Spears Reclaims the Romantic Gesture

Gregory Spears’ premiere of Sleepers Awake at Opera Philadelphia marks a definitive exit from the era of postmodern pastiche. For three decades, contemporary opera has leaned on irony to negotiate its relationship with the past; Spears replaces that irony with a sincere engagement with neoromanticism (a late 20th and 21st-century return to the emotional and tonal language of the 19th century). His score utilizes triadic harmonies not as nostalgic quotation, but as a primary formal language capable of sustaining a large-scale dramatic arc. Concentric circles reveal Spears operating in the space formerly occupied by the late works of Carlisle Floyd or the tonal transparency of the British post-minimalists, yet his harmonic logic is more rigorous. While his contemporaries often use the aesthetic of the 19th century as a costume, Spears treats it as a tool for structural cohesion. This approach bypasses the 'automatic mysticism' that often plagues new stage works, where complexity is mistaken for depth. The institutional significance of Sleepers Awake lies in its refusal to adopt the protective coloration of the avant-garde. The claim is that the Romantic gesture, when stripped of sentimental excess and rebuilt on clear tonal foundations, remains the most effective vehicle for operatic narrative. The success of the work’s climax—a G-major expansion that refuses to apologize for its own consonance—suggests that the audience’s hunger for tonal resolution is a structural reality, not a conservative reflex. Opera Philadelphia’s commitment to this score validates the shift toward a music that values communicative transparency over conceptual obscurity. The door is now open for a repertoire that seeks to move the listener through the mechanism of the score itself, rather than through the framing of the program note.