Among the many changes wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has been a transformation in the scale of live music. In certain locations, opera companies who would normally be in the middle of a season bulging with large-scale works now find themselves opting for smaller orchestrations of classics in order to keep performing whilst conforming to strict health regulations. Fullscore reductions have a long history, with many composers reorchestrating their own work as well as older compositions, sometimes to accommodate hall size, and frequently to fill pockets. Canadian companies like Opera By Request, Voicebox: Opera In Concert, and Tapestry Opera have long presented reduced works, operas in concert, or chamber operas as part of their respective mandates, but whether or not reduced versions will translate to larger organizations remains to be seen.
“Maybe this is the moment where we have to think out of the box and experiment,” says Johannes Debus, Music Director of the Canadian Opera Company. “Maybe we are allowed to carry out those experiments; it all can happen now. I think the main aspect is when you do say, ‘Okay, let’s rewrite the score, let’s reorchestrate, let’s rearrange, let’s trim it to the forces we can actually have, given the rules and restrictions’ that you somehow are able to envision what the consequences are, what the sound world will be, and how that might have an impact on the work’s interpretation.” The impact of such revisions are difficult to foretell, particularly with composers who made immense sound their . The operas of Richard Wagner, for instance, present a host of challenges for the transcriber; shrinking. In Abbass’s version, first presented in 1920, he reduces the six harps in the original score to one; the original 15-member woodwind section to 12 (the eliminated parts reallocated to retained instruments); offstage brass is brought from six trumpets to two, and six trombones to four. His reduction of Wagner’s , like that by conductor Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1903-1975), maintains Wagner’s existing string and percussion sections but reduces winds, harps, and offstage music. In , for instance, portions of sections written for harp are transposed for the concertmaster to play instead. It’s one of many creative reductions of Wagner’s mammoth including composer Jonathan Dove’s, first presented by Birmingham Opera in 1990 that utilized just 12 singers and 18 players. Owing to COVID19-related restrictions, it, like many reorchestrations, may find itself coming into more regular use.
