COINING WORDS, especially ones that incorporate words with perhaps salacious connotations, runs the risk of being perceived as capricious and received as offensive. Both are entirely foreign to my intent. I use "rape" here in its original late Middle English sense of a violent seizure of property

(Latin: rapere = to seize). Equally strong as verb or noun, it has come to mean to plunder, to despoil, to abduct, as, for example, in the Peter Paul Rubens painting "Rape of the Sabine Women" (1635-40; abduction), or Alexander Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock" (1712; despoilment), or--more contemporaneously--the rape (plunder) of pristine landscape by unscrupulous developers.

In mid-February, my wife and I attended a performance of La traviata at The Skylight in Milwaukee, a venerable small opera house with a long history of excellent and innovative productions. The previous sentence intentionally omits the composer's name, because this disturbing staging had little to do with Verdi, and nothing at all to do with Dumas; in fact, the libretto, not a translation, was an entirely new creation by Dimitri Toscas. Violetta, known more familiarly as V, was a cocaine-snorting pop singer; Alfredo, not surprisingly called Alfie, was a rising politician; Flora was an outrageously flamboyant drag queen. There were no sympathetic characters in this ship of fools, not even Senator and former president George Germont, in a plot devoid of the cultural values and moral conflicts of the original.

Verdi's wonderful orchestral prelude, with its incomparable simultaneous thematic depiction of the dichotomy between licentious pleasure and serious love, was omitted. Once the shock of the plunge in media res, into a world of drugs, booze, and decadence, ameliorated a little, we were treated to a text liberally seasoned with profanity. In "Ah! qual pallor," for example, instead of something like "Oh! How pale," V dropped the F-bomb in a line that I only can leave to the reader's imagination. Further, a great deal of sensuous physical contact culminated--or rather, deteriorated--in simulated intercourse in the opening scene of Act II. I am no prude, but I need to ask: What purpose does all this serve? Must even the most tawdry, base aspects of society and human nature be elevated as art?

The single intermission took place at an inappropriate place somewhere in the middle of Act II. How the title of Verdi's masterpiece could be applied to this travesty is incomprehensible; I would think that the composer's estate may have grounds for a lawsuit.

Although a particularly egregious example, the Skylight performance is by no means an isolated case. In 2004, when I attended the Kongress of the Bund der Deutschen Gesangspadagogen (BDG) in Hamburg, I saw what generously may be called a "novel" production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. A week or so later, while visiting a friend in Basel, I witnessed a bizarre staging of that composer's Die Zauberflote. Of course, the fantasy world created in Mozart's last opera seems to lend itself to fantastic interpretations, but some go beyond the pale. In this case, among other atrocities, the addition of phallic appendages to the otherwise virginal costumes of the three Genies had no rationale other than shock value. Similarly, during the 2007 BDG Kongress in Essen, I saw a production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut that was set in a modern cafe/ bistro with weird effects.

It would seem that Boris Goldovsky's seminal, wonderfully effective concept of the orchestra (score) as stage director has been replaced by the philosophy of egotistical whim as stage director. Few of these "innovative" concepts have anything to do with the music. The audience is so consumed with matters of staging (set design, lighting, costuming), choreography, and (perhaps) text, that music necessarily is relegated to a position somewhere in the periphery. When and how has opera been taken over by and become the province of nonmusical forces? Stage directors have come to impose their concepts on the music, rather than allowing their concepts to arise out of the music. Admittedly, sometimes it works--a few Peter Sellars stagings come to mind--but most operas are, in fact, period pieces. Would anyone consider improving the "Mona Lisa" with a mustache? How about bringing Shakespeare up to date? ("Hey, Romeo! Like, where you at, dude?") It seems akin to adding graffiti to architectural marvels. Opera needs to be music, with the voice reigning supreme.

To end this commentary on a more positive note, earlier on that same cold February day, with eager anticipation, largely due to a great deal of media attention, my wife and I visited the Body Worlds exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Resulting from a phenomenon called plastination, a revolutionary method of specimen preservation invented by Dr. Gunther von Hagens, real bodies in various dramatic poses, as well as individual excised organs, are shown in elaborate detail to reveal the "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalms 139:14) human animal. It is a captivating, instructive, sometimes troubling experience to study the structure and function of healthy and unhealthy specimens. Anyone who continues to smoke, for example, after witnessing blackened lungs first-hand and up close, would seem devoid of reason. It also gives pause to see actual scar tissue thinning the heart wall as a result of an infarct. On a healthier note, one finds it fascinating to observe the relatively small laryngeal structure that houses the vocal folds, surrounded by an intricate muscular and neural network and supported by a complex pulmonary system, all of which combine to produce the miracle of voice. When it becomes accessible in your general area, I enthusiastically recommend the exhibition to all voice practitioners, especially voice pedagogues and students of singing. A visit would be a marvelous--although admittedly somewhat expensive--field trip for a voice pedagogy class.

Journal of Singing departs from the usual format in this issue to include a guest editorial by NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, reasons for which you will read in my prefatory comments to the essay. It is an extraordinarily timely and provocative piece. I particularly welcome his citation of Marcus Aurelius; it reinforces what I consider to be an underlying tenet of Journal of Singing editorial philosphy.

Finally, dear reader, as part of my annual New (publication) Year's greeting, I wish you an enjoyable and successful season of teaching, singing, studying, and reading. It is my hope that Journal of Singing will occupy an important role in all of those activities. I count it a rare privilege to serve NATS and its official publication.