Television Opera

Here are three operas, commissioned for television at twenty-year intervals - Menotti's 'Amahl and the Night Visitors', Britten's 'Owen Wingrave' and Barry's 'Triumph of Beauty and Deceit. Examining changes in television techniques, Jennifer Barnes considers their impact on the role of the composer and questions whether television, in its rapid evolution, has abandoned early indigenous production methods, and with that its secrets of writing and producing opera for the medium.