# Joseph Kerman Has Died



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Most music lovers are apt to know Mr. Kerman's work primarily from his incendiary first book, "Opera as Drama," published in 1956. Drawing on essays he had written in the late 1940s for the Hudson Review, the book proposed a simple yet radical view of opera: that it is the composer whose vision above all shapes the dramatic essence of a work.

[....]

But the controversies surrounding "Opera as Drama," which was released in a revised second edition in 1988, owed less to its philosophical underpinnings than to the ferocity of Mr. Kerman's judgments about the operatic repertoire. In his view, the truly successful works in the canon were limited to the masterpieces of Mozart and Verdi, as well as a few works by Monteverdi, Debussy, Berg and Stravinsky.... He was impatient with Wagner, unaware of Handel, condescending to the young Britten, and sneeringly dismissive of Puccini and Richard Strauss.

Full obituary:

http://www.sfgate.com/music/article/Joseph-Kerman-musicologist-critic-cultural-5332557.php


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