Opera
- William Alwyn - Miss Julie, opera in 2 acts, after Strindberg
- Luciano Berio – Opera (revised version, 28 May, Teatro Comunale Florence)
- Peter Maxwell Davies – The Martyrdom of St Magnus (18 June, Kirkwall, St Magnus Cathedral)
- Julian Livingston – Twist of Treason
- Thea Musgrave – Mary, Queen of Scots
- Donald Sosin – Esther
- Karlheinz Stockhausen – Atmen gibt das Leben (22 May 1977, Nice)
- Michael Tippett – The Ice Break (7 July, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden)
Read more about this topic: 1977 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word opera:
“Opera once was an important social instrument—especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television.”
—Luciano Berio (b. 1925)
“The real exertion in the case of an opera singer lies not so much in her singing as in her acting of a role, for nearly every modern opera makes great dramatic and physical demands.”
—Maria Jeritza (1887–1982)
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)