One day, a New York Times article made the striking announcement that there was a “Jazz Opera in View for the Metropolitan.” The company expressed interest in producing an opera of the “modern American type.” Branching out beyond the European canonical repertory, the article explained, was a necessary innovation which would “bear important fruit in the near future.” If these sentiments – a desire to expand the repertory, a commitment to foregrounding new work – sound familiar, then it may come as a surprise to learn that this article was published nearly a century ago: on November 18, 1924. What’s [...]