The New York Times has published an interesting piece, their classical music writers giving their thumbs-ups to the modern operas they consider the most likely candidates for perennial popularity. Which, in opera terms, means at least a production every year or two, somewhere, we'd guess.
Among their choices were some fine works but, perhaps inevitably, the list felt incomplete. It was bound to, and there's the fun.
The Times writers picked, among many other works, Thomas Adès' The Tempest (no argument there from me, the opera is a miracle of dark beauty and drama), record-breaking Sir Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur--come to think of it, Brits do rather well in this list, with Judith Weir, George Benjamin, the warning Peter Maxwell Davies and, as per Anna Nicole, Mark-Anthony Turnage also accounted for--along with Kaija Saariaho's intoxicating L'Amour de Loin.
Steve Smith, the Times writer perhaps most immersed in the world of new music, goes for some eclectic and unexpected choices. David T. Little's Dog Days gets his vote, as does Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives, neither of them in many people's lists of usual suspects.
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