# Who was the better opera composer?



## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Whose your pick? One of them wrote many more operas, the other's only opera didn't suck.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I chose Glass because his style is very suited to opera. His operas in my opinion are far superior to Fidelio anyway. I think is a rather silly poll as I can't imagine many people would choose Beethoven _as an opera composer_ to Glass. Opera wasn't suited to Beethoven and he admitted that he found it difficult composing one. Glass on the other hand is well at home with the genre.


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## AmericanGesamtkunstwerk (May 9, 2011)

it is very challenging for me though...

on the one hand, one couldn't possibly ever vote glass over Beethoven.

On the other, Glass has some *magnificent new theater* under his hand and this is an opera question and where would we be without Fidelio? not too different a place.

I heard a legend that Beethoven considered doing Hamlet. I just couldn't cope with that I think that would just be too much.


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

This is quite interesting. I actually intended this poll to be over the top. I thought just for fun, what two composers could I pit against each other that would be a ridiculous comparison. But it's having different results than I had expected. I guess I'll force myself to go to the next glass opera I can, (I had intended out of curiosity to see the Mets Live IN HD last season of satragaha, but I had been pressed for both time & money and decided i'll just rent a dvd from a library or something). But Glass beating Beethoven? Seriously? Or is this a joke on me? Maybe some of you are assuming that I'm a troll. That I'm the same guy that posted the poll pitting mozart vs beethoven and wanted to proove myself by posting another poll under another name... Nope. Though I did feel sorry for Beethoven and thats why in the end I did decide to give him an easy match, because my mind Fidelio can't possibly be all that bad? I mean sure its not as great as the magic flute, but its still very accessible and enjoyable. Just look at the production counts around the world between fidelio and all of glass's operas combined. I'm sure Beethoven is winning handily by this stat alone. and then there are the # of performances of each production too.... I think the met only put on 4 performances of Satragaha, and a normal production has like 10-12 performances.... I know its been said in the past about other composers such as Wagner, but I think this forum is full of die hard fanatics with somewhat different tastes (for advant guard etc) than the Opera going public in general.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

^Maybe if the poll was Fidelio vs. Kepler you would achieve different results. Instead you wrote "who was the better opera composer" implying that one composer was better at writing operas than the other. I know Beethoven's opera is a good, but he had a hard time writing it and he revised it so many times because he didn't think it was right. Glass has written over twenty operas now and he finds himself at home with the genre. I think Fidelio was a fantastic effort on Beethoven's behalf and I don't know where the world would be without it, but I just think that Glass is better at writing operas than Beethoven.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I chose Glass because his style is very suited to opera. His operas in my opinion are far superior to Fidelio anyway. I think is a rather silly poll as I can't imagine many people would choose Beethoven _as an opera composer_ to Glass. Opera wasn't suited to Beethoven and he admitted that he found it difficult composing one. Glass on the other hand is well at home with the genre.


I should have said "_some_ of his operas are far superior to Fidelio. I would definitely rank Akhnaten, Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha above Fidelio, but I think Fidelio deserves to be ranked higher up than something like Waiting for the Barbarians.


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