So-called artistic freedom is something special. The great operatic masterpieces– Don Juan, Figaro, Fidelio–were the results of successful battles against this danger of isolation by composers striving toward a universally applicable form against the intentions of their patrons. Not having to fight for its life, it grew spoiled, over-refined, exigent, following whims and disregarding general laws. For a long time it was produced for private enjoyment at the courts of princes and aristocratic patrons and so was a typically subsidized art. A typical European phenomenon, it developed in correspondence with social necessities in Europe. It became an independent art-form, going further and further away from the theatre, because the music subordinated the drama. Opera arose in the sixteenth century with the attempt to revive the ancient theatre, and the first operas were “musical theatre” in the best sense, achieving a logical union of music and drama, and bringing the drama into complete balance with the musical form. Since the theatre was originally a folk-art, it needed music, always the most natural, most “popular” form of artistic expression. Those cultures from which our theatre has descended (the Greek theatre, the Japanese theatre, the medieval mysteries) attempted and accomplished, each in its own way, the union of word, tone and movement from which sprang the later opera form. The music theatre is as old as the theatre itself.

We can see a field for the building of a new (or the rebuilding of a classical) form. If we substitute the term “music theatre,” the possibilities for development here, in a country not burdened with an opera tradition, become much clearer. The concept of opera cannot be interpreted in the narrow sense that was prevalent in the nineteenth century. What we have known for years in Europe is even more applicable here. I was therefore greatly interested in discovering the state of the theatre when I came to America about twenty months ago. The development of opera in Europe, which had a sudden upsurge after the war, has been stagnant for many years. The English version presented in Modern Music was translated by Joel Lifflander. Note: This article was originally written in German Weill’s typescript is housed in the Weill-Lenya Papers at Yale University Music Library.

What country was opera not developed in