American music critics writing on opera are thought by most European critics to be distressingly parochial. The attitude of fidelity to the composer’s wishes, scenically and dramatically as well as musically, is considered by continental critics as quaint, certainly passé, and not a little naïve—adjectives which have been regularly applied to Americans by those from older and wiser civilizations.

At a time when European ideas of opera production are being seen more often on American stages and—more the point—European ideas are being widely disseminated through television (e.g., the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle stagings of Monteverdi operas, or the Chéreau staging of Wagner’s Ring) and movies (the Hans Jürgen Syberberg Parsifal), it seemed to me that it might be productive to journey to Germany to see such productions in situ. Thus, one week, and five operas.

First of all, the disclaimer. What I saw was only a fraction of what is being newly produced; though that fraction is, I was told, typical of the best, and the work of stage directors who are highly regarded. In addition, that fraction is only a minimal percentage of the annual dose of performances in German opera houses, which are among the busiest in the world.

In Germany no less than in any European country, there is a pervasive cultural chauvinism, which dictates not only that the native works are forever kept before the public, but that it is the task of the state, be it on the federal, state,