Theater audiences came much earlier and seemingly with much more understanding to productions that explored subtexts and the cultural origins of the plays they were seeing than opera audiences that have fought long and bitterly against change. I believe it may be due to opera’s having maintained the repertory system that features a core group of works from Mozart to Strauss that are rotated endlessly, with excursions backwards into the baroque, and forwards to a very few modern composers. Theater certainly revives its classics (viz. the admired Little Foxes, above), but theater is much more driven by new work and is more likely to interpret older material in the same “everything is on the table and open for exploration” mentality than opera.

Is the audience’s interest in modern work produced in a modern way beginning to change? I’ve noticed that a large number of the big hits in New York lately have been Die Soldaten, the MET’s latest Lulu revival along with The Nose and From the House of the Dead, and the Philharmonic’s Grand Macabre. There are calls for St. Francois d’Assise. J.J., how do you see it?