on new opera, which is so exciting. I do think, since in the intervening years there has been more and more emphasis on the theatrical side of things, that’s been great for the conversation around opera. So yes: I do think in general, maybe if this book came out 20 years ago, it might have been a more foreign or alien thing, but I hope that it’s out now as the overall zeitgeist is ready to rethink some of these assumptions.
Well, I’ll give you one case study.
OK!
Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s The Listeners, which we just saw here. It also coincided with Anthony’s assuming the helm at Opera Philadelphia, and his new pricing initiative, where every seat was available for as low as $11.
Right.
So it was a really fascinating thing to witness these excited full houses.
Right.
On the first night, Anthony asked the audience: “How many of you are here seeing opera for the first time?” And it was a pretty substantial number of people in the hall who cheered and applauded. Then the nature of that opera really does lean into the theatrical, with Lileana Blain-Cruz…
Yes. Such a great director. We had her here too.
It was very cool to see, because people were really riveted. And the phrase of yours that popped to mind around this was the notion of an “anti-elite opera.” This story, with its exotic and yet familiar contemporary milieu, and the cult element, and Royce’s libretto. It all felt like, “Oh, if I were to think about a manifestation of Yuval’s anti-elitist opera, this actually does fit the bill.”
Amazing. I’m so sad I didn’t see it in Philadelphia, but I plan to see it in Chicago. And we did Missy and Royce’s Breaking the Waves last season. So it’s been exciting to see exactly what you said — that something about how approachable the piece is, how direct the work is. And I have to say, I was so impressed by how Missy and Royce also really captured… You know, a key feature of opera for me, that I talk about a lot in the book, is how ambiguity functions in opera. They managed to make ambiguity a sensuous pleasure — which is very challenging, but to me is the core of what opera is all about. I just think the world of them.
I’m also very curious how Anthony’s gambit with pricing is going to play out over the next few years. I think it’s a great signal to send to people. I nevertheless hope that people that came for the first time and only paid $11, I hope they realize what a great gift that was for them. Because, if those tickets cost what the opera actually cost to produce, then we would be talking about a very elite art form. But I will say that actually, even in Detroit, we don't have $11 tickets, but we have tickets as low as $25, and our top ticket is $145. Now, $145 may on the surface sound like a lot. But I just went two nights ago here in Detroit to see Stevie Wonder, and $145 would not have gotten you in the door. And not a single person is going to say that the Stevie Wonder concert was elitist or exclusionary.
Right.
So the price point is a factor, but I think it’s going to be all of it. I think it was great that Anthony started this with The Listeners, as something that was new and different and direct, like you said so. So I’ll just be curious how we go every direction, in every path that we can, to try and express to people that this is engaging material, and there are no barriers to your appreciation or inclusion in what’s happening.
Now, a lot of what you’re known for is experimentation with form. And by that I mean everything from sequence — you know, running the the last act first, and that kind of thing…
Right.
But also “form” meaning, like, presenting things outside of a hall. Out in the streets, or in moving vehicles, or in a parking lot. So that clearly presents one sort of mode of reinvention for this art form. Then there’s another thing: let’s say, The Met Opera, where you have experience.
Not yet, but it’s coming soon!
Right, you’ve been commissioned to do the Ring Cycle, which is sort of the Valhalla.
That’s absolutely right. Yeah.
So The Met Opera is going to be The Met Opera, no matter what.
It’s true.
There’s a certain grandeur and a certain scale. But I’ve seen both of Terence Blanchard’s operas there. And at opening night of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, it was really electric to take stock of who was in the hall…
Oh, sure!
…and how they felt about being there.
Yeah. Yeah.
This very wild sense of, like, “We’re here. We are telling our stories in this space,” and it was a real long journey to that. So could you talk about that element as well? Like, who is opera for?
It’s such a great question. And it’s a question that's still evolving which is so wonderful, you know. And it's why I believe so much in the idea that opera is a continually expanding art form. Because as we all know, opera was originally for aristocracy. The art form grew in a very, very elite and exclusionary context. But it wasn’t long before (and I talk about this a bit in the book) opera became this kind of Janus figure. It had on one hand, the aristocratic elite audience — Monteverdi’s Orfeo for a very, very small public, in a room that was really quite narrow and had actually very few theatrical possibilities — to less than 50 years later, when competing theaters in Venice are vying for public audience. And opera as a commercial entertainment that rose and fell based on popular interest then opened up a whole new possibility for what opera is. And so within 50 years of its birth, we automatically have this tension that I think is still with us, which is: “Who is opera for,” to your question. And the possibility that actually it can be for anybody, based on how it’s produced and who’s producing it. And what’s the subject matter, and how accessible is this, how close to contemporary politics are we really going to dare to go, for example? So Monteverdi’s last opera that survives — I mean, many of his operas didn’t survive. But there’s Orfeo on the one hand, which is the earliest surviving opera. And then there’s Coronation of Poppea. So half of what we’ll be doing at Curtis is one of the few remaining public operas that still exists.
Mmhmm.
And you see in that range — well, first of all, the two pieces together when you compare them, they’re so very different. And the Poppea, clearly, invites the audience into a political satire which must have had contemporary resonance that we can only kind of academically understand, maybe. But makes for part of the power of Poppea kind of challenging, when you do Poppea again. And that led us to Comet / Poppea, which maybe we’ll get to during this conversation, or we’ll see.
Yeah.
But in any case, I think that Monteverdi absolutely knew he was writing for a kind of everyday kind of audience, potentially, with Poppea, which he was not doing for Orfeo. He knew that the audience was different. Now that’s all Italy, in origin-of-opera time. Here we are now in America. We’ve inherited all these operas, we still do them. Sometimes we do them with what I think of as a kind of false sense of duty to their original ideas — because our context is completely different. So for me, I don’t totally understand why we would do these operas exactly the way they were done. And also, in most cases we don’t really know how they were done, but we have assumed traditions that we just keep passing on from from one generation to another. But you know, in America we have, in addition to that, this notion of who is included in the storytelling, who is included and invited into the participation of this art form. And I think we all know that unless it is as diverse of an art form as…
Right.
In many ways, opera has diversity in its DNA because of its hybrid nature — because of it being music, drama, fashion design, poetry, all of these things. No single artistic voice having dominance, but instead finding a way to to cohere. There’s something about that that for America, it only makes sense if we’re also opening up the notion of diversity of story, or diversity of interpreter, diversity of perspective. I think that what we have been seeing in the last few years with that proliferation of new voices in opera, to me it feels so natural for opera, because opera is already inherently a hybrid kind of genre. So I’ve been finding that incredibly exciting to see opera get closer and closer to what it means to be American. And my book is very focused on opera in America. I don’t talk a lot about opera in Europe; I mean, I do have some of my stories of of working in Europe. But I’m really focused on opera in America, with all of its challenges and all of its potential.
So that raises an interesting point for me, which is that the American cultural apparatus is so geared towards stars, towards exceptional individual accomplishment. We’re speaking on the day Netflix posted a new trailer for Maria, their Callas biopic.
Oh! I can’t wait to see this. It’s coming out in theaters first, though.
It’s going to be in theaters in November and then on Netflix in December. And the trailer, of course, is very sumptuously made…
Yes. As I’d expect. [laughs]
…and Angelina Jolie looks like she’s on a fast track to a Best Actor nod.
Right.
It’s a win, quite possibly. But there’s a moment in the trailer where she is speaking in response to a question, perhaps. And she says: “My life is opera. There is no reason in opera.” With this hauteur, you know. I saw this literally an hour before we connected.
Funny.
I had to bring this up, because it seems to me that in this book, you are — if not anti-diva, you are sort of indifferent to the veneration of the diva. The fact that this is the metric by which most people think about opera. When you say the word “opera” in America, people think Caruso or Callas or insert-name-here.
Yeah, exactly. It’s such a great question. Yeah, really, really great question. So, how do I say this? I do have a chapter in the book that’s really about singers. I think it’s natural, every time I tell people I am an opera director, they say, “Oh, you must sing too.” They just assume because it’s opera that anyone involved in opera also sings. So I say, “No, no, I’m a terrible singer. I leave that to the experts.” Let’s leave that to the people that really do that well. There’s a John Cage word for his methodology that I think is so appropriate for opera in general. His operas are to me like the perfect operas in so many ways. But there’s a word that he came up with that connects those operas with the rest of his work, which is “interdependence.”
Hmmm.
And I love that word, because you can’t be independent in opera. You can’t be just your own person. That’s also the danger of the diva, actually, is that it’s only about the star turn, and not about how that diva (or devo, if we want to gender it)... That can sometimes tip the balance of opera into a direction that no longer becomes about interdependence. And also, you’re still dependent on everybody else, too. But if everyone’s only dependent and doesn’t have personality and doesn’t bring themselves to it, then you just have a kind of slavish dependence on each other, and that’s not interesting either. Right? So you have these two extremes, dependence and independence — and Cage came up with the word “interdependence,” and that to me is opera. In the end, divas have a hard time being interdependent, and so again, that’s the danger. But I also, of course, adore the singers that you just feel like they have an artistry that’s so individual to who they are. And Maria Callas, for sure, is one of those people. I never saw her, so I don’t know — her presence always tipped the scale so far in the direction of just her. I mean, when I listen to her recordings, there’s some of them that just feel like she found a way to unlock the character and the emotions and the music in a way no one else did. But I don’t know if maybe on stage she just sucked up all the oxygen herself, and didn’t leave any room for anybody else. That might be the case. And again, for me it’s conjecture, because I didn’t experience that myself.
But when I wrote the book I did feel like, I wonder if I can write a book that doesn’t go into an adoration of Maria Callas, because I feel like that does get in the way of trying to explain the crazy, messy hurlyburly that opera really is. And Maria Callas does appear briefly in the book, but she’s not featured anywhere near as heavily as Waltraud Meier, who is an artist who absolutely to me exemplifies that notion. She is truly one of the greatest singing actors I have ever seen onstage, and it’s always about the work. And it’s always about her colleagues, and it’s always about the production, but she doesn’t disappear at all. I mean, she really comes to the fore. So for me, I spent a lot of time in the book talking about her, and also talking with her, because I wanted to give her a chance to speak with her own voice, the way that I would like to see singers have that kind of personality. But not at the expense of anybody else. And that is possible, but it’s challenging. So then, after Maria Callas there were plenty of divas that kind of went in her direction, and certainly did tip the balance. But I will say, as I look at the operatic landscape like I would love to see more of those kind of singers that really do have a personality that absolutely make you say “I’m so curious how she or he interprets this particular role.” Just not as a solo act.
Yeah, it’s interesting. When you think about Callas, you think about this spectacular talent. And then hopefully, ideally, one of the questions you ask is, “Well, what is the system that so perfectly spotlighted this talent?” Like, how was opera — as a tradition, an art form, a cultural machinery — so effective in taking what she did well and putting it on this pedestal? And if that system didn’t exist, would she have become the star that she did?
Totally. I’m really excited to see it. Obviously, it’ll be pretty major to see how opera is depicted. It’s been interesting to see how classical music and opera has appeared. I talk about this also in the book somewhat, how it’s found its way into popular culture. There are ways in which it is a kind of stand-in for elegance, and conspicuous consumption, and all of these things related to capitalism. And I I don’t like that at all. So it’ll be interesting to see how someone like Maria Callas is depicted, and if it feels like it’s the kind of piece that people will just be so excited to — well, maybe from there people will really be interested in going to the opera. That would be a great thing to come out of this movie.
So let’s turn to The Comet / Poppea, because I have questions.
I’m sure you do! It’s a very confusing project!
As I’m reading your book, I’m nodding, and thinking, “Oh, there’s such a great push towards accessibility and welcome and inclusion.” Then when I look at The Comet / Poppea, on paper, I’m like, “This is so high-concept. and it feels very intellectually rooted.” But I know that when I experience it, I’m going to have a very different response. So I’d love to hear your thoughts. How did you conceive of this pairing?
Well, to your hesitation — because I get this a lot with my projects. You know, I really care about accessibility and engagement, but for me, none of that has to do with a piece being watered down. You know what I mean? And in the book, I have a quote that really spoke to how I thought about opera, which is by Simone Weil, the French philosopher, talking about how we don’t need to water down “high culture,” so that people that don’t have experience with it can possibly engage. In fact, all we have to do is translate it so that it’s legible to the heart. She describes it in a way that’s so beautiful. And I completely believe that: that actually, the average audience member is able to comprehend much more than we give them credit for. And we often, with an opera, are so worried about its potential irrelevance that we can often water things down and make it on the surface seem relevant — and by doing so, maybe take away all of the flavor of what makes it actually a meaningful opera.
We did Comet / Poppea in Los Angeles, and I do have to say that it was a wide range of audience reactions. Maybe on paper, it might seem a challenging piece to engage with, if you’re only reading the marketing materials. But I do know people that were sitting with the piece and understanding. And just in the piece with us, I think they found a lot of potential meaning from it, beyond any “intention” that any of us might have had. And that to me is so crucial, thinking through that. But the pairing really emerged because Anthony Roth Costanzo wanted me to do just Poppea and I actually really resisted doing an opera that felt like it was only about an Emperor behaving badly. This was during 2018, so we had a lot of wannabe emperors behaving badly in our culture, and I just did not want to do that in the opera world. Instead, I thought to myself, “How about relativizing that with a story of a different kind of social mobility?” I mean, Poppea is ultimately about social mobility of the one character trying to become empress. And so I thought, “Well, how does that resonate with other stories that might be contemporaneous, or closer to contemporaneous?”
And it was in talking to George Lewis that we decided on The Comet by Du Bois, because it allowed us to really be a commentary on exclusion in classical music more broadly. Pieces like Poppea enact a certain exclusion, especially in America, which just made us want to say, “Let’s balance that idea with stories of: how do we get past this? How do we get past the notion of opera as exclusionary and closed and finished?” So that led to a tessellation of these two pieces. And very early on, it was clear to me: “OK, these are going to be two operas happening simultaneously on a rotating stage, and the audience on either side of the stage is going to see part of it. And you’re going to have to let your imagination fill in the blanks from what seems to be happening on the other side.” You’ll be able to hear everything. But what you hear in relation to what you see is going to be totally dependent on where you’re sitting. That’s a mode of spectatorship that I’ve been very excited about, and it does underline a lot of the thoughts in the book. I had somebody who read the early galley of the book and then came to see Comet / Poppea in Los Angeles, and they said, “Well, this is the perfect crystallization of everything you’re talking about in the book.”
Oh, that’s exciting.
I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it, and see if you agree.
The experiential note that you’re describing feels very resonant with what you write about.
Yeah.
Well, let me ask about George Lewis’ contribution, because I’m familiar with his work as an improviser and a pioneer of computer music. I’ve actually seen a concert version of Afterword, his AACM opera, at the Ojai Music Festival.
Oh, you saw that. OK, great.
George is such an enormous thinker, and conceptualizer. His music can present some challenges, in terms of points of entry. I’m really curious to hear how this sounds, and whether he engages with the Monteverdi language, or just completely diverges from it.
We developed this piece over six years, so it was a long gestation process. Douglas Kearney, who wrote the libretto, really got involved in the dramaturgy of Poppea, and tried to look at ways in which the poetry from Monteverdi's librettist might find echoes and resonances in the language of The Comet. I think that George’s approach was thinking about the structure being a bit more modular, so that there was the opportunity for interruptions, starting and stopping. I think he knew that it’s not a piece for him to be precious, and that’s the attitude he brought with him to this. And you know, Joelle Lamarre, who sang in that AACM opera as well, she got this music and said, “Well, this is the most tonal music, George, that I’ve ever sung of yours!” So he really wrote a very different piece. I wouldn’t want to put words in his mouth about how much Monteverdi influenced him. But I think what influenced him probably more than anything was just this notion that he’s almost making an exquisite corpse with Monteverdi, you know?
Yeah.
Because he didn’t know 100% which scenes might appear when. He couldn’t anticipate that the audience would necessarily hear one particular thing. So where was he going to introduce ideas of repetition and revision throughout the piece? So I think it was a kind of constant but maybe not active dialogue partner. I think he was always aware of it, and I think when he thought about the timbres of the orchestra, he definitely had the harpsichord in mind as a kind of contrary voice — that he, of course, also then wrote a virtuosic scene for. But no spoilers. [laughs]
You know, political resonances and cultural resonances — this is something you very much take into account, sometimes steering away from the obvious. In the case of The Comet, there is a really interesting dialogue, obviously, about race. And then also this kind of post-apocalyptic meditation.
Yes.
Which scarily has a lot of relevance for us today. What was purely conjectural in the sort of sci-fi landscape, I think we all think about apocalypse today.
Oh, For sure. Everywhere. It’s hard to avoid right now.
Can you talk about your thought process there, in terms of releasing this into the world at this stage in history?
What really is crazy is that when Du Bois wrote The Comet short story, it was written in 1920, as a response to the last global pandemic, the Spanish influenza. And it led him to also be thinking about end times. But from a really specifically racial perspective of: will it take a global pandemic to eliminate racism? And the way that the short story ends gives you the impression, “No, actually, even that is not going to be enough.” George talks about it a lot as an early forerunner of Afro-pessimism. When we started exploring it, the libretto was done before COVID hit. It was all done prior to George Floyd being murdered, and Breonna Taylor being murdered. We knew when we brought in Du Bois, I and George and Douglas, we all wanted to talk about race and exclusion in classical music, and in many ways the piece began as a kind of institutional critique of opera as exclusionary, and an allegory for that in many ways.
Yeah.
We did not anticipate that the piece would end up feeling so resonant, with things that were just about to happen. Now, it took four years before we actually produced it, but in many ways it feels like the timing is really right. Because I think now the public conversation around race, and end times, and the relevance of our old institutions — you know, one of the things that happens in Poppea is that the philosopher Seneca is forced to commit suicide, and in many ways it’s such a clear allegory for the notion that old ways of thinking, and old philosophies that organized our culture, are no longer valid. And are forced to commit some kind of suicide. That feels so resonant, too, with our time. And so yeah, I’m always so fascinated by the notion that you start these projects with a real sense of just following some sense of intuition. And then, before you know it, you’re responding to all of these invisible forces around you — and sometimes not-so-invisible forces around you. I think in that case, this piece feels like a very honest expression of what we’ve all been thinking the last five years.
A New Philosophy of Opera is available now from Liveright / W.W. Norton.
