1920-1960: The Wright brothers take to the sky, Clara Bow becomes Hollywood’s first-ever “It” girl, Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” explores a dream deferred, and opera sings on in the face of unprecedented doom and destruction.
In this resource, you’ll:
“Ceci n’est pas une opera.”
There isn’t one.
From around 1900, opera began fracturing into countless mini subcategories, like so many beams of light through a prism.
(And yes, that start date is different from the one mentioned above—we told you trying to pin down opera trends can get messy. Dates will shift. Eras will overlap. Just go with it.)
So, forget what you’ve learned so far (kinda). The only rule from this point on is: There are no rules.
Have… fun?
By the 20th century, opera was old enough for some psychoanalysis.
That is: It was ripe for taking a good look in the mirror and examining all its tropes and traditions to see what it should keep and what it should kick to the curb.
On a more personal level, 20th century opera creators found themselves fighting for survival in (or in between) two world wars, leaving them with serious questions about the nature of the law, freedom, morality, mortality, humanity, and so much more. It’s only natural the resulting operas were destined to be wildly expressive, angst-ridden, contemplative, existential, and emotional journeys into the human mind.
It also follows that these operas would end up being kaleidoscopically different, offering powerfully individual takes on what had come before… along with some ferociously contrasting views on what should come next.
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Okay. Not to be a buzzkill but, among the patchwork quilt of opera styles that was the 20th century, there were, in fact, some recurring themes.
Let’s start with the loudest and most impossible to ignore:
Innovation.
Sounds like such an innocent word, doesn’t it?
But no, this isn’t “innovation” in the sense of “We’ve innovated the workflow process so the office can be more efficient.” It’s innovation as in “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS AND START THE WORLD OVER AGAIN.”
That’s right: Musical innovators of the 20th Century virtually smashed almost all conventions and expectations, forcing audiences to look around and ask, “What did I just listen to???” For these innovative composers, the days of pleasing melody and comfortable harmony were long gone. They needed newer, more explosive ways to breathe life into their operas, which were largely musical meditations on joy and pain; beauty and suffering; violence and compassion; mass cruelty and mass courage… basically all the many bewildering contradictions that characterized the entire era.
Some of the most earth-shattering operatic innovations of the 20th century were:
Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
Getting rid of standard keys – MUSIC NERD ALERT: Until the 20th century, most of Western music was built on groups of notes known as “modes” or “keys.” By 1900, everyone had gotten cozy with a standard musical skeleton of eight notes or “tones” that provided a blueprint for how melodies and harmonies could unfold. But then came Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), who created a new skeleton in which notes could be arranged and rearranged in seemingly random order. This revamp of the old “tonal” methods in favor of something sonically unpredictable became known as “atonality,” and it would go on to influence much of 20th-century music and opera.
Using the voice in different ways – The two biggest names in atonal opera, Schoenberg and Alban Berg (1885-1935), also experimented with a vocal technique that was midway between speaking and singing. Not to be confused with recitative, this performance style—Sprechstimme, German for “spoken voice”—didn’t involve any musical notes per se. Instead, performers would mimic singing by sliding their voices up or down as they recited lyrics in time with the orchestra. (Think of how your voice trails upward when you ask a question, or how it falls downward when you’re feeling sad… Sprechstimme is a little like that, just a bit more prescribed.)
Subverting dangerous authority – Sure, this had been done before, but there’s a strong argument the risks had never been quite as high. With many 20th-century composers living under authoritarian regimes, some, like Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), put their reputations (if not their lives) on the line by producing operas about depraved people living in dystopian societies. Such works often featured allegorical characters who were obvious stand-ins for broad, sweeping ideas like “greed,” “betrayal,” or “corruption,” making them less realistic, but no less threatening to the powers that be.
In addition to innovators, there were also opera inventors: composers who filled in artistic gaps by developing new genres (or rebooting old ones) and harnessing up-and-coming technologies for special effect.
Opera’s genre-bending 20th century inventions involved:
A change of scale – After the 19th century gave us epic works by the likes of Verdi, Gounod, and Wagner, it probably seemed like opera had gone as far as it could go scale-wise (we refer you to the elephants occasionally brought onstage during productions of Aïda…).
This feeling that opera had reached “peak grand” inspired English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) to test whether opera could still provoke a human response without a cast and crew of hundreds—especially since resources and funding in England were pretty scarce in the years that followed World War II.
The result was a set of chamber operas: works with a limited ensemble of instruments and a handful of solo singers, modeled after early operas that required only a few performers. But though Britten’s chamber operas were “small,” they were often fiercely intense and emotionally draining, proving that great opera could come in any size.
The use of tech in a starring role – Since opera had always been obliged to wrestle with the realities of its day, there was simply no way it could escape the early 20th century obsession with telephones and television (as opposed to our total and 100% healthy interest in TV and smartphones today). The advent of mass communication therefore gave birth to several operas based around tech, which functioned either as the subject of the opera itself or a critical part of the production... or both.
Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti was the first opera specifically composed for television in 1951.
A blend of opera and musical theatre – Over in America, opera composers were up against a new(ish) genre of music storytelling: the musical. And while some composers chose to stay in the operatic lane, others wrote pieces that were true opera-musical hybrids with Broadway-style features like upbeat dance numbers and casual spoken dialogue.
If all this innovation and invention has you stressed out like twenty one pilots, don’t worry: there were a fair amount of 20th century composers who felt the same way.
The irony was, sometimes the composers who once came across as radically “modern” were the very same ones who tried to turn back time by resurrecting older, pre-Romantic forms and styles.
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)* is probably the biggest offender here. His Salome (1905) scandalized the opera-going public with its avant garde harmonies and darkly obsessive storyline (see below).
Richard Strauss, Apic/Getty Images
But flash-forward just six years, and Strauss was reviving Mozartian semiseria tropes with operas like the bittersweet Der Rosenkavalier (The Cavalier of the Rose, 1911), which harkened back to opera’s golden Classical era (pants roles! lower classes showing up their “superiors”! love stories going horribly awry only to be ironed out by the end!).
Over the next few decades, Strauss and his frequent collaborator, novelist and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), went on to create several “Neo-Classical” operas that drew from Classical/Enlightenment ideals of harmony, order, balance, and basic human dignity. These works included both Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadne at Naxos, 1916) and Arabella (1933), as well as Strauss’s final opera, Capriccio (1942, composed without Hofmannsthal, who’d since passed away).
*Not to be confused with waltz king Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), who’s primarily known as a composer of dance music and operettas.
Then of course there’s Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) whose ballet The Rite of Spring caused a literal riot in 1913 Paris due in part to its violent, trippy, Psycho-esque score.
Igor Stravinsky. Roger Viollet/Rex/Shutterstock.
But by the end of World War II, Stravinsky was living in the United States, eventually writing his first full-length opera, The Rake’s Progress, as a sort of 20th century answer to Mozart’s Don Giovanni—complete with extended standalone arias and a plot about a sorely misguided player (or “rake”).
However…
We can add that, though operas like Der Rosenkavalier and The Rake’s Progress owe a huge debt to the Classical era, there’s no denying their modern sound.
With these Neo-Classical works, you should still expect plenty of dissonance and existential angst, just maybe a little softer around the edges. The style was more about fitting new music into an older mold than it was about abandoning modern tastes altogether.
Would you believe us if we said this wasn’t the only 20th century opera to feature a beheading? (We’re looking at you, Dialogues of the Carmelites).
Drawn from Oscar Wilde’s… ahem… wild retelling of the biblical tale, Richard Strauss’s Salome created quite the operatic stir—and raised the eyebrows of bigwigs like infamous New York banker J.P. Morgan—due to its racy subject and its creepily atmospheric, dissonant, and often downright cacophonic score. (It’s like… really loud.)
If an opera could be rated R, Salome would absolutely fit the bill. Ticketholders should prepare for scenes of full-frontal nudity, troubling sexual politics, and a bloody severed head that could fit comfortably in any Halloween display.
Insomuch as we can credit a single opera with breaking down Romantic barriers and shoving audiences into the 20th century without any hope of turning back, Salome wins the prize. Hands down.
Not for the faint of heart, Wozzeck is a supremely bleak opera featuring a sad-yet-horrifying tale wrapped in a deliberately uncomfortable score.
Based on a drama from the early 19th century, but mostly composed between World Wars I and II, the opera wrestles with questions of virtue and sin through the eyes of a military worker trying to sustain a family in times of war and extreme poverty.
Perhaps the most famous atonal opera (read: an opera that doesn’t follow traditional harmonic rules), Wozzeck can feel ultra-modern at times, especially when the lead characters launch into melancholy Sprechstimme.
Still, the opera does include a few nods to conventional Western musical style. For all Berg’s crunchy, off-putting dissonance, there are some recognizable melodies that take on a decidedly folksy vibe, as well as a toe-tapping waltz or two.
Opernhaus Zürich’s production of Wozzeck.
1935, GEORGE GERSHWIN
Metropolitan Opera’s Porgy and Bess. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times.
George Gershwin (1898-1937) and his brother Ira may be the undisputed legends of the “Great American Songbook,” but their contribution to American opera is the stuff of legend, too.
Produced on Broadway in the height of the Jim Crow era, Porgy and Bess—which, despite its musical theatre roots, takes some heavy operatic training to perform in its original score—centered on Black joy and Black grief in the American South at a time when Black stories were rarely given any professional courtesy or public platform.
Gershwin even immersed himself in South Carolina culture and imbued his music with jazzy inflections like rhythmic syncopation (along with traces of gospel and blues) in an effort to pay homage to historically Black music.
Yet it’s worth pointing out both the Gershwins and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, who co-wrote the play on which Porgy was based, were all white individuals. And while many Porgy and Bess tunes like “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” continue to hold massive sway with the listening public, it’s important to remember the opera’s Black representation is offered from a completely white perspective.
So though Porgy’s infectious music and poignant love story will always have a place in the operatic repertoire, audiences should never mistake it for a wholly authentic portrayal of early 20th century Black life.
Golda Schultz sings Clara’s Act I aria in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Porgy and Bess.
Listen: Porgy and Bess
Presented by Washington National Opera, host Saul Lilienstein
takes you through the musical world of Gershwin’s lush, jazzy drama.
Written in English by a British-American team of librettists, composed by a Russian musician with ties to French and American culture, and premiered in Venice, Italy, The Rake’s Progress represents a truly international achievement.
But if we’re talking direct influences, we have to hand this one over not to a single country, but a single person: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Così fan tutte all echo undeniably throughout Igor Stravinsky’s Neo-Classical score.
With painfully obvious character names like “Anne Truelove,” “Tom Rakewell,” and “Nick Shadow,” The Rake’s Progress traces the adventures of a womanizing ne’er-do-well (so… basically Don Giovanni) as he drinks and debauches his way toward insanity—leaving nothing but a young lady’s broken heart behind.
But though the story might seem a little familiar, it’s really the music that calls Mozart’s stylistic flair to mind. Sound a little sus, kids? Have a listen to Progress heroine Anne Truelove’s big aria “No word from Tom… I go, I go to him!” side by side with Countess Almaviva’s showstopping Act III aria, “Dove sono,” from Le Nozze di Figaro, and see if you can detect any similarities in mood, rhythm, or structure. (We think you’ll find we’re right about this…)
Anne Truelove’s aria “No word from Tom… I go, I go to him!” from The Rake’s Progress.
Countess Almaviva’s aria, “Dove sono,” from Le Nozze di Figaro.
Aaaaaaaand… the English speakers have entered the chat.
It’s unclear exactly why English-language opera wasn’t much of a thing between the 17th and 20th centuries, but it’s definitely true that several musical and international shakeups helped give rise to a legit English-opera wave in the early-to-mid 1900s. Especially in America.
The U.S. had always been a fan of opera, and opera houses were a proud 19th- and early-20th-century feature of cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco. But though European operas effectively dominated the American stage up to that time (and musicals like Jerome Kern’s Show Boat were making a name for themselves as early as the 1920s), the rules changed when native and immigrant composers started adapting standard operatic forms to American tastes and/or retrofitting operatic tropes to new English-language librettos—all of which came to a head in the decades surrounding World War II (roughly 1930 to 1960).
George Gershwin, for example, successfully blurred the lines between European opera and American jazz with his landmark work, Porgy and Bess (1935).
Meanwhile U.S.-born composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) and his librettist/life partner, Gian Carlo Menotti (an accomplished composer in his own right) brought a scandalous European love triangle to English-speaking American audiences with Vanessa (1958).
Plus, Menotti’s own compositions—as well as those by other U.S. nationals—helped capture American imaginations by employing recognizable local settings (Menotti’s The Saint of Bleecker Street, 1954; The Ballad of Baby Doe, 1956, by Douglas Moore, 1893-1969) or calling on themes of bureaucratic and technological angst (Menotti’s The Telephone, 1947; The Consul, 1950; and Help! Help! The Globolinks!, 1968)… perfect for a population grappling with a new, uncertain post-war identity.
In addition, immigrants like Weill and Stravinsky, both of whom traveled to America in the wake of European fascism, also developed operatic (or opera-like) works designed specifically to appeal to US listeners. These often incorporated elements of American musical theatre (Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars, 1949) or mapped Classical models to modern English lyrics (Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress).
Across the pond, British opera found its champion in Benjamin Britten, whose works continue to reign over opera’s English-speaking repertoire to this day.
Perhaps best known for his harrowing, melancholic masterpiece, Peter Grimes (1945), as well as his stark, unforgiving tragedies (see The Rape of Lucretia, 1946; Billy Budd, 1951; or The Turn of the Screw, 1954), Britten’s output was as versatile as the English word: He actually composed a handful of sparkling comedies (Albert Herring, 1947; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1960) alongside his catalog of devastating dramas.
Just as it’s really, really hard to divorce German Romantic opera from Richard Wagner, it’s desperately difficult to talk 20th century German opera without getting into a serious discussion on Richard Strauss.
And, like Wagner, Strauss comes with a lot of problematic baggage.
Despite Strauss’s obvious attraction to storylines that eschewed social hierarchy (Der Rosenkavalier, 1911) and placed special emphasis on beauty, dignity, and truth (Arabella, 1933; Capriccio, 1942), the composer himself was inextricably linked to Hitler’s Nazi Party.
Disturbingly, Strauss was named “official top musician” of the Third Reich and didn’t seem to mind, even though he had family members and collaborators who were Jewish. (Strauss’s son and Jewish daughter-in-law were actually imprisoned and then put under house arrest during World War II—though, of course, the composer chould have objected to the Nazi Party outright, irrespective of the threats to his family and friends. Frustratingly, he seems to have done nothing either way.)
Yet in part because Strauss’s artistic ideals never really aligned with German-centric Nazi propaganda as closely as Wagner’s, Strauss hasn’t been judged as harshly by music history. Today, he’s mostly remembered as a composer who skillfully straddled modern and Romantic styles—a sort of musical ancestor to other 20th century German-speaking composers of both the traditional (Erich Wolfgang Korngold, 1897-1957) and progressive varieties (Schoenberg and Berg).
Dogged by massive social and political upheaval (including the Bolshevik Revolution, World War I, World War II, Stalinist rule, and the constant redrawing of the Soviet map), composers throughout Russia and Eastern Europe were no less prolific than their contemporaries in the West.
Despite the looming threat of state sanctions—which could spell blacklisting, imprisonment, or worse—Russian composers like Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) kept some of the flavor of Russian Romanticism (think Tchaikovsky) while simultaneously pushing harmonic boundaries with operas that shed light on societal evils like collective indifference and government oppression.
And though persistent political unrest led many artists (including Stravinsky and Prokofiev) to flee Soviet territory for extended periods of time, operagoers still have Russia to thank for some of the edgiest, most beautiful, and enduring operas of the 20th century.
Czechoslovakia and Hungary, too, produced more than a few memorable operas during the early to mid-1900s, even as their artists were forced to work in the shadow of shifting political fault lines.
Chief among operatic composers in this part of the world were Czechoslovakia’s Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), who built his reputation on searing portrayals of Slavic village life such as Jenůfa (1904) and Káťa Kabanová (1921), and Hungary’s Béla Bartók (1881-1945, emphatically not the bat from the animated Anastasia movie) whose sole opera, A kékszakállú herceg vára (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, 1918) brought the rhythms and cadences of Hungarian folk song to the cosmopolitan stage.
And now for something completely different.
Over in the land of excellent food and perpetually amazing fashion, composers followed the path forged by Claude Debussy to bring French lyricism—that sweepingly expressive je ne sais quoi so common in French grand opéra—into the modern age (read: to modern audiences who liked their music innovative and their drama as brutally honest as possible).
Standouts included Francis Poulenc, whose Dialogues des Carmélites (Dialogues of the Carmelites, 1957) pulls precisely zero emotional punches and features a mass execution at the end; Maurice Ravel (1875-1937, of Bolero fame) whose fanciful L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Magic Spells, 1925) is one of opera’s few truly kid-friendly offerings; and Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) who finished what Mozart and Rossini started with La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother, 1966), a musical setting of the final chapter of Figaro’s famous narrative.
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Fallingwater
1920: The Einstein Tower in Potsdam, designed by Erich Mendelsohn (Germany)
1923: Vers une Architecture published by Le Corbusier (France)
1930: The Chrysler Building, designed by William van Alen (USA)
1931: The Empire State Building, designed by Shreve, Lamb, & Harmon (USA)
1931: Christ the Redeemer statue completed (Brazil)
1932: Radio City Music Hall in New York City, designed by Raymond Hall (USA)
1933: Bauhaus school of design closed by Nazi government (Germany)
1935: The U.S. Supreme Court Building, designed by Cass Gilbert (USA)
1936: Hoover Dam, designed by Gordon Kaufmann (USA)
1937: Fallingwater in Bear Run, PA, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (USA)
1937: The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, CA, designed by Irving Morrow (USA)
1943: The Pentagon, near Washington DC, designed by George Bergstrom (USA)
1949: Glass House in New Canaan, CT, designed by Philip Johnson (USA)
1953: The United Nations headquarters, designed by Wallace Harrison and Max Abramowitz (USA)
1955: Notre Dame du Haut chapel, designed by Le Corbusier (France)
1955: Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, opens (USA)
1956: The Capitol Records Building in Hollywood, CA, desinged by Louis Naidorf (USA)
1959: The Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (USA)
Guernica
1920: Abraham Lincoln, sculpted by Daniel Chester French (USA)
1921: Tableau I, painted by Piet Mondrian (the Netherlands)
1921: Three Musicians, painted by Pablo Picasso (Spain)
1923: On White II, painted by Wassily Kandisnky (Russia)
1925: The Harlequin’s Carnival, painted by Joan Miró (Spain)
1926: Black Iris III, painted by Georgia O’Keeffe (USA)
1927: Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, photographed by Ansel Adams (USA)
1929: The Treachery of Images, painted by René Magritte (France)
1930: American Gothic, painted by Grant Wood (USA)
1931: The Persistence of Memory, painted by Salvador Dalí (Spain)
1935: The Human Condition, painted by René Magritte (France)
1936: Summer Days, painted by Georgia O’Keeffe (USA)
1936: Migrant Mother, photographed by Dorothea Lange
1937: Guernica, painted by Pablo Picasso (Spain)
1938: Time Transfixed, painted by René Magritte (France)
1940: Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, painted by Frida Kahlo (Mexico)
1942: Bull’s Head, created by Pablo Picasso (Spain)
1943: The Four Freedoms, painted by Norman Rockwell (USA)
1943: A Little Night Music, painted by Dorothea Tanning (USA)
1946: Mark Rothko develops his multiform painting style (USA)
1948: Christina’s World, painted by Andrew Wyeth (USA)
1950: Lavender Mist, painted by Jackson Pollock (USA)
1950: Peanuts comic strip, by Charles M. Schulz (USA)
1953: Relativity, drawn by M.C. Escher (the Netherlands)
1955: Flag, painted by Jasper Johns (USA)
1955: The Sacrament of the Last Supper, painted by Salvador Dalí (Spain)
1956: Red Mobile, sculpted by Alexander Calder (USA)
Count Basie
1923: The Creation of the World, composed by Darius Milhaud (France)
1924: Herman Winterhoff develops the vibraphone for the Leedy Manufacturing Company (USA)
1924: Rhapsody in Blue, composed by George Gershwin (USA)
1925: Ballet Méchanique, composed by George Antheil (France)
1928: Boléro, composed by Maurice Ravel (France)
1931: Grand Canyon Suite, composed by Ferde Grofé (USA)
1932: George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker invent electromagnetic pickups for guitar (USA)
1932: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major, composed by Maurice Ravel (France)
1934: Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff (Russia)
1935: Leslie Hammond invents the electric Hammond Organ (USA)
1936: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, composed by Béla Bartók (Hungary)
1936: Peter and the Wolf, composed by Sergei Prokofiev (Russia)
1937: Symphony No. 5, composed by Dmitri Shostakovich (Russia)
1937: One O’Clock Jump, composed by Count Basie (USA)
1937: Donald Leslie patents the Leslie rotating speaker cabinet (USA)
1938: Adagio for Strings, by Samuel Barber (USA)
1939: Sonata for Trumpet and Piano, by Paul Hindemith (Germany)
1939: Imaginary Landscape No. 1, composed by John Cage (USA)
1939: In the Mood, written by Joe Garland (USA)
1940: Romeo and Juliet, composed by Sergei Prokofiev (Russia)
1941: Quartet for the End of Time, composed by Olivier Messiaen (France)
1942: Gayne, by Aram Khachaturian (Armenia)
1942: Fanfare for the Common Man, composed by Aaron Copland (USA)
1944: Appalachian Spring, composed by Aaron Copland (USA)
1945: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, composed by Benjamin Britten (England)
1948: Conlon Nancarrow begins composing his player piano studies (Mexico)
1948: Columbia Records introduces the Long-Playing vinyl record (USA)
1950: Leo Fender releases the Fender Telecaster, the first mass-produced solid body electric guitar (USA)
1950: Harlem, composed by Duke Ellington (USA)
1952: 4’33”, composed by John Cage (USA)
1952: Guitarist Les Paul helps design the Gibson Les Paul solid-body electric guitar (USA)
1955: Variations for Orchestra, by Elliott Carter (USA)
1956: The RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer is developed (USA)
1956: Elvis Presley’s debut album (USA)
1957: Gruppen, by Karlheinz Stockhausen (Germany)
1957: Birth of the Cool, by Miles Davis (USA)
1958: Poème Électronique, composed by Edgard Varèse (France)
1958: The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is formed in London (England)
1959: Afro Blue, composed by Mongo Santamaria (Cuba)
1959: Kind of Blue, by Miles Davis (USA)
1959: Mingus Ah Um, by Charles Mingus (USA)
1959: Take Five, composed by Paul Desmond (USA)
1959: The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center is established in New York City (USA)
Martha Graham
1920: Valeska Gert debuts her motionless performance piece, Pause, in Berlin (Germany)
1923: The Charleston dance is popularized (USA)
1925: Gret Palucca establishes the Palucca School of Dance (Germany)
1925: George Balanchine is invited by Sergei Diaghilev to choreograph for the Ballet Russes (France)
1926: The Martha Graham Dance Company is established (USA)
1928: George Balanchine premiers his neoclassical ballet Apollo and the Muses (France)
1928: The Humphrey-Weidman Company is founded by Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman (USA)
1928: Rudolf von Laban publishes his first book on dance notation (Austria)
1928: The Lindy Hop is popularized in Harlem, New York City (USA)
1929: Sammy Davis Jr. debuts with the Will Mastin Trio at age 3 (USA)
1930: The Katherine Dunham Company is established in Chicago (USA)
1931: The Royal Ballet is established in London (England)
1932: The Nicholas Brothers become the featured act at the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City (USA)
1932: Fred Astaire debuts on Broadway in Gay Divorcee, written by Cole Porter (USA)
1934: The Bennington Festival summer dance program is formed in Vermont (USA)
1934: Agrippina Vaganova publishes Fundamentals of the Classical Dance (Russia)
1935: The Imperial Ballet of Russia is renamed the Kirov Ballet (Russia)
1938: Hanya Holm forms the Hanya Holm Dance Company (USA)
1937: The American Ballet Theater is established (USA)
1940: Jerome Robbins joins the American Ballet Theater (USA)
1942: The Eleanor King Dance Repertory Company is founded in Seattle (USA)
1943: Pearl Primus debuts African Ceremonial in New York City (USA)
1945: Talley Beatty is featured in the film A Study in Choreography for Camera (USA)
1946: The José Limón Dance Company is established (USA)
1946: The Dance Theater of Los Angeles is founded by Lester Horton (USA)
1948: The American Dance Festival is formed in Connecticut (USA)
1948: George Balanchine co-founds The New York City Ballet (USA)
1949: Alwin Nikolais forms the Playhouse Dance Company (USA)
1952: The Erick Hawkins Dance Company is founded (USA)
1952: Gene Kelly dances in the rain in the MGM musical Singin’ in the Rain (USA)
1953: Merce Cunningham Dance Company is established (USA)
1953: Anna Sokolow creates Lyric Suite (USA)
1954: Paul Taylor Dance Company is established (USA)
1954: Bob Fosse choreographs his first Broadway musical, The Pajama Game (USA)
1954: George Balanchine choreographs a new version of The Nutcracker (USA)
1957: The Joffrey Ballet is established (USA)
1958: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is established (USA)
1958: The first professional society is formed to promote the Alexander Technique (England)
1959: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno develop Butoh dance (Japan)
1959: Anna Halprin founds the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop (USA)
Shuffle Along
1920: Erwin Piscator and Hermann Schüller establish the Proletarian Theatre, Stage of the Revolutionary Workers of Greater Berlin (Germany)
1921: Shuffle Along, written by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle (USA)
1922: The Hairy Ape, written by Eugene O’Neill (USA)
1924: Erwin Piscator uses projected images in productions at the Volksbuehne in Berlin (Germany)
1925: Luigi Pirandello assumes the artistic direction and ownership of the Teatro d'Arte di Roma (Italy)
1925: No, No, Nanette, written by Irving Caesar, Otto Harbach, and Vincent Youmans (USA)
1927: The Royal Family, written by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber (USA)
1927: Show Boat, written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II premiers at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City (USA)
1929: Erwin Piscator publishes The Political Theatre (Germany)
1930: Private Lives, written by Noël Coward (USA)
1930: The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre, written by Bertolt Brecht (Germany)
1931: Boris Godunov, written by Alexander Pushkin (Russia)
1931: Lee Strasberg co-founds the Group Theatre in New York City (USA)
1932: The Palace Theatre abandons vaudeville for cinema (USA)
1934: The Children’s Hour, written by Lillian Hellman (USA)
1934: Anything Goes, written by Cole Porter (USA)
1935: The Federal Theatre Project is established (USA)
1936: An Actor Prepares, written by Konstantin Stanislavski (Russia)
1936: You Can’t Take It With You, written by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart (USA)
1938: Antonin Artaud conceptualizes Theatre of Cruelty (France)
1938: Our Town, written by Thornton Wilder (USA)
1939: The Iceman Cometh, written by Eugene O’Neill (USA)
1939: Arsenic and Old Lace, written by Joseph Kesselring (USA)
1939: Theatre director and Stanislavski protégé Vsevolod Meyerhold is arrested by the Soviet government (Russia)
1940: Cabin in the Sky, written by Vernon Duke, Lynn Root, and John Latouche (USA)
1940: Bertolt Brecht publishes On Experimental Theatre (Germany)
1941: Blithe Spirit, written by Noël Coward (England)
1943: Oklahoma!, written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (USA)
1944: The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams (USA)
1945: Carousel, written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (USA)
1945: The Madwoman of Chaillot, written by Jean Giraudoux (France)
1945: Harvey, written by Mary Chase (USA)
1947: A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams (USA)
1947: The Actors Studio is founded in New York City (USA)
1948: The Caucasian Chalk Circle, written by Bertolt Brecht (Germany)
1948: Kiss Me, Kate, written by Cole Porter (USA)
1949: Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller (USA)
1949: Stella Adler Studio of Acting is founded in New York City (USA)
1949: South Pacific, written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (USA)
1950: Guys and Dolls, written by Frank Loesser (USA)
1951: The King and I, written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (USA)
1951: The Chairs, written by Eugène Ionesco (France)
1953: The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller (USA)
1953: Shure Inc. develops the first wireless microphone system for performers (USA)
1954: The Public Theatre is formed by Joe Papp in New York City (USA)
1955: Twelve Angry Men, written by Reginald Rose
1955: Waiting for Godot, written by Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
1955: Damn Yankees, written by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (USA)
1955: A View from the Bridge, written by Arthur Miller (USA)
1956: Long Day’s Journey into Night, written by Eugene O’Neill (USA)
1956: My Fair Lady, written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and George Bernard Shaw (USA)
1957: Endgame, written by Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
1957: The Birthday Party, written by Harold Pinter (England)
1957: The Music Man, written by Meredith Wilson (USA)
1957: West Side Story, written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim (USA)
1959: A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry (USA)
1959: Rhinoceros, written by Eugène Ionesco (France)
1959: Gypsy, written by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim (USA)
1959: The Sound of Music, written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (USA)
The Catcher in the Rye
1920: The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (USA)
1922: Ulysses, by James Joyce (Ireland)
1922: The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot (USA)
1922: The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams (England)
1924: A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster (England)
1925: The Trial, by Franz Kafka (Germany)
1925: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (USA)
1925: Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (England)
1926: Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne (England)
1926: The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway (USA)
1926: The Call of Cthulhu, by H.P. Lovecraft (USA)
1927: Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis (USA)
1927: To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf (England)
1928: All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque (Germany)
1928: The Tower, by W.B. Yeats (Ireland)
1928: Orlando, by Virginia Woolf (England)
1929: The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner (USA)
1930: The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett (USA)
1930: As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner (USA)
1931: The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck (USA)
1932: Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (England)
1933: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein (USA)
1934: Mary Poppins, by P.L. Travers (England)
1934: Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie (England)
1934: Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller (USA)
1935: Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (USA)
1936: At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft (USA)
1936: Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (USA)
1937: Out of Africa, by Karen Blixen (Denmark)
1937: Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie (England)
1937: Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck (USA)
1937: The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (England)
1937: Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Huston (USA)
1938: Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier (England)
1939: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (USA)
1939: The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West (USA)
1939: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot (England)
1939: The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler (USA)
1939: Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans (USA)
1940: For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway (USA)
1940: The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)
1941: Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey (USA)
1942: The Stranger, by Albert Camus (France)
1942: Runaway Bunny, by Maragaret Wise Brown (USA)
1944: The Razor’s Edge, by Somerset Maugham (England)
1945: Animal Farm, by George Orwell (England)
1945: Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh (England)
1945: Stuart Little, by E.B. White (USA)
1945: Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren (Sweden)
1947: The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank (the Netherlands)
1947: Goodnight Moon, by Maragaret Wise Brown (USA)
1948: The Cantos, by Ezra Pound (USA/Italy)
1948: Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey (USA)
1949: Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (England)
1950: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis (England)
1950: I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov (USA)
1950: The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury (USA)
1951: The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (USA)
1951: The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury (USA)
1952: The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison (USA)
1952: Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White (USA)
1952: The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (USA)
1952: East of Eden, by John Steinbeck (USA)
1953: Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming (England)
1953: The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler (USA)
1954: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien (England)
1954: Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (England)
1954: Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (USA)
1954: I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson (USA)
1955: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (USA)
1955: Beezus and Ramona, by Beverly Cleary (USA)
1955: Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson (USA)
1955: The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis (USA)
1955: Eloise, by Kay Thompson (USA)
1956: Howl, by Allen Ginsberg (USA)
1957: The Cat in the Hat, by Theodor Seuss Geisel (USA)
1957: On the Road, by Jack Kerouac (Canada)
1957: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand (USA)
1957: The Guns of Navarone, by Alistair MacLean (England)
1957: Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger (USA)
1958: The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson (USA)
1958: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote (USA)
1958: Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
1958: A Bear Called Paddington, by Michael Bond (England)
1959: Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs (USA)
1959: The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (USA)
1959: Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein (USA)
Chuck Yeager
1924: Edwin Hubble discovers that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies (USA)
1925: Erwin Schrödinger defines the Schrödinger equation of quantum mechanics (Austria)
1927: Werner Heisenberg develops the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics (Germany)
1927: Georges Lemaître develops the theory of the Big Bang (Belgium)
1927: Charles Lindbergh performs the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris (USA)
1934: Enrico Fermi creates nuclear fission by neutron irradiation (Italy)
1937: German zeppelin Hindenburg crashes in Lakehurst, New Jersey, ending the airship era (USA)
1938: B.F. Skinner publishes The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis (USA)
1939: Alan Turing develops a system of decyphering coded German transmissions (UK)
1945: Howard Florey develops mass production of penicillin (Australia)
1945: J. Robert Oppenheimer leads the first test of an atomic bomb (USA)
1947: Chuck Yeager becomes the first pilot to fly faster than sound in the Bell X-1 (USA)
1948: Alfred Kinsey publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (USA)
1950: Alan Turing publishes the Turing test, one of the most influential concepts in artificial intelligence (UK)
1952: Jonas Salk develops and tests first polio vaccine (USA)
1953: James Watson and others discover the helical structure of DNA, the basis for molecular biology (USA)
1953: Alfred Kinsey publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (USA)
1957: The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, is launched into orbit (USSR)
1957: Laika the dog is sent into orbit on Sputnik 2 (USSR)
1957: Noam Chomsky publishes Syntactic Structures (USA)
Jackie Robinson
1920: The League of Nations is founded (Multinational)
1920: Prohibition in the United States begins (USA)
1920: Mahatma Gandhi launches Non-cooperation movement (India)
1921: The Mexican Revolution ends (Mexico)
1921: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of the Nazi Party (Germany)
1921: The Italian National Fascist Party is established by Benito Mussolini (Italy)
1922: British archeologist Howard Carter discovers Tutankhamen's tomb (Egypt)
1922: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the first Communist state, is formed (USSR)
1923: The Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic, ends in failure (Germany)
1924: The death of Vladimir Lenin triggers power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin (USSR)
1927: Joseph Stalin becomes dictator of the Soviet Union (USSR)
1929: Wall Street crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression (USA)
1931: Japan invades Manchuria (Japan)
1933: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor (Germany)
1933: Japan and Germany withdraw from the League of Nations (Multinational)
1933: Prohibition in the United States is abolished (USA)
1934: Hitler declares himself Führer (Germany)
1936: Beginning of the Spanish Civil War (Spain)
1937: Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister (UK)
1937: Japan invades China, and the Nanjing Massacre begins (China)
1938: The Great Purge ends after nearly 700,000 executions (USSR)
1939: World War II begins (Multinational)
1940: Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister (UK)
1941: Germany begins the attempted extermination of Europe’s Jewish population (Germany)
1941: The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor leads to the USA joining World War II (USA)
1944: D-Day landings in Normandy, France (USA)
1944: Paris is liberated from German occupation (France)
1945: President Harry S. Truman orders the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (USA)
1945: The end of World War II in Europe and the Pacific (Multinational)
1945: The United Nations is founded (Multinational)
1947: Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American baseball player to play modern Major League Baseball (USA)
1947: Independence of India and Pakistan and beginning of First Indo-Pakistani War (India)
1948: Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi (India)
1948: The United Nations establishes the formation of the State of Israel (Israel)
1949: The creation of NATO (Multinational)
1950: North Korean invasion of South Korea begins the Korean War (Korea)
1952: Queen Elizabeth II becomes Monarch of the Commonwealth realms (UK)
1953: End of the Korean War (Korea)
1954: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Brown v. Board of Education, ordering an end to racial segregation in public schools (USA)
By far the most popular 20th-century composer in today’s operatic canon is Richard Strauss. There are a few runner-ups, particularly Berg, Britten, Stravinsky, and—thanks to some serious efforts by Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras—Janáček.
Sadly 20th-century American operas seem to be something of an acquired taste for major international houses (even those within America). Still, some works like George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors have broken through to become operatic mainstays, showcased again and again throughout the U.S. and often beyond.
20th-century features you’re still likely to hear/see today:
*Apologies to any singers reading this. We don’t mean “belt” in its pedagogical sense here; we just mean it as in “get loud.”
Atonality – a term used to describe compositions that broke with traditional musical scales (that is: standard relationships from note to note that sound comfortably familiar to Western ears) and established a more random, unpredictable musical system; pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg.
Sprechstimme (“spoken voice,” also known as Sprechgesang, or “spoken singing”) – a 20th century style of rhythmic vocal production that’s part speech, part song, echoing the rise and fall of normal conversation through approximated musical sounds; championed by Arnold Schoenberg (that name comes up a lot, doesn’t it?).
Chamber operas – operatic works written for a limited number of singers and a small ensemble of instruments; often associated with several small-scale operas by Benjamin Britten, including Albert Herring and The Turn of the Screw.
Neo-Classical – a 20th century musical aesthetic that evoked the balance, elegance, and accessibility of Classical music (best exemplified by the likes of Mozart and Haydn); prime operatic examples include The Rake’s Progress by Stravinsky and Arabella and Der Rosenkavalier by Strauss.
Writer
Eleni Hagen
Producer
Kenny Neal for
Kennedy Center Education
Digital Learning
Updated
April 19, 2023
Unfortunately, a lot of people think they don’t, and most of them have never seen one. In this audio story, opera fan Eleni and opera skeptic Samantha discuss how their experiences with opera as children influenced their opinions of the art form as adults.
A soprano is a soprano because they can sing high and a bass is a bass because they sing low, right? Not really...
A beginner’s guide to some of opera’s most challenging female roles and a unique look at how opera does girl power.
Opera has always been addicted to love, and its romances can range from the hilarious to the dramatic. But don’t expect a standard “Boy Meets Girl” story when you take your seat at the opera house.
A quick overview of Weill's 1949 opera based on the novel Cry, the Beloved Country and set in the days before apartheid in South Africa
A quick overview of Bernstein's 1956 operetta based on Voltaire's satirical novella
A quick overview of Gershwin's 1935 quintessential American masterpiece
A quick overview of Britten's 1951 opera based on Herman Melville's novel
A quick overview of Britten's 1945 opera about a troubled fisherman
A quick overview of Puccini's 1926 unfinished final opera
A quick overview of Stravinsky's 1951 homage to Mozart's operas
A quick overview of Berg's 1925 ground-breaking atonal opera
A quick overview of Strauss's 1905 passionate drama
Eric Friedman
Director, Digital Learning
Kenny Neal
Manager, Digital Education Resources
Tiffany A. Bryant
Manager, Operations and Audience Engagement
Joanna McKee
Program Coordinator, Digital Learning
JoDee Scissors
Content Specialist, Digital Learning
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![Angel Blue and Eric Owens in Porgy and Bess, photo by Ken Howard. [Metropolitan Opera]](/globalassets/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/artsedge/media/understanding-opera/porgy-and-bess-2-169.jpg?format=webp&width=768&quality=70)
