TAPESTRIES

Summers, the artistic and music director at the Houston Grand Opera, offers a fresh and insightful look at the power of opera and the arts in general, and why they matter.

Those who know little about opera generally conjure visions of singers straining to reach high C or to break a champagne glass. Beyond this stereotype, of course, lies a richly creative art form, as Summers effectively argues in this lively essay collection. He began writing the essays during the Covid-19 pandemic, which made live performances impossible to do safely for an extended period. Opera’s relevance, he argues, springs from art’s central mission to “wake us up to things we [haven’t] noticed,” and from its focus on using sound to tell a story of “those soul places that have more than mere hunger—the places of desire.” Little wonder, then, that Summers observes that opera “is a vast art, so dismissing it out of hand probably points to a narrow definition of it.” He outlines his case for opera’s importance in four sections, ranging from general reflections on the creative arts to a deep dive into classic operas and his experiences with the Houston Grand Opera. Given such an ambitious agenda, no point is too minute to address, as the author demonstrates in “Joining the Dance,” a look at assistants such as Ferdinand Ries, who’s credited with keeping Ludwig van Beethoven “solvent and busy” in his living and publishing arrangements, even serving as “the ears of the deaf composer in professional situations.” Although experts regard Ries as a fine composer in his own right, he’s now largely forgotten by the general public, “at least partly because of the depth of his devotion,” Summers suggests. In fact, the uneasy dance of celebrity versus creativity runs throughout the narrative.

Readers will find ample food for thought in these pages, whether in the author’s questioning of a star conductor’s impact on musicians’ morale (“if they are not inspired or, worse, are antagonized or maltreated, where would we expect their job satisfaction to come from?”) or sounding a cautionary note about putting pressure on child prodigies (“expecting a young voice to carry the weight of operatic music simply for the brief entertainment of adults is rather like a ten-year-old body builder”). Appropriately, the latter observation arises in the author’s warm reflection on helping the adult Shirley Temple Black light her cigarette in 1998—one of several celebrity encounters recalled here. Still, some of the book’s finest moments spring from the author’s nuanced considerations of troubling issues, such as the stereotypical characters in George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (1935) and the lack of opportunities for Black performers at the time: “Should there have been more and better opportunities?” the author asks. “Absolutely. But the cultural speed limits of the time shut them down.” At the same time, he notes that “What Porgy and Bess did, unknowingly, was shift the creative forces of opera onto American shores.” Overall, the collection makes a persuasive argument for opera’s vitality and its relevance as an art form.

An irreverent, entertaining, and thoroughly inspiring opera overview.