20th Century Opera’s Most Misunderstood Flop?

It was one of the highest-profile world premieres in opera history: Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, commissioned for the 1966 grand opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center. The audience cheered, but critics sneered or sniffed. “Was the world deaf? Music once perceived as 50 years behind the times now seems to have been written 40 years too early. Same notes, opposite impressions.”