Joyce DiDonato, and vocal music post 1900

Joyce DiDonato's new CD (“Stella di Napoli”) reminds us just how much music is still pretty well unknown. We hear attractive arias from the likes of Giovanni Pacini, Michele Carafa, Saverio Mercadante and Carlo Valentini along with music from the more familiar Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini. To entrance us, a good aria needs a fine librettist (to write the words), a talented composer (to compose music for the words) and a superb singer (to sing the words and the music). Joyce DiDonato is a singer who really enters into what she is singing, and is able to convey the feelings behind the words being sung even if you don't follow the language. A very fine CD indeed; entrancing music, expertly sung.

Listening to the 10 arias on the CD, one cannot help but wonder what has happened to operatic music post-1900. From Italy from the very beginning of the eighteenth century onwards, vocal music poured out from a multitude of talented composer, from Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Porpora onwards until Verdi and Puccini and then: nothing of note. It was a similar tale in Germany, where vocal music poured forth from the end of the seventeenth century onwards and then: Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler and afterwards very little, with the honourable exception of Richard Strauss.

In 50 years time, will one of DiDonato's grandchildren give us a CD of moving vocal music by Dallapicolla, Nono, Schönberg and Stockhausen? I somewhat doubt it. Twentieth century composers whose music looks like surviving long term include Sibelius, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Britten (maybe). Not many Italians or Germans. However, a new Great Age might dawn, one day.