The Redemption of "Vanessa," a Neglected Operatic Masterpiece

Vanessa was first encountered through a PBS broadcast of a Spoleto Festival production directed by Gian Carlo Menotti. The music’s beauty and craftsmanship drew immediate engagement, even though the plot of an aging aristocrat waiting for a long-lost lover differed from personal experience. A subsequent RCA recording from the Metropolitan Opera premiere featured major American performers and Dimitri Mitropoulos. The opera’s style is described as conservative, influenced by Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky, while remaining utterly original. “Under the willow tree” is highlighted as a sinister ensemble scene that sounds like a catchy folk song. The opera won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 but was later sidelined by academic trends favoring serialist and experimental techniques. Renewed interest is attributed to Heartbeat Opera’s recent performance activity.

"I first encountered Samuel Barber's opera in 1979, when, at thirteen, I happened to catch a PBS broadcast of a production at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, which had been directed by Barber's longtime partner, the composer and librettist Gian Carlo Menotti. I was hooked at once, swayed by the astonishing beauty of the music and the unerring craftsmanship that held it all together. The crux of the plot-an aging aristocrat waiting for her long-lost lover-was alien to my experience, but Barber's constant current of melody revealed such a profound sympathy for his characters that I was carried along with the tide."

"Soon after, I used some of my allowance to buy an R.C.A. recording featuring the mostly American cast from the Metropolitan Opera première, a dream team that included Eleanor Steber, Rosalind Elias, and Nicolai Gedda, conducted by the eminent Dimitri Mitropoulos. (It is just as unrivalled an interpretation as Maria Callas's "Tosca" with Victor de Sabata.) Barber's idiom was at once extremely conservative-it bore the influence of Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky-and utterly original."

"A prime example in "Vanessa" is "Under the willow tree," a sinister and rhythmically incisive ensemble scene that masquerades as a catchy folk song. The opera won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958, but its unfashionable avoidance of the serialist and experimental techniques that were rapidly taking over the academic musical establishment made it a piece that few musicians wanted to talk about, or even acknowledge. "Vanessa" was like the illegitimate cousin of a grand old family who is paid to stay away."

"So, for years, I held my fervent reactions to myself. Now I know conclusively that I am not alone: the latest manifestation of the work's growing popularity arrived last Thursday night, when Heartbeat Opera, the scrappy and daring twelve-year-old company that stages radical transformations of classi"

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