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Verdi's Veto. The inevitable revolt against such excesses came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when German composers such as Wagner and Strauss insisted on Werktreue— allegiance to the printed score. At the end f his career, even Verdi was threatening to sue any opera house that permitted singers to change a single note of his music. The castrato vogue gradually faded, and as the size and interpretive importance of the orchestra multiplied, the composer became the dominant figure in opera. "The singer's margin of creative and imaginative freedom was inevitably inhibited," says Pleasants, "and he became a single element in a vast ensemble subject to the conductor's direct guidance and control."
And so it rigidly remained until the 950s, when Maria Callas set the opera world on its ear by reviving the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini, and demonstrated that bel canto embellishments could be used to impart new and exciting interpretations to a role. She has since been followed by Sutherland, and in the past few years virtually every major young singer to appear, including Teresa Berganza Marilyn Home and Montserrat Caballe' has performed in bel canto operas.
Chance to Get Away. It had to happen, says Pleasants, if only as an antidote to the dulling sameness of the note-perfect performances. A boldly outspoken theorist, Pleasants goes so far as to say that this straitjacket is so confining that some pop vocalists such as Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra, whose jazz improvisations are a direct counterpart of bel canto, are "technically better than most opera singers." The voice of Ella Fitzgerald, whom he regards as the prima donna of pop, "is so naturally placed that she can sing more in a week than most opera singers can in a month." The falsetto wailings of the Beach Boys and Beatle Paul McCartney all echo the early 19th century bel canto singers, he adds. Beyond their interpretive freedom, the major link between pop singers and the bel canto tradition is the microphone, which allows vocalists to sing more naturally, without straining to make them selves heard above a thundering opera house orchestra. To stay vital, says Pleasants, opera singers must look backward to bel canto because they have nothing to look forward to. He contends that the torturously difficult vocal writing of modern composers is so contrary to the melodic essence of song that it is beyond salvation. The futility, he says, is reflected in Basso Cesare Siepi's lament that "I have nothing against modern composers. But what have they got against me?" The only answer, concludes Pleasants, is for the singers "to go back to the old music.
They can have a lot of fun doing it, and we'll have a lot of fun listening to it."