Opera, as cognoscenti know, is the ultimate form of creative expression. How better to explore this all-inclusive art form, which incorporates all others, than to explore it through a kaleidoscopic array of media? The Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibit “Opera: Passion, Power and Politics” makes a bold attempt to realize that goal without alienating the neophyte who might feel put off by the art form’s pall of obscurity and elitism. Structured as a kind of maze in the museum’s basement-level Sainsbury gallery, the self-guided tour leads the visitor through seven specially themed rooms, each dedicated to a “quintessential” work that marks a watershed in opera’s development, from Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea (1642) to Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1934), along with a presentation of the urban environment in which each opera premiered. An eighth and final room traces opera’s development over the past few decades and postulates that it may have a vibrant future. The exhibition’s stated purpose is to reveal “how operas are inextricably entwined with the social, political, and cultural landscape” of their societies and how opera “held a mirror to society and crossed borders to inspire audiences.”
In addition to the operas that bookend the exhibition’s chronological layout, the curatorial effort showcases Handel’s Rinaldo (1711, London), Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (1786, Vienna), Verdi’s Nabucco (1842, Milan), Wagner’s Tannhäuser (1861 version, Paris), and Richard Strauss’s Salome(1905, Dresden). The choice of operas for this introductory corpus of works is solid—I myself have taught all