Francesco Peri graduated in Philosophy in 2003 with honors from Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. In 2005 he published his first book “Da Weimar a Francoforte” and entered the Ph.D. Program at University of Lecce. While researching for his Ph.D. thesis, Francesco moved to Paris, where he lived, studied and wrote for two years.

In 2007 his book “La regina dei Porsei” won the Italo Calvino Prize,  the most prestigious award for young and talented writers.
Concurrently, from 2003 to 2008 Peri made contributions to philosophical magazines and numerous Italian and Foreign Literature periodicals. He specializes as translator of authors like Th. W. Adorno, Hans Blumenberg, Egon Wellesz, Michael Baxandall.

Upcoming publications include his Ph.D. thesis on the relationship between words and images from antiquity to present day, a book on the concept of ‘modern music’ in early 20th century German criticism and a research about art and mental disorder in the European Literature of the late 19th century.

Franco Corelli in Radames from Verdi's Aida

Ouch...you picked out a pretty tough one to begin with. It's a provocative question that calls for provocative answers. Let me suggest one that singers won't probably even think of... I'll speak as the devil's advocate, stating the CASE AGAINST opera. The enemy's point of view sometimes helps us see things better.

The core of the problem, to keep it simple, is the atrocious repetitiveness, dullness and mustiness of contemporary repertoire. For more than a century the same 30/40 titles have been all there was about opera. Let's face it: how can an audience such as ours be interested in a cultural practice that is basically dead? How can a young person with an ear for music and a taste for plots pay big bucks to ear the same stuff, follow the same stories, see Don Giovanni being dragged down into hell for the 10000th time? Is that the fault of the i-Pod generation? Isn't it rather healthy, in the sense Nietzsche would give this word?

Why don't we rather stress the fact that musical theatre hasn't produced one single sound and recurrent repertoire work ever since TV was estabilished as the basic popular entertainment channel? Fact is, the old works we worship no longer have any living connection with the expectations, the tastes, the hopes and fears of our time. A connection that was once effectual, and to which all of Donizetti's output, to make an example, owed its existence. Would you blame a lack of interest in literature, if literature only consisted of Homer, Dante, Ariosto, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Corneille? I know I would quickly grow tired of books, if this was the case.

Unfortunately, with opera this IS precisely the case! Opera life has long shrunk into a mummified, self-sufficient, museum-like ritual, just like the kabuki theatre, and it won't surely be vocal proficiency, when displayed to the usual, worn-out stock of airs, that will attract the masses, uneducated or not.

Shouldn't we be honest and realize that we have a big problem in this department? Perhaps young people are right after all, like the rats abandoning the ship that sinks. Spiritual life has moved on, it no longer dwells in the pages of Verdi and Wagner... Hasn't opera lived past itself? This is the real question to ask.

Ok, end of the devil's statement. I admit it was brutal, but this is the quintessence of what you will hear from most men in the street. It's a perspective one has to consider. If you haven't set out to lynch me yet, have a nice day and take care.

Francesco Peri