My principal debt of thanks is to Vicki Cooper – kindest and most encouraging of commissioning editors – and her staff at Cambridge University Press, without whose constant support and patience this volume could never have materialized. Special thanks are due to Becky Jones and Clive Unger-Hamilton for helping with the finishing touches and steering the book efficiently into production. Valuable advice on various aspects of the text along the way has been received from Patrick Carnegy, Eoin Coleman, Fiona Ford and Aine Sheil.
To work with such a varied and distinguished team of contributors has been a constant pleasure, and several have provided input to the project that has affected the book well beyond the confines of their individual textual contributions. In particular I am grateful to Nigel Simeone and Philip Weller, not only for their expertise and efficiency in compiling the Chronology and translating Chapter 3 respectively, but also for their characteristic blend of acumen, enthusiasm and friendship that has made our many discussions and exchanges of correspondence on all aspects of twentieth-century opera so memorable. Tom Sutcliffe has given generously of his time in helping me with various matters, and in kindly making available several of the book’s illustrations. Arved Ashby deserves particular gratitude for having taken on Chapter 15 at short notice.
Thanks are due to the following for their help in sourcing illustrations, and for granting the necessary permissions for their reproduction: Daniel Cande, Wilfried Hösl, Susanne Lutz (Pressebüro, Bayerische Staatsoper), Hendrikje Mautner (Oper Frankfurt) and Professor Günther Kieser; Gisela Prossnitz, Monika Rittershaus and Ruth Walz; Dr Christopher Grogan and Dr Nick Clark (Britten–Pears Library, Aldeburgh); Deen van Meer and Lizet Kraal (GKf Amsterdam); Richard Jeffery and David Knight (BBC); Gerard Mortier, Stéphane Löber and Pierrette Chastel (Opéra Bastille); Rachel Beckles Willson and Annegret Strehle (Schott); and Margaret Williams and Michael Burt (MJW Productions).
Most importantly of all, it is a pleasure to recall the enthusiasm for the project shown by Anthony Pople, who died after he had already started work on a chapter devoted to minimalist opera that was to have formed an essential part of this collection of essays. Whilst Anthony would be endearingly intolerant of anyone who (as he would view it) wasted energy on feeling melancholy about his untimely passing, this book is affectionately dedicated to his memory with a mixed sense of both celebrating his astonishingly productive life and career – and his phenomenally indomitable high spirits, even in times of acute personal crisis – and a very real sadness that we have lost such an infectiously energetic and pleasant friend and colleague.