The news that the Almeida Theatre in north London will no longer stage its summer opera festival is pretty saddening. But it was Michael Attenborough’s parting shot at the art form that really stuck in my throat. Attenborough told The Telegraph that ‘modern opera studiously avoids anything so old-fashioned as melody or emotion’.

Which reminded me of an extraordinary night of melodic, emotion-filled opera that left me pole-axed and delighted a few years ago. It was the canny two-hander Love Counts by Michael Nyman – a deeply moving portrayal of an unlikely London romance in its world premiere performance. As a composer Nyman enchants and infuriates me in equal measure, but he scored Love Counts with heartfelt, diligent skill and the theatre staged it with cutting brilliance. Now which theatre was it again…ah yes, that’s right, it was the Almeida.

There are plenty of talented composers who Attenborough could call if he wanted to commission a new opera in a tonal, tuneful style – not least Nyman, but also Jonathan Dove, who was associated with the Almeida for a number of years and wrote his involving and dramatic opera Siren Song for it.

If Attenborough’s beef is with the big houses who commission large-scale and predominantly atonal pieces from the more prominent names in contemporary music – and yes, they happen to have commissioned a string of duffs over the past two years – then he’d be ideally placed to ratchet-up Almeida Opera as an alternative. It always was a nimble little festival, and with the profusion of non-line-towing opera being sung above the pubs on Upper Street he’d be on just the right patch.

In a sense, though, that’s not the point. I’ve no idea which operas Attenborough has seen recently, but the fact is, to many ears plenty of ‘modern’ and ‘modernist’ operas harbour the emotion Attenborough craves despite having a complicated relationship with melody. Western art music (for want of a better pigeonhole) began to fracture its relationship with melody a century ago, and since then plenty of operatic masterpieces have been born. Many have an ambiguous relationship with melody rather than presenting it straight as Mozart and Puccini’s operas might, but hey, that’s where large parts of our musical tradition have gone and it has proved very stimulating and involving for a large number of people while also reflecting the jarring magnificence of modern life. 

The point being, Attenborough’s claim that music is ‘all about’ melody is questionable: there’s stuff called rhythm and harmony, too, and when those things begin to obscure our traditional neurological relationship with a good tune, it can be a compelling artistic and human experience. Complaining that music is emotionally defunct because it doesn’t offer you a tune you can instantly whistle is a little like berating contemporary verse because it doesn’t always employ rhyming couplets. 

The real reason for the Almeida shutting its opera festival, which The Telegraph journalist understandably chose to reference a good few lines below the ‘modern opera is rubbish’ line, is that it divides the Almeida audience. In these straitened times the theatre wants to focus on its core punters for spoken plays, which is fair enough. But if the Almeida hasn’t been able to wed spoken theatre and opera in the way that, say, the Young Vic has, it’s a little disingenuous to go pointing the finger at opera in general.

On September 5 I’ll be taking my seat at the Royal Albert Hall to watch one of the greatest ‘modern’ operas get a 25th-birthday concert performance. Nixon in China by John Adams is an intensely modern work because at the time of writing it locked into a narrative that was bang-on the zeitgeist and used complex music that was recognisably born of a dialogue with the changing world around it. It’s one of the most performed of 20th-century operas, and it also has some of the most exquisite melodies I know. I’ve got a spare ticket, too, so if you want to come along, Michael, do get in touch.