Why Didn’t Bach Write An Opera?
Among the odd assortment of summer-festival opera this year, no production is more curious than this one, billed as Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Actus tragicus.” After all, the greatest ever Lutheran church composer never actually wrote an opera. Closer inspection reveals the piece to be a modern assemblage of six of Bach’s sacred cantatas, fused together. And so the question remains: Why did he never turn his genius to the opera stage?
