TRENDS IN OPER A TODAY

Abstract

The issue of contemporary opera nowadays moves many music critics, experts, directors, as well as many admirers of this kind of music to think about what the courses and modalities of the survival of the genre in our time are. Is this merely a museum genre or a living an ever regenerating music organism? The paper starts with a brief history and reminder of the world’sgreatest operatic authors of the 20th century, as well as the origins of the genre in Serbia, and moves on to provide in its later part an insight into some of the latest works that could be categorized as postmodernism of our time, since the offspring in the new operas are several young female composers who address both the genre and the audience in a new manner. Their works communicate with the younger audience but also gain admirers among those who worship the “iron” repertoire. How the national opera is treated and what the course of its development is in our time is dealt with in the concluding part of the paper which poses many questions, gives certain answers but also moves to thinking. Among other things and: is there such a thing as female musical idiom in our country? Will a shift occur in our environment as well as in the relationship to national being and operatic genre or will everything end in a museum? The answers are hereby implied and offered to the readers.