Opera in Miniature: Growth of an English Genre

The only permanent opera houses in England are both in London. This is perhaps the main reason why, since the war, the operatic life of this country has been characterised by the appearance of tiny companies dedicated to performing opera in what novelists of the last century would have called “reduced circumstances.” It is the nature of the reduction in each case that distinguishes one little group from another: it can mean complete opera in concert performance; truncated opera in stage performance; excerpted opera, and opera designedly miniature in its creation. In no instance are the functions of the leading London-based companies precisely duplicated.