New to the Aria 

When most people think of opera, the image is likely of 18th- and 19th-century period pieces, sung in Italian or German, and requiring supertitles. It almost certainly doesn't include a story about people stuck in an airport, sung in English.

Contemporary opera is not some unicorn, with rare exceptions peeking up through the canon of Verdi, Puccini and Mozart. According to Kristine McIntyre—director of Utah Opera's production of Flight, a 1998 opera by composer Jonathan Dove and librettist April De Angelis—this could be considered a "golden age" of contemporary operatic works. Yet it's still challenging for a layperson to draw distinctions between a theatrical piece as "contemporary opera," and the more familiar designation of "musical theater."

McIntyre believes there are a couple of key differences between the two forms—one related to the performers, and one related to the initial creators. As to the former, she notes that the specific classical training of opera singers makes for an entirely unique experience. "Opera is ... generally about the beauty and power of the unamplified human voice," she says. "These singers are trained not to be miked. With all respect for my musical theater comrades, most of them couldn't sing these contemporary operas. These singers, they're racehorses. They're specialists, and writers of contemporary opera are writing for those specialists."

Furthermore, she adds, there's a different focus at play in the creation of opera. "In theater, the prime storytelling mechanism is the words," McIntyre says. "I don't think anybody would say, even in something like Les Misérables, that the prime storytelling mechanism is the music. It is in opera. The music tells the story.

"Broadway scores are written for 12, 14 instruments, and you're lucky now if you get a live pit band. There are five percussion instruments alone in Flight. ... I don't think you find that kind of musical characterization in musical theater."

There is still the question, however, of why someone would choose to tell a particular story through contemporary opera, rather than through a traditional play, or even a novel or a film. Flight's story of lives intersecting at an airport is in part inspired by the story of the same nationless refugee that was turned into the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks film The Terminal. Yet McIntyre recognizes the components in Flight that made it "operatic," despite material that could have been—and has been—taken in a more whimsical direction.

"You can see how this could have been a funny modern play," she says. "But [Dove and De Angelis] wanted to push it into a different realm. The characters of the Refugee and the Controller warranted something more in terms of musical motifs; they seem human, but there's something almost supernatural about them. It's no surprise that, when Jonathan Dove was writing Flight, he had just come off of a translation of [Wagner's] Ring Cycle. What pushes it into opera is bringing all of those elements together."

As a director, McIntyre also believes that the general approach to guiding performances isn't radically different in a contemporary piece than it would be for a more classical, canonical opera production, though there are some nuances. "A piece like Flight requires a different level of authenticity than a Verdi masterpiece," she acknowledges, "but I think the heightened emotions that make opera work are the same. ... Contemporary composers are particularly good at underplaying emotion until it ramps up. We're much more comfortable with the idea that everything doesn't need to be full-throttle all the time."

McIntyre's bio indicates that she has enjoyed a particular emphasis on doing contemporary and English-language works, which makes sense when you consider the peculiarities of directing for opera companies. "In the theater, if you directed Hamlet twice in a lifetime, that would be a pretty big deal," she says. "But I've done Don Giovanni six times. So part of it is wanting to do something new. I've seen a lot of Verdi and Mozart and Puccini. The energy is in contemporary opera."

It is true that staging contemporary pieces presents some challenges to companies where classics like Tosca and The Magic Flute are surer bets to draw audiences, which can require some creative planning. Newer works often involve multiple regional companies co-producing and sharing resources, as was the case with the 2018 production of Moby-Dick that McIntyre directed for Utah Opera, in order to reduce the financial risk. But the flip side is that contemporary opera can be a way to welcome in new audiences who might otherwise feel intimidated by the high-art connotations of the mere word "opera."

"If anybody is 'opera-curious,' Flight is a great place to start," McIntyre says with a laugh. "It's a wonderfully approachable piece. It shows what contemporary opera is really good at: Come see a show where all the characters are appealing and totally understandable, and have your spirits lifted by this music."