Do modern opera composers care about word-setting?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Managed to find a few hours this week to play a couple of un-spun recent-ish English operas. First up was Ades's The Tempest. Enjoyed it, but was often annoyed by utterly insensitive, random false emphases in the word setting, on both unimportant words and normally unaccented syllables within words.

This afternoon it was Tippett's King Priam, and if there was a false accent anywhere in it I failed to spot it. Following the words was so-o-o much easier!

Why such a huge decline? Does Ades simply not care, or has insensitivity to natural speech-rhythm somehow become mandatory for contemporary operas? A spot of audience alienation maybe?

[Haven't checked this out but memory suggests that Harrison Birtwistle isn't very sensitive to the natural stresses of his native tongue either!]

[Richard Barrett]

Managed to find a few hours this week to play a couple of un-spun recent-ish English operas. First up was Ades's The Tempest. Enjoyed it, but was often annoyed by utterly insensitive, random false emphases in the word setting, on both unimportant words and normally unaccented syllables within words.

This afternoon it was Tippett's King Priam, and if there was a false accent anywhere in it I failed to spot it. Following the words was so-o-o much easier!

Why such a huge decline? Does Ades simply not care, or has insensitivity to natural speech-rhythm somehow become mandatory for contemporary operas? A spot of audience alienation maybe?

[Haven't checked this out but memory suggests that Harrison Birtwistle isn't very sensitive to the natural stresses of his native tongue either!]

I haven't heard the Ades piece but I agree that it's easily possible to follow King Priam without a libretto. Birtwistle too for the most part. In fact, though, ignoring the "natural stresses of the native tongue" goes back to ancient Greek tragedy. I really don't think it's possible to generalise about "modern opera composers" anyway. Stockhausen, Berg and Stravinsky are usually readily understood, Berio and Nono not so much. One point of view is that if the words are important they ought to be esily heard. Another is that to really get to know the text of an opera you have to study it away from the performance anyway, and you shouldn't expect to get everything out of the music at a first hearing so why should that apply to the libretto? I think which of these applies depends on the work under discussion.