| In the early 1980s, arts professionals from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and OPERA America expressed concern with the scarcity of new American operas and the stagnation of standard European repertory. Many believed the solution was to borrow from the vital world of American avant-garde music theater occurring outside of opera establishments, most successfully represented by Philip Glass. This dissertation uses the reception of Glass as a lens to examine the discussion transpiring among members of these arts organizations, showing how the various interlocutors were critical for a sudden flourishing of American opera. I focus on the role adventurous impresarios have played in American discourse about opera, promoting ideological orientations and controlling the resources that sustain artist reputations. I show how Harvey Lichtenstein at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Robert Brustein at the American Repertory Theater, and David Gockley at the Houston Grand Opera challenged the role of opera in American culture, lauding Glass's synthesis of popular and high art.;Drawing from interviews and archival materials, this narrative charts interactions between Glass and the network of patrons, institutions, directors, critics, and performers who supported and influenced his work. I examine the meanings these people ascribed to Glass's music as a cultural phenomenon, situating their discourse within the context of the broader issues that vexed American opera. Exploring the activities of arts administrators provides a new entree into the larger world of American experimental music that nuances the "maverick" label that has so often been attached to Glass. As I contend, the various aesthetic frameworks that sustained the agendas of Lichtenstein, Brustein, and Gockley were at least as important in shaping public perceptions about Glass as anything the composer has said about himself. Because of these impresarios, Glass's operas became a model for innovation, bringing in record box office receipts and revitalizing American opera. |
